Will the REAL Wolverine
please stand up?
By "The Ace of Knaves"
Considering the large selection of Marvel comics featuring "the old canucklehead",
you'd expect a Wolverine fan like me to be spoilt for choice. This is
unfortunately not so, as in my opinion the quality of the produced stories
tends to vary al lot. The past years have seen an enormous increase in
Wolverine titles (he even has two solo books now) but to be honest, there
hasn't been a lot of "WOW!" for me. So imagine my surprise when Wolverine
#62 actually managed to give me the "Wolverine feel" for the first time
in nearly four years. The last good Wolverine "run" for my tastes was
Greg Rucka's, ending with #17 (nov. 2004). Mark Millar's subsequent "enemy
of the state" was a good story, but I feel it would have been more effective
as an out-of-continuity mini series or as a graphic novel. Some of the
stand alone issue's were also quite good (#32 and #41) and Guggenheim's
'Civil War" follow up story wasn't that bad, but Loeb's run was in my
opinion absolutely disastrous. I absolutely hate the "let's retcon a shadowy
mystical super villain into the background and involve all sorts of mystical
crap" approach. I know Batman used to have a split fanbase, some loving
the more gothic / magic approach and some preferring the scientific /
human stories.
Personally, I find that heroes should be presented as befits their origin.
Doctor Strange, Doctor Fate, Thor, Captain marvel,
their powers and
natures are magical so I would expect the stories to turn that way. Spider-man,
Batman, Iron man, Wolverine,
are "science" heroes and should avoid the
arcane. That is not to say they can never ever be involved in arcane plots,
but it should be limited to single occasional story arcs and it definitely
should NOT be retconned into the origin stories (Strazynski's Spider-man
/ Morlun / Ezekiel arc still brings me out in a rash. How would Thor fans
respond if they would try to retcon his origin in continuity to having
him really being a mutant who just has an overactive imagination and delusions
of grandeur?). So you can imagine that when Loeb was finished and Guggenheim
took over again, but with yet another "fight for the soul mystic doo-dah"
arc I felt all hope was lost. By the way, that reminds me: if you're going
to do a magical-spiritual story like Loeb did, you shouldn't kill off
Sabretooth as he is an essential counterpart to Wolverine. It's not like
they have mutants to spare at the moment! Yin-Yang, Batman-Joker, Wolverine-Sabretooth.
If you want to make the mystical point you should reinforce this, not
end it! Anyhow, this to explain that I didn't have much hope when I began
reading #62, figuring that "Get Mystique" would turn out to be an unnecessary
prolongation of the in my opinion hideously flawed "Messiah complex".
However the new creative team and writer Jason Aaron managed to put together
an exiting issue that didn't give me the feeling that I'd seen it all
before. Aaron has also just started writing a new arc on Ghost rider (so
he can do both the "science" and the "magic"! I'm impressed!), so I'm
definitely going to keep my eye on him and browse some of his earlier
works. His flashback scenes with Mystique and Wolverine in Mexico and
Kansas are just the sort of stuff I would have hoped to see in "Wolverine
Origins".
Which brings me to probably the saddest Wolverine series. There hasn't
been a good issue of "Wolverine Origins" yet in my opinion, and I can't
understand why (other than that I'm a nit picking snob fanboy with delusions
of grandeur, but hey, I'm allowed as much self deception as the next guy).
It had such promise: "Wolverine Origins"! I would have imagined it to
be like "legends of the dark knight" started out, bringing self-standing
arcs featuring Wolverine at sometime in his hidden past. In fact, the
just released (and very promising) "Logan" mini series featuring Wolverine
in WWII Japan is just the sort of stuff I would have wanted to see in
"Origins". So why not? Way and Dillon did a great job on other stuff (Punisher
Vs Bullseye for one), but somehow they just don't work for me on "Origins",
and that's a damned shame. It's expressed best by Wolverine himself in
X-force #1: "
as it turns out, I knew more about myself BEFORE I got
my memories back. Ain't that a bitch."
I wasn't sure about this new X-force series; yet another "Messiah complex"
spin-off. And yet I'm getting a good feeling here. Kyle and Yost have
managed an intriguing set-up involving the Wolverine-X23 father-daughter
relation (she's even more of a loose cannon than he ever was). Add to
this some of the most loathsome villains ever created (the purifiers and
bastion) and Wolverine in an outfit reminiscent of his "brown" uniform
(for covert ops) and things are looking up. "X-Force Logan" has a little
too much muscle and hair-gel in the pencils for my tastes but I don't
really mind. It's better to see the "old soldier" Wolverine trying to
steer X23 than to see the "John Wayne mono dimensional" Wolverine ("Let's
grab a brew") in Uncanny X-men.
Concluding: "Wolverine" is on the map again and "X-force" and "Logan"
also offer a good yarn in my opinion (I'm looking forward to see what
"The amazing immortal man and other bloody tales " is going to bring),
but "Uncanny X-men" and "Wolverine Origins" need to brush up their act.
(Oh, and then there's still Wolverine in the "avengers " and "first class",
but I don't read those so it would be unfair of me to comment. I will
say this though: me not reading them is comment enough).
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