Comic Book Resources

Not that Pottsville; it's, um, some other one

The big mystery of Wolverine: Switchback apparently isn't who's laying deadly road traps for motorists. It's, Where the heck is Pottsville?

The Marvel one-shot, released last week, features a certain Canadian mutant winding up in tiny Pottsville (elevation: 4,210 feet) as he tries to take a break from all things X-Men and Avengers and ... the 17 other teams on which he serves.

But which Pottsville is it? Stephen J. Pytak of The Republican & Herald newspaper in Pottsville, Pa. (elevation: 659 feet) tries to find out.

"If you spend $3.99 to read the X-Man’s latest adventure," he writes in Sunday's edition, "don’t expect to see references to Route 61, Yuengling beer and the Pottsville Maroons."

Artist Das Pastoras' establishing shots depict rocky mountains with snow-covered peaks. So I'm guessing this Pottsville is ... somewhere in the Rocky Mountains? New Mexico, maybe.

Marvel Assistant Editor Sebastian Girner assures Pytak that Wolverine's Pottsville is entirely fictional, and fairly generic: "This could be Pottsville anywhere. It could be anywhere in America. The writer didn’t specify where this was taking place."

So Pottsville, Pa., population 15,549, will have to be satisfied with Yuengling, and not a comic book, as its claim to fame -- and be happy it didn't suffer the fate of Stamford, Conn.