Rewatched Scorsese’s Infernal Affairs retread, The Departed.

I’ve found over the years that it is a better film than I first felt it to be, watching it in a fancy hotel in Asia where in the torrid sticky heat (long story) it felt like a never-ending trailer rather than an actual movie.

Each viewing, I’ve ended up refocusing my attention onto some different element than previously: moments of prefiguring, plot points that I hadn’t originally noticed, character tics and so on.

This time it was a minor detail – a comic handed by Whitey Bulger analogue Frank Costello (Nicholson) to a young Colin Sullivan (Conor Donovan). I recognised the masthead as being that of hirsute mutant claw-waggler Wolverine, and a quick look at Comic Vine confirmed that it was indeed Wolverine issue #11, cover dated September 1991.

I also noticed a few moments later what seemed to be another, different Wolverine comic in the background – not passed from Frank to Colin, but on a rack behind Colin’s head in the reverse shot. I screenshotted it, and after changing the levels was able to identify it as Wolverine #18, cover dated December 1991.

I think the comics stood out for me because whilst I never read that particular series – not having grown up a Marvel fan despite occasional dalliances with the Tubbs Hill-era UK anthologies like  Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Action, and later engagement through The Sleeze Brothers and Strip – in 1991 I was actually following the character in Marvel Comics Presents, attracted by bold covers by Barry Windsor-Smith and then later Sam Kieth.

Anyway, after identifying which comics I had spotted, I checked to see if anyone else had previously addressed the issue (so to speak) – and came across this post by Adam Cadre. His blog features notations on the comics and books he has read, as well as the movies he has watched (in a more polished way than my own A Week In Film), and it is with awe and admiration that I note that he scores his cinematic truffling on an asymmetric scale of 0-24.

Kudos, pilgrim.