Five Comics Worth Reading - June 2011

BATMAN BEYOND
I was not a regular viewer of the Batman Beyond cartoon—caught a couple stray episodes, the Return of the Joker movie and then the Justice League Unlimited crossover stuff—but Adam Beechen and company have made sure that’s hardly a prerequisite to enjoying this comic. An elderly Bruce Wayne mentoring a snarky new Batman in the future seems like a pretty slam dunk premise, but what I dig about this book is the effort Beechen puts into not resting on the concept’s laurels and pushing himself to go further. Terry McGinnis’ is a great character—he’s Peter Parker with more swagger as Batman—but Beechen focuses on fleshing out the world around him, from his relationship issues—the classic “my girlfriend thinks I’m bailing on her because I’m a super hero” routine but done with panache—to a techno-conspiracy enveloping his best friend/sidekick. There has also been expansion to the Batman/DC Universe elements I believe the cartoon only touched on, including bringing in Dick Grayson, giving the Justice League a bigger role and starting to dig into what happened to Bruce following his Batman career. It’s all stuff that can be pulled off better in the comic book format than in episode TV aimed primarily at kids, so I applaud Beechen, Ryan Benjamin, et al. for embracing the new avenues open to them while keeping the heart of the show and what made it work intact.

GENERATION HOPE
There are few things tougher in this current comic book climate than creating new characters with distinct voices who can hopefully capture the attention of the audience, but with Generation Hope, Kieron Gillen faced this challenge not once but multiple times, with a cast whose most tenured star has only been around a couple years and that includes five newbies that he and Matt Fraction introduced only months ago. There may have been some growing pains early on, but the Five Lights and their leader have genuinely won me over to the point where I’m quite compelled to see what’s up with them each issue and the X-Men guest stars serve more to place them in the larger universal context than anything, thanks in large to the clever and endearing writing of Mr. Gillen. These kids stand out from the New Mutants or Young X-Men of the past in so many ways, not limited to their complete lack of preparation for this life given a world where nascent mutants have become scarce as well as the paramilitary yet arguably practical lifestyle Hope took from her mentor, Cable, and is passing on to her fellow barely adolescents. I enjoy the soap opera I’d argue is paramount for any X-Men title worth its salt, but also the more sinister touches, like exactly how much sway Hope holds over her “friends” and to what degree they realize it. There are also neat well thought out and uniquely Gillen touches like the idea of a mutant who manifests in the womb or the seemingly canine Teon delivering a compelling speech in court because his power is to adapt to situations, and the other Lights then wondering if he was being genuine or if “adapting” in this case meant keeping proximity to Hope whether he liked it or not. Salva Espin is matching the tone of the book nicely, upping his game each month both in terms of bringing fun nuance to the lighter moments and letting his experimental side run wild on a character like Kenji.

INCREDIBLE HULKS
Greg Pak is finishing out a five-year run with The Hulk, and you can tell he’s enjoying every last second of his swansong. If there’s one thing Pak’s Hulk has never been, it’s understated, so when he put together a multi-part spy story that featured Bruce Banner going undercover with a tux—that Hulk promptly ripped—and cool gadgets to save his wife-turned-Red-She-Hulk who had thrown in with his old foe Tyrannus on a quest for Pandora’s Box, you better believe he was going to wring every last drop of awesome out of that description, not skimping at any second for less smashing, fighting, big set pieces or over-the-top resolutions than you’d expect. There have been no shortage of pathos over the last five years, but aside from a healthy dose of heartache peppered throughout and culminating at the conclusion, that arc was more about enjoyment than emotion. Now we come to “Heart of the Monster,” Pak’s big five-part finale, and thus far he’s already brought in every element from the previous story plus Bi-Beast—BI-BEAST!—Wendigo, the Troyjan from Peter David’s legendary run, Fin Fang friggin’ Foom, Umar, a wishing well, possibly the fountain of youth and surely more to come. Pak has also brought Amadeus Cho back to where he started out as Hulk’s alternating tech wiz/sidekick/comic relief and it’s been a beautiful fit. Also also, Tom Grummett on the last arc and Paul Pelletier here are about as delightful a one-two artistic punch as you can ask for. Everything about Pak’s Hulk run has been wonderfully well-rounded, delivering massive action alongside laughs, angst and character development, so this is proving a fitting farewell.

WOLVERINE: THE BEST THERE IS
If there’s anything book on the market today that delivers pretty much what’s advertised on the cover in spades, I do believe it’s Wolverine: The Best There Is, and for the record I consider that a good thing. Up front in black and white you’ve got no shortage of labels letting you know this is not a comic for immature readers or the weak of heart, and it’s not; it’s Charlie Huston’s glorious ode to hyper violence and taking off the safety as you only can with a character like Wolverine—or perhaps only with Wolverine, period—as illustrated with fiendish and sickeningly beautiful visual glee by Juan Jose Ryp. The first arc saw creepy new villain Contagion attempt to unlock the secret to Logan’s healing factor by employing every nefarious trick in his arsenal, be it his own ability to produce the grisliest plagues he could imagine, mind games of the crudest nature, or his array of henchmen with regenerative abilities of their own—a mix of Marvel obscurities Huston delighted in reviving or his own creations—hacking away at our hero in manners most hideous. Best There Is serves as the comic book equivalent of a grind house horror flick in the tradition of Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider, building on brutality, turning the amps louder than they should logically go, and making an experiment in four color sadism the kind of fun you feel mildly guilty about having. Plus: “Suicide” Chris Daniels (not to be confused with Christopher Daniels aka Suicide)!

XOMBI
On the surface, I almost feel like Xombi is a book that should be too smart for me—a testament to the sophistication and layers John Rozum brings to it—but when I get to actually reading, I’m able to follow along without much trouble and get absorbed into a the weirdness of it all—a testament to how skillfully he and the people working with him manage and present those elements as strengths rather weaknesses. The series’ lead, David Kim, is basically immortal and resultantly a bit emotionally detached, but Rozum chooses to examine that condition, letting the narrative live in large part in Xombi’s head, challenging the merits as well as the pitfalls of being so apart from the world at once in a clinical manner but an impassioned one that can’t break free as well. Our cold point of view figure proves a perfect lens to a fantastically bizarre world that includes super-powered nuns, demons powered by their own reputation and men who get their information from loose change. Xombi delights in its weirdness but also knows how to throw in some darn good fight scenes amidst the conspiracies and mythologies, with all of it powered by Frazer Irving, an immensely talented artist whose style stands out amongst anything else in comics, appearing more like wood carvings than drawings at times, and matching up nicely with the story Rozum’s telling, both residing on a plane so separate from about anything else you’ll read. There’s nothing else on the stands anything like Xombi, and I look forward already to reading it back as a whole and enjoying it perhaps even more than I have the parts.

Underrated/Overlooked: Fatal Attractions

The thing most people remember about the 1993 X-Men semi-crossover Fatal Attractions is, frankly, the holograms.

Fatal Attractions spread the long-awaited return of X-Men uber villain Magneto (he’d only been “dead” for a couple years, but there were so many X-Books with so much happening every week at the time that a couple years felt like decades) over six chapters. What made it somewhat unique on the heels of stuff like Inferno, X-Tinction Agenda and my beloved X-Cutioner’s Song and the reason I call it a “semi-crossover” was that unlike those events, where each chapter bled into the next and readers had to adjust to shifting creative teams trying their best to tell a seamless story, each installment of Fatal Attractions more or less stood alone as pieces of a larger puzzle that could still be savored individually and gave every writer and artist their own chance to shine without having to worry about any baton.

But back to the holograms for a moment.

Gimmick covers were of course all the rage in 1993. The gimmick du jour for Fatal Attractions was that the front of each cardstock cover had a hologram of one of the book’s stars as designed by the series artist in the upper right hand corner under the logo. I’ve heard from the walls that can talk at Marvel HQ that these babies were not exactly the easiest things to pull together—and to the best of my knowledge we haven’t seen them since—but they sure did look sweet, particularly as you could really see each guy’s design sense in the one he created (Joe Quesada did Havok for X-Factor, Greg Capullo did Cable for X-Force, John Romita Jr. did Magneto for Uncanny X-Men, Andy Kubert did Gambit for X-Men, Adam Kubert did Wolverine for…well…Wolverine and I’m not sure who did Nightcrawler for Excalibur, maybe Joe Madureira, but it looked nice—and I’m sorry if I just got any credits wrong).

However, this was one case where the 90’s sizzle on the outside has perhaps caused folks to forget that the work in between the covers brought the steak in spades. Like I said, each chapter really did work on its own, so let me touch quickly on what I dug about each.

The story kicks off in X-Factor #92 by Peter David and Joe Quesada, although more than any other part of Fatal Attractions, this one ties in more thematically than anything else and serves truly as the prologue. Magneto’s groupies, the Acolytes, led by the guy who “killed” him, Fabian Cortez—they don’t know that—attack a government Sentinel-building factory really as a way to draw Quicksilver, X-Factor member and son of Magneto, into the fray. The main event of the issue is Cortez attempting to sway Quicksilver to become his ally and take his place as Magneto’s heir, which does a nice job filling any new readers in on what Mags’ deal is and why he’s such a nasty piece of work. While this is going on though, you also get a pretty killer X-Factor vs Acolytes throwdown—with a literally killer Jamie Madrox moment—gorgeous formative Quesada art, the balance of wit and morality that PAD always brings to the table, and a pretty powerful ending where the team confronts their government liaison and supposed friend Val Cooper about the whole Sentinel thing. There’s also a cameo from Exodus, who becomes more important down the line.

X-Force #25 by Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo has its own big time non-Magneto comeback, as Cable, who had been “dead” for an even shorter amount of time, returns to the team he founded to discover maybe they don’t need him anymore. I’ve said before how much I absolutely loved this era of X-Force and the Cable-less issues in particular, but this remains a personal favorite because it highlights how much Cannonball and company had grown over such a short time and forces Cable to have to prove his worth to his old charges, a neat 180 from the first year or so of the series where he was the gruff and mysterious drill sergeant they were all eager to please; you also get the beginnings of Cable as far more of a fully realized character as opposed to a 90’s cliché, with him relaxing a bit and demonstrating that he cares about and appreciates this kids just as much as his pouches and guns. But if that wasn’t enough to entice you, Exodus makes his first extended appearance to beat the crap out of X-Force and attempt to invite Cannonball and Sunspot to join his “master,” a cloaked guy in a space station who they tip toe around naming until the very end where he dons the full Magneto regalia as awesomely depicted by Capullo. It’s definitely the “warm-up” issue for the main event X-Men one-two, but it’s again a great story on its own that once more effectively shows a side of Magneto—in this case the teacher who wants his students back—as well as bringing Cable back in style and elevating X-Force since each guy wants to guide them (and Cable’s awesome “I don’t want them to follow my path—I want to follow theirs!” speech coupled with Magneto’s brutal disassembling of his machine side makes for a fantastic close).

So then we come to Uncanny X-Men #304, the first round of the true prize fight by Scott Lobdell and John Romita Jr., and you’ve got a lot going on. First off, Colossus’ kid sister Illyana, at one time Magik of the New Mutants, had died of the Legacy Virus, and it is in many ways the death of innocence in the X-Men’s world. Lobdell does some really nuanced character work covering the reactions, from Colossus’ refusal to show his feelings (or his non-metal form), to Professor X’s guilt, to Kitty Pryde’s gamut of emotions (she’s us, remember); there’s also a great bit where Bishop tries to pull his whole cryptic warnings of a doomed future routine with Banshee and Banshee deadpans “And what if I just go toss myself in front a bus? What happens then?” Interwoven with the grieving and the X-Teams coming together, there are pages written by Lobdell with powerful art by Jae Lee revealing pieces of Magneto’s earliest days in a Nazi concentration camp, some of which had been covered, but never with such raw detail (I believe this is the first time he’s called Erik and it’s not a stretch to say the great opening to the first X-Men movie borrowed heavily from here, intentionally or not). The two worlds come crashing together as Magneto, flanked by his Acolytes—Exodus revealed Cortez’ treachery to them and crushed him earlier in the issue—has the audacity to make his showy official return in the midst of the funeral and earmark this failure on the X-Men’s part to protect the most innocent among them as proof positive that Xavier’s dream has failed. Over the course of several Romita Jr. pages packed with characters and details, the more-powerful-than-ever Magneto dominates his heroic adversaries while also engaging with the usual philosophical battle of wills with his old friend Xavier, maybe making better points for why he’s right than ever before. It all builds to the heartbreaking moment where X-Men stalwart Colossus can stand no more tragedy and does the unthinkable, choosing to side with Magneto and become an Acolyte, breaking Professor X’s heart in the process and perhaps shattering his dream as well. The final page, where Xavier is dropped from the sky by Magneto, caught gently by Archangel and then assures his X-Men he knows he can count on all of them is extremely poignant; it’s an impressive pairing of action and pathos in that unique way only super hero comics can do it.

There’s less talk and more action in X-Men #25, as Nicieza comes back for his second go around, this time with Andy Kubert on art. Magneto fries most of the world’s electrical grid with an electromagnetic pulse mostly to show he can, so Professor X decides enough is enough and he’s taking a small strike force of X-Men—Jean Grey, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit and Quicksilver, on loan from X-Factor—to finish this once and for all; he also dons a sweet Shi’Ar exoskeleton that allows him to walk so he can be front and center, despite the protests of many of his students. When Xavier essentially tells Cyclops he needs him to stay behind to carry on in case they don’t come back, you believe it. The strike force storms Avalon and teleports the Acolytes off the base so it’s straight up X-Men vs Magneto with the good guys being more ruthless than ever at Xavier’s insistence. Quicksilver and Rogue both play up their personal connections to Mags while assaulting him simultaneously; Professor X and a reluctant Jean barrage him with a psychic slew of bad memories, including Cypher’s death while he was in charge of the New Mutants; Wolverine goes full berserker; I’m not quite sure why Gambit was there other than to justify being in the cover hologram, but maybe he picked some locks or something. Despite it all, Magneto just keeps coming and neither side looks to give an inch. Then, out of nowhere, Wolverine makes a vicious swipe at his opponent’s guts—and Magneto responds by tearing the adamantium clear off Wolvie’s bones and out of his pores!

This is of course nearly 20 years in the rearview at this point, but you have to understand, as a fan reading at the time, the splash page image of the most popular and untouchable X-Man screaming in agony and quite possibly meeting his end in visually grisly fashion was beyond shocking. An enraged Xavier responds to that knockout with a ruthless uppercut of his own, full-on mind blasting Magneto like he never has before and wiping the dude’s brain clean, leaving him catatonic (we wouldn’t see him operational again for another six years, so really Fatal Attractions was more a blip on the radar than a full return, but what a blip). The postscript has Wolverine and an exhausted Xavier both in critical condition as Colossus shows up to help his former teammates get out before the other Acolytes return and then silently cradle Magneto’s limp body in a powerful closing panel.

To demonstrate just how standalone these books were, I have never actually read Wolverine #75! I know it’s by Larry Hama and Adam Kubert and that it deals with Wolverine ultimately recovering then electing to leave the X-Men, but I’ve never cracked the cover; it’s one of my white whales.

Everything wraps up in Excalibur #71, written by Lobdell with an assortment of artists helping him out, but this is really an “It’s all over but the crying” situation, as the big action was out of the way and now it was just a matter of dealing with the fallout; it’s a nice bookend to X-Factor in that it’s a true epilogue you don’t always get to see when you’re running from one big story to the next. Professor X, Cyclops and Jean Grey come to Muir Island, where the remaining members of Excalibur—Nightcrawler, Shadowcat and Phoenix—have stopped in to help Moira MacTaggert with some business. After some serious persuasion—and some nice “Professor Xavier is a jerk” thematic callback—the X-Men persuade Kitty to lure Colossus to the island, as apparently he has an outstanding head injury and they fear it may have influenced his recent decisions. Colossus shows up, feels the sting of his one-time love’s betrayal, but gets the help he needs while Cyclops and Nightcrawler beat up the Acolytes cannon fodder—including CKT favorite Katu!—and Rachel Summers has a somewhat random but sweet meeting with her alternate reality half-brother (neither knows yet, but the readers kinda did) Cable. In the end, Colossus forgives Kitty and offers thanks to the X-Men, but still chooses to remain an Acolyte, putting a bow on Fatal Attractions and what it was really trying to say as a whole: There are no absolutes in the X-Men Universe and neither Professor X nor his dream may be quite as infallible as we thought. Also, Excalibur decides to stay on Muir Island with Moira, but that’s another story.

It’s come to be a mantra from me here and elsewhere, but the 90’s get a bad rap. The X-Men in the 90’s get a particularly bad rap. A story like Fatal Attractions, remembered more for its posters, gimmicks and splashy returns was actually a deft ballet of awesome action and harrowing emotional betrayal, with healthy doses of humor and character growth mixed in plus pretty consistently great art throughout. It’s a true example not to judge a book by its cover.

Regardless of if the cover has a sweet hologram.

Five Comics Worth Reading - April 2010

Every now and again I read a comic and am just like “Wow, this book is sick,” but don’t always have more than a few sentences to say about it, let alone a whole post. To that end, with no ambitions whatsoever of any sort of regular schedule, I use this recurring feature babble about books I’m really digging.

Books like these.

THE BOYS
From Preacher to Hitman to Punisher, Garth Ennis does his best work when he uses over-the-top violence, gore, and crude trappings to mask the fact that he’s actually telling a story with a lot of heart. Yeah, his stuff is funny and gross and often ridiculous, but his characters are some of the most sincere you’ll find and the guy can write dialogue that will well up your eyes when he wants to.

Back when The Boys first started, I thought it might be Ennis taking a break from the serious stuff to go full-bore in surface mode, telling the nastiest super hero parody he could, and truth be told I would have been ok with that; it was still a good monthly laugh and Darick Robertson’s art is just gorgeous. But over time after some growing pains, The Boys has revealed itself as being—surprise surprise—a book with a lot of heart about characters with tremendous depth and an intriguing world in which everybody is playing everybody…with a healthy dose of super-powered sex jokes padding the panels.

The recent run of one-off “origin” issues for the oft-neglected characters of Mother’s Milk, The Frenchman and The Female was great, ballsy stuff, with Ennis going to the well and coming up with back-stories rooted in classic tropes yet spinning in entirely new directions. The latest arc, in which Butcher has come to suspect something’s up with Hughie—for my money one of comics’ most likable characters with a fantastically Ennis romance—and sends him to do recon on a socially-stunted Legion of Super-Heroes pastiche is shaping up to be more of the goodness.

And seriously: Darick Robertson is amazing.

HOUSE OF MYSTERY
Rickey and I have talked up House of Mystery quite a bit in private over the past couple years, though I’m not sure how often we’ve plugged it here on the blog—well, better late than never I suppose.

It’s a really cool book for many reasons, not the least of which is that it pays off on the potential for a format I and many of my fellows have often seen in an underexploited genre, that being the anthology book. No, it’s not a traditional multi-story anthology and there’s a pretty heady main plot threading through the series, but the idea that every month you can get a cool short horror-tinged story by the likes of Sam Kieth or Farel Dalrymple (to name a couple recent contributors) is just a neat and special thing. The conceit of these stories coming out of the book’s set-up wherein patrons at the bar around which it’s centered must pay their tab in tales is also quite an ingenious one if I do say so (I do).

But the short story icing aside, Matt Sturges has really weaved a delicious cake of—wait for it—mystery in the main narrative. The recent direction semi-change of rotation in and out of certain cast members really shook things up in the right way, as the old guard are not forgotten nor are their unanswered questions, but we’ve also got new faces and conundrums creeping up, headed up by heroine fig’s creepy and possibly homicidal brother Strawberry. It’s a smart book as you’d expect from its pedigree, but certainly not too dense for any old joe to dive right in.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA
Like many others, I was a bit concerned when Geoff Johns ended his landmark run on JSA and fearful that whoever took over would not be able to nail that elusive formula that makes a book centered around 70-year old characters and certainly lacking a certain sexiness still work in this age of super hero comics. I think it took Bill Willingham awhile to ease his way in, but he seems to be hitting on the right cylinders now.

Halving the book’s cast was a good move, since fifty percent of the JSA is still bigger than pretty much any other team excepting the Legion, and Willingham wisely assembled a team consisting primarily of characters whose voices he can nail. Whether it’s the stoicism of Alan Scott, the gruffness of Wildcat, the perkiness of Liberty Belle or that in-over-my-head terror Doctor Fate exudes, Willingham knows his players and their quirks and how the group dynamic should work.

The story arc with Mordru was a nice bit of fun, and now the current multi-parter in which the team is fighting across two eras to prevent new age Nazis from taking over the world is shaping up as quite the sizable epic. The peril feels quite real and the action is well-choreographed. With the focus more on Mister Terrific with a dash of folks like Doctor Mid-Nite and Lightning thrown in, Willingham is also moving the camera around nicely, which is a necessity on a book like this.

Jesus Merino has come into his own as well, still clearly influenced by his years of inking Carlos Pacheco but not shackled by it; he draws real pretty.

WOLVERINE: WEAPON X
When Jason Aaron is on his game with Wolverine, I’m not sure I’ve seen more than one or two other writers who make the character more enjoyable to follow.

I was re-reading the recent standalone issue about Logan’s love life a few nights ago and found myself smirking with every page at how fun Aaron makes this guy who has been a perennially put-upon and tortured character for so long and so often. Yeah, the angst is certainly still there in Weapon X, but this Wolverine is more a guy with some crazy war stories to tell but whose charisma and wit draws you to him, as opposed to the depressing guy wallowing in the corner of the bar.

Aaron also helps his case by never taking Wolverine too seriously, or letting the character do so either. Self-conscious sequences of the writer poking fun at how his charge seems to be a dozen places at once or scenes where Logan is getting a sex talk from Jubilee and especially Wolvie asking to hold Luke Cage and Jessica Jones’ baby make the crazy ass battle sequences where this guy is tearing people apart with his claws so much more effective via contrast.

But the current arc with an army of Deathloks coming back from the future to hunt down a master list of super heroes so they can rule their own time period Terminator style is just a whole other step beyond.

It’s hard to really encapsulate what makes this story so darn fantastic, but it illustrates that Jason Aaron is perhaps without peer when it comes to visualizing the craziest big picture concepts ever and then actually following through with them. He did it on Ghost Rider with stuff like Johnny Blaze storming the gates of heaven on a motorcycle and challenging the baddest angel in the land an issue or two after fighting a possessed steam shovel and he does it here with an army of cyborg killing machines coming back in time to kill people we’ve never heard of because their kid will grow up to be a legendary hero. The time jumps, the continuity winks, and the way he handles new and old characters just so darn well in the midst of unparalleled craziness is just a masterful thing and a joy to see unfold.

X-FACTOR FOREVER
As somebody who never had any emotional attachment to Louise Simonson’s run on X-Factor from when I was like eight and no particular fondness for the original X-Men outside of a tough-to-quantify fandom for Iceman, this was the last book I was expecting to get into.

But it’s really a good read.

My hat is off (or it would be if I were wearing one) to Ms. Simonson for being able to analyze her work of two decades ago and re-imagine it for a modern day audience without it feeling stagnant or at the other extreme dragging it kicking and screaming on a forced migration into the 21st century just by sticking iPods in the characters’ hands. She has instead pulled off perfectly the act of balancing nostalgia with a knowing awareness of how storytelling conventions have evolved and created a comic that reads like a fun super hero book from a simpler time without coming off stale or pedantic; this I imagine can’t be an easy thing to do.

As an X-Men junkie, I love the feel of the story wherein Apocalypse has grand designs involving destiny and whatnot we’re only getting the tip of, but I’d imagine somebody picking the book up cold could also just appreciate the idea of characters with neat costumes and cool powers fighting a giant robot across New York City. The book has thus far succeeded in both servicing those of us looking for a trip back to the elaborate X-Men mythos of yesteryear while also being new reader-friendly.

Simonson also just writes a great Apocalypse, and her re-imagining his full history in the back-up is a great bonus.

Dan Panosian really brought his A-game as well, and has clearly worked to keep growing his craft from his Image days back in the 90’s. His design skill for the aforementioned costumes is spot-on and the guy can do a fight scene like wow.

The Wolverine of My Youth

This Friday, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" hits the big screen. You should most definitely buy multiple tickets because it will be awesome and/or because I have a wedding to help pay for this fall, up to you. You should also be sure to hit up Marvel.com for the best coverage of the movie you'll find anywhere ever, yo.

Now with that out of the way...how do I feel about the character of Wolverine?

Well, growing up, I wasn't too passionate about Wolverine one way or the other. As I've said numerous times, I was (and remain) a huge X-Men fan, and he was (and continues) to be a large and looming presence on that team, so obviously he's always been front and center of my comic book reading experience, but for most of that time, I had no particularly passionate feelings about him one way or the other.

To be sure he was a character viscerally appealing to a young person with a charismatic personality, a standout look and friggin' knives coming out of his hand. However, even as a kid I could tell he was the guy the marketing was centered around, and I've always been somebody who gravitates to underdogs and oddballs. In most cases, I prefer the third most popular character to the most popular one, and Wolverine is no bronze medalist as far as the masses are concerned.

On the other hand, I didn't have the harsh aversion to the guy I've seen in people as I've grown up in this industry. It didn't bother me that he was pushed so heavily into the spotlight both because unlike some other characters who got overexposed and then some in the 90's he did have quite a bit of depth owing to decades of world building by Chris Claremont and others, but also because I didn't find him difficult to ignore.

In the last decade, I've become much more of a Wolverine fan than ever before. Part of that is because Hugh Jackman really is one of the best of the best when it comes to the folks who bring super heroes to life on film; his Wolvie is seriously just the ultimate rad ass (that's a bad ass who is also incredibly rad). I've also come to discover and dig the more off-the-beaten path Logan solo stories Marvel has put out over the years. From that first Claremont/Frank Miller mini in Japan, to Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X, to the more recent stuff by guys like Jason Aaron and Stuart Moore as well as the assorted one-shots by up-and-coming writers. While Wolverine definitely has an entertaining role to play among the X-Men or Avengers, I've really come to see his value as a Man With No Name kinda archetype character who you can drop into various genre stories with the added benefit of his signature flourishes.

But the Wolverine story I remember most from when I was a kid was batshit crazy.

The year was 1992. I was 10 years old and sampling new comics like I had a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's factory. One of the books I figured was a no-brainer given my affection for all things X was Wolverine's solo book. I expected some routine slashing, the usual catchphrases, and perhaps a few of those "beers" I had heard so much about to be consumed.

What I got was...something else.

My first issue was Wolverine #62. Larry Hama was the writer, Mark Texeira provided the art. The plot centered on Wolverine's dead girlfriend Silver Fox showing up with a big gun and threatening him and Sabretooth until they agree to follow her outside to her Hydra ship where Carol Hines of the Weapon X project is waiting to give them answers about their convoluted shared history. Before she can do that, some old dude named Mastodon melts into a skeleton and Jubilee freaks out. Then some teenage parapalegic computer genius helps them hack some coordinates and they fly off to a secret island where a guy named Psi-Borg is waiting with Maverick as his bodyguard. Peppered amongst all this is plenty of talk about memory implants, genetic alterations, and other stuff I didn't fully understand, plus Texeira's gonzo art, which was gorgeous and unlike anything I had seen to that point.

That was the first issue.

After that was two more issues of that story that included Psi-Borg turning into some sort of giant plant monster and tormenting Wolverine and company with a maze of false memories that manifested as a giant thorn bush. By the end of the arc, it seemed like at least half the characters were dead, but it was honestly tough to tell.

Following that, something in a motel in Canada triggered a previously buried memory in Wolverine's brain, sending him off to Russia in pursuit of somebody called Epsilon Red. Along the way, he hallucinates a bus full of people telling him he's "the best he is at what he does," ends up in the desert where he needs to eat vultures in order to provide protein for his healing factor, and "fights" a Russian cosmonaut super soldier in a battle that may or may not have taken place only in his head because there was a telepath whose mother got killed by Sabretooth involved (and I believe the story was left open-ended but recently learned it was resolved a couple years later in the Maverick ongoing). While all this is going on, Wolvie is also flashing back to a mission he participated in back when JFK was president and the two scenarios are getting totally jumbled.

All the while, Texeira is putting Sam Kieth to shame with some of the trippiest, most surreal art you'll ever see and Hama is matching him move for move.

It was great stuff and it blew my 10-year-old mind. When Tex left the book and Wolverine was fighting straightforward battles with Sauron and the Sentinels a few issues later, it just couldn't really measure up.

So for years whenever I thought of Wolverine, I thought of crazy psychic thorn monsters, eating vultures, and Russian cosmonauts with Greek letter names.

They need to make a movie of that!

Five Comics Worth Reading, 10/22/08 pt. 5

And so we come to the conclusion of our five day odyssey a day late, not because I was being lazy, but because I thought it appropriate to let Kiel's Halloween opus fly high at the top of the blog for all of October 31.

In spreading this out over five days, I've learned that I much more enjoy writing about one comic a day as opposed to trying to cram my thoughts on five separate books into one massive post over the course of a Sunday afternoon. However, I also don't like having capsule reviews of comics by me cluttering up the blog and clipping its diversity. So I've got to figure out a different way to format my thoughts on the week's comics (if indeed I want to keep sharing them regularly), but that's something I'll ruminate on. For now...

Disclaimer.


WOLVERINE: MANIFEST DESTINY #1

I greatly enjoyed Jason Aaron's brief run on the primary Wolverine title earier this year. I'm also a big fan of old school martial arts flicks like "Enter the Dragon" and its brethren. Thus, by simple calculus and/or algebra, this limited series about Wolverine having a kung fu adventure in San Francisco's Chinatown written by Jason Aaron is right up my alley.

First, a word on Wolverine.

Books like this and many of the other one-shots we at Marvel have produced over the last year or so (because as assistant editor of Marvel.com I play an integral role in the production of Wolverine one-shots*) such as Wolverine: Roar and the badass Wolverine: Saudade (which I refuse to pronounce any other way except for "Wolverine Saw-Daddy" in a southern accent) have given me a new affection for a character I hadn't had much spark for in many years. That is to say that while I still appreciate and enjoy Wolverine's place on the X-Men, I think he works far better these days as a Clint Eastwood or David Carradine type wading into the middle of genre fare and playing the central tough guy of neat little self-contained stories.

This is that type of story, though not completely self-contained, as it centers around the X-Men moving to San Francisco--giving Aaron the opportunity to do a fun little scene with Nightcrawler--and Wolverine having to deal with some old issues from his past before he can get settled. Seems Logan was involved in some nasty business back around the turn of the last century in Chinatown (we only get scattered details) and now he's gotta square old debts and fight a whole bunch of kung fu masters as well as reckoning with an old girlfriend. This first issue also sets up that the area is not exactly a nice place run by nice people and Wolverine may have to do something to rectify that over the next three chapters.

When Wolverine got all his memories back a few years ago, it didn't immediately have much of a strong impact, but the long run benefit is that we get to see stories like this (and like Jason Aaron's last go around, "Get Mystique"), where Logan is given more depth via the exploration of his past sins and current attempts at reparations. The old "My life sucks because it's all a lie" Wolverine got played out pretty thoroughly sometime circa the 90's, so I find this less emo, more soul-searching version of the character to be far more appealing and much closer to the guy everybody fell in love with during the glory days.

Aaron's story set up is all classic tough guys action movie cliche, complete with the spunky but obnoxious street urchin cheering our hero on, the stock army of eccentric bad guys, and the spurned lover out for revenge, but it all works and comes off fun rather than lame because of its self-awareness. This stuff has worked for years in other mediums for a reason and Aaron knows ow to translate it successfully to comics.

There is also much to be said for artist Stephen Segovia, who I predict is going to be a big deal much sooner rather than later. I noticed the guy, who is like a cross between Leinil Francis Yu and Chris Bachalo with his own flair for action scenes and splash pages, back when he was doing the Eclipso back-ups in that Countdown to Mystery book last year and even there you could see a raw energy that was ready to explode. Here, on a book totaly suitd to his style, he just does beautiful work. Big things.

I also love the inclusion of the Sons of the Tiger, among my favorite comic characters I've never actually seen featured in any stories but have always wanted to because they sound dope. If Aaron can somehow weave Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu, who is my holy grail of guys I want to see my completely irrational faith in justified via an awesome guest appearance, he will have truly created a book that caters to me in every way except somehow featuring a gratuitous Nova cameo.

I hope he reads this blog.