Wolverine fan delves into past to find voice
THE NEXT LEVEL
Voice actor Steve Blum heard Wolverine’s voice in his head from a young age, when he sat in his grandfather’s book store sorting comic book collections purchased by his uncle.
Today, he voices the character in “Wolverine and the X-Men,” the first three episodes of which have just been released on DVD. Blum first voiced the character of Wolverine in 2004 in the “X-Men Legends” video game. He’s since returned to Wolverine in additional video games, and in the “Hulk Vs. Wolverine” DVD film from earlier this year.
“Initially my take on Wolverine was based on what I had been hearing in my head since I was a comic-book kid,” Blum said in a recent phone interview with The Oklahoman. “I didn’t really base it on anything but that. I really tried to divorce myself from all of the other animated incarnations. And though I love Hugh Jackman’s on-camera version of Wolverine, I have a different voice in my head for sort of a comic book/animated representation of him.”
In “Wolverine and the X-Men,” the X-Men have been disbanded after an attack on Professor Xavier. Wolverine, known as a loner, must regroup the team under his leadership. The character of Wolverine is as high-profile as ever, with appearances in comics, the animated series, and a big-budget movie, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” starring Jackman. Wolverine wasn’t necessarily the most likely multimedia star, first appearing as an antagonist to the Hulk in “Incredible Hulk” No. 181. Blum’s path to voice acting was also somewhat circumspect.
Blum broke in as a voice actor almost by accident, while working as a driver for a low-budget sci-fi film company.
“In the mailroom, we had a lot of time to just banter around and tell awful jokes,” Blum said. “I just happened to mess around with voices.”
A friend who was casting an anime production for a new company heard Blum’s voices, and asked if he’d be interested to come in and create some monster voices.
“He’d pay me $7 a line for doing it and feed me breakfast and lunch, and I thought that was the best deal I ever heard of,” Blum said.
Blum said the timing of voice-over for anime came to him very naturally.
“I was able to fall in step with the sounds that they needed for their creatures, and eventually that evolved into actual acting and creating voices for human-like characters,” he said. “I kind of learned on the job, I really had no acting training. Just doing it for 15 years in anime was really my schooling.”
Blum said working on “Wolverine and the X-Men” is an incredible ride, as more and more characters from the X-Men’s world are brought to life.
“It’s really the realization of a fanboy’s dream, it’s amazing for me,” Blum said. “In the studio, when we were recording the series, for me to sit and listen to the other characters come to life around me was just as exciting as doing the voice itself.”
By Matthew Price
From Friday’s The Oklahoman
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