Wolverine Wednesday #77

After a summer holiday and some postal delays, I am finally back covering all things Adamantium-laced. Although there are only two books to cover this month, I feel enough time has passed that I can do a Wolverine-centric review of Deadpool and Wolverine complete with spoilers.

Life of Wolverine #1

Writer: Jim Zub | Artist: Ramon F. Bachs | Colourist: Java Tartaglia | Letters: Joe Sabino

This originally came out as a digital-first comic in ten parts, during the X Lives/Deaths mini-series. It makes perfect sense for Marvel to release this as a print comic when they did. It is a simple one-shot that can appeal to a cross-section of fans. Obviously, you have the hardcore Wolverine fans like myself who will pick anything up. It also helps bridge the gap between the ongoing series ending and the next one starting. Then there are the casual fans who might be interested in reading about history in one swoop rather than picking up more issues. Finally, it can piggyback on the crest of a wave that is Deadpool and Wolverine. Jim Zub does a really good job shaping his story and selecting what makes it into the cut. With the story originating in a different format, he had different parameters to play in. In my head I always thought I could do a project like this, but in reality, I couldn’t. It is a balancing act! Of course, you have to play the hits, but you can’t get stuck on one moment. It does start off a little slow, perhaps spending more time on elements newer readers won’t be as familiar like Origin and its sequel. Once the story hits the war years it gains pace and you are then getting more moments per page. One pitfall stories like this can fall into is recency bias, it barely touches on the beginning of the Krakoan Era. With a panel depicting the formation of X-Force as one of the penultimate panels. So you can’t play the recency bias card here, as a lot of the events of the Origins series are woven into the narrative. One glaring omission is his death and return. To show the sign of quality there are a few smaller moments from more obscure mini-series that caught even self-professed experts like myself out. Luckily at the back of the issue is a six-page index that highlights what issues all the moments mentioned in the story come from. The index was complete with cover images from some of the issues used for inspiration. This was a lot of fun seeing some old classics I love like Wolverine #34 and X-Men #5. Then there were the more surprising ones like Web of Venom: Ve’nam and Logan: Shadow Society. Both of these led me to want to do a deep dive re-read of some more one-shots and mini-series. Moving onto the art, Bachs follows the template of the writing. By which I mean he can’t spend too much time on the bigger moments and has a balancing act on what to include. It would be unfair of me to treat this review of the art like I normally would as he is not presenting your usual sequential storytelling. What I would say is that from what is on display here I would have no problem with him being on a regular Wolverine comic. There is a lot about his style and the colour work of Tartaglia to like. It feels like a Wolverine comic, if that makes sense? In the earlier pages he does well with establishing shots. Right from panel one you know you’re in the Origin era, later you know immediately from the first shot you’re in Madripoor. He showed good control over hectic, overcrowded pages. When there are pages with lots of characters, often from different eras it was of great value that from Bachs’ art you instantly recognised who they were. It really helps with the reading experience with a story of this nature, you are not getting bogged down in the details and second-guessing your continuity knowledge. The stand out for me was when Bachs paid homage to creators of the past. On every page there is at least one moment where he is doing his version of a classic Wolverine image and it makes perfect sense. Why redo a whole visual narrative for something the fans can do so well, when you can just put your own spin on it. Again it is a device that helps move the story along. You turn the page and get a little nostalgia hit. Some of my favourites included his version of the cover of Wolverine #10, the opening splash page to Path of the Warlord and the cover to Enemy of The State. It is not cut and past he makes each his own. I would liken it to a Wolverine version of Tin Tin. Also with the well-populated pages, it puts me in the mindset of the Agent Arthur puzzle book series. This is a book for Wolverine hardcore fans, but I think there is wider appeal to a more casual reader. I had a lot of fun reading it and even just flicking through the art, also it came in handy for my next review.

Wolverine: Deep Cut #1

Writer: Chris Claremont | Artist: Edgar Salazar | Colourist: Carlos Lopez | Letters: Travis Lanham

This issue starts strong and never really turns back. I appreciate how Claremont doesn’t spend time on set-up. He gives the fans what they want, especially after the electric Philip Tan cover and that is Wolverine and Sabretooth going tooth and nail! Yes, we might have had a lot of Wolverine vs Sabretooth lately, but this is old-school stuff! Of the twenty pages, only seven of them are not dedicated to the fight. When you consider one of them is set up and one is the aftermath, it is then only five pages that are doing other storytelling. I have been critical of issues that are extended fight scenes in the past. Maybe this one just caught me on a good day? In the five pages that aren’t the fight, Claremont slips back into the old routine like a fine wine. He is providing all fresh character beats for two of his favourites in Storm and Kitty. Add into the mix the heavily implied lesbian sexual tension between Kitty and Yukio and it’s like he never left writing the X-Men. What stood out and impressed me most was that this really felt like Claremont writing for a newer, younger audience. It had all his trademarks but just didn’t seem as wordy. This makes the reading experience accessible to new readers coming to Claremont’s world for the first time. Like I said there is no getting away from the fact that this is a fight issue. But Claremont still manages to deliver a twist and then steer the story in the direction of a new villain which readers may not have seen coming. I’m really interested to see where and how things develop from here as there is a small, restricted window for things to play out in. Edgar Salazar is no stranger to the Wolverine family having done art duties on the recent X-23 Deadly Regenesis. While that mini-series failed to fully win me over Salazar’s art really caught my eye and again here it was good the see the little signatures and plot devices he uses that impressed me last time out. He is a very good fit for a Wolverine series with an emphasis on dynamic action. While this story may be set in an era that was defined by Marc Silvestri, Paul Smith and JrJr, Salazar stamps his own authority on things. His Wolverine and Sabretooth are dominating, eye-catching figures on the page. You do feel a slight sense in the three previous artists in the figure work, especially on Wolverine. The fight itself is brutal and bloody, right up there with anything we saw in ‘Sabretooth War.’ In a scene with Mohawk Storm where again he puts his stamp on things, she towers over Wolverine which is a detail that I really appreciate. Marvel has been putting out a lot of series like this over the last two years and they have largely been hit and miss. I made the argument recently that if they are getting the writers from yesteryear back, why not the artists too? Salazar makes the case for the excellent fusion of the old and new colliding to deliver a good comic. These types of series are the equivalent of the Star Wars Disney+ shows. By that I mean they have no consequences by inserting themselves into well-established and loved eras of continuity. With that in mind, they have to deliver elsewhere, so I will be watching this space…

Deadpool & Wolverine

I was very excited going into Deadpool and Wolverine, I even wore my Zombie Wolverine t-shirt which turned out to be rather prophetic. There are people who have reviewed the movie better than I could. At its simplest, it is a entertaining and fun movie-going experience. Did it feel like Deadpool 3? Very loosely in that he didn’t want the characters from that film to die. Did it feel like a Marvel movie? No. Everything that drove the story and gave its heart and soul came from the Fox Universe. Is this the movie that saves the MCU? Again no. But I never understood why it was burdened with that by so many anyway! Despite the positivity and love for this movie I just can not picture Deadpool in an Avengers movie. No matter how many MCU references they put into it, they are still poles apart in tone! Moving onto the Wolverine of it all and I can’t have any complaints. The opening scene flew in the face of Reynold’s promise to not undo the perfect ending of Logan and yet somehow did it in a way so nobody cared. Just over a year ago, we got our first glimpse of the yellow costume for the first time on the big screen. Little did anyone know going in that we were going to get so many more costumes in a glorious montage? It was pure gold for Wolverine fans. For me, that scene was worth the price of admission alone, with its nods and winks to the comics and the creators. Hats off to Hugh Jackman as well. He gives a tour de force performance essentially playing an alternate version of a character he has played for twenty years. The fight scene in the car is the high point of these two larger-than-life characters colliding. The icing on the cake was the fight scene at the end, where just as it starts Jackman reaches pack and pulls on the cowl! On behalf of Wolverine fans everywhere, I just want to say thank you to everyone who played a part in that scene becoming a reality.