Wolverine Wednesday #79

Wolverine #1

Writer: Saladin Ahmed | Artist: Martin Coccolo | Colourist: Bryan Valenza | Letters: Cory Petit

Wolverine comes roaring back with a new number one. It’s good that we didn’t have too long a wait between one series ending and the next one starting. After all, we are in his 50th year so he should have an ongoing on the shelves. Everyone who has read my reviews over the last few years will know how much I enjoyed Benjamin Percy’s time on Wolverine. But as soon as the new direction was announced I was excited for the future. I read Ahmed’s first issue of Daredevil last year and I thought he brought a good combination of tried and trusted Daredevil lore and some new ideas. In short, he brings the same to the table in this first issue of Wolverine. I have two negative takeaways from the issue, but they are rather due to my personal taste so let’s get them out the way early. My interpretation from the solicitations was that this was going to see Wolverine back to basics, some preview art showed him hunting with wolves. I was locked into this being the direction to go in, so I was a little disappointed to see this done away with after a few pages. It is not long before Nightcrawler shows up and talk of the X-Men’s recent shortcomings comes into play! Secondly, while it was great to see Cyber back in the pages of Wolverine after a long absence, the final page reveal gave me that feeling that this story might try and be too big, too soon. I could be wrong and only time will tell, but sometimes it is better to ease into things. Wolverine vs Cyber is big enough to start, we don’t need the grand scope every time. On the subject of Cyber Coccolo adds a whole new visual appeal to the character. He was already badass, but giving him a big gun may seem very 90’s but it works. It makes him more sinister somehow. I liked in Cyber’s monologue how it linked back to Wolverine Origins. This shows to me that Ahmed cares about the details and I feel the character is in safe hands for the foreseeable future. Now all readers of Wolverine Wednesday know a big part of a good Wolverine story is all in the internal monologue. Perhaps controversially this opens the story in the third person! I did enjoy though getting a glimpse into Cyber’s motivations as he took over the narration. We don’t get Wolverine’s own monologue until well over the halfway point of the story. But thankfully it was worth the wait, while it isn’t very long Ahmed delivers a solid attempt. It will definitely be something I keep a close eye on in future issues. Brutal, bloody battles with old-school enemies seem on trend for Wolverine stories of late. Coccolo doesn’t hold back as Wolverine and Cyber tee off on each other, it is right up there with the ‘Red Band’ issues in my opinion. With Ahmed and Coccolo I am excited to be along for this new journey, I feel the character is in good hands. That feeling starts right from the cover which is a homage, on drugs, to the very first Wolverine ongoing cover! The story itself launches out of the blocks and doesn’t let up till the final reveal. For a first issue, it offered a good balance between character development and action. For a character like Wolverine right, getting this balance right is as important as that internal monologue and getting the claws right! While we will never end the controversy over a new issue one with every new creative team this was a solid start to Wolverine both visually and narratively. While look forward to the next issue this does already have the feel of being written for the trade so it may be some time before we fully see their vision fleshed out more fully.

Wolverine Revenge #1 – #2

Writer: Jonathan Hickman | Artist: Greg Capullo | Inker: Tom Townsend | Colourist: FCO Plascencia | Letters: Cory Petit

You can really tell it’s Wolverine’s 50th birthday, as there has been a solid amount of mini-series this year, all of a good entertaining standard. When this series was solicited it took the limelight away from the new ongoing that came a month later. This had the big push with the all-star creative team and I felt the new ongoing was somewhat overshadowed. I think it is fair to say I and a lot of comics fans approach anything new by Hickman with a sense of scepticism. When you think he is coming off the back of something huge like The Krakoan Era this was always going to go one of two ways. Thankfully two pages in you know this is something very different from Hickman. It feels like he is writing this as a cleansing experience, something fun after the grand scale of X-Men. What stands out most is that it feels like he asked Capullo what he wanted to draw and wrote a story around what he answered. That’s why on the second page we get Wolverine riding into the story on a Triceratops. I was very excited to see what Capullo could bring to Wolverine. Right from the cover you get a good idea that it is going to be an awesome journey. I love seeing Wolverine in the blue and yellow, here with the colours by Plascencia it really pops on the page and this costume lends itself more to the big screen action nature of the story. Capullo’s Wolverine has the right stature in height and stockiness, with the stubble being a nice touch. Hickman’s story moves at a great pace in the first issue getting all the pieces onto the board early. Capullo masters the pacing with well-constructed page and panel layouts. He effortlessly transitions between talking heads paging and the action of which there is plenty. He treats us to no less than three amazing splash pages in the first issue alone. The best being a four-way tussle between Wolverine, Sabretooth, Deadpool and Omega Red! If Hickman write like this all the time, well there would be a lot less negativity around him. This story if people didn’t already know takes place in a different universe. Despite this there is none of his usual big world-building. It is all laid out in a simple opening blurb. It is fun with each page turn we see how he fits certain characters into this story. It is refreshing not to see him doing big grand design, an entertaining story seems his first goal here. Best of all there are no text pages! I had the ‘Red Band’ issue one was was rather bloody in all the right places. We are talking Dinosaur guts spilling on the page and the gruesome final pages as Wolverine is tested to the limits. The second issue kept up the levels of violence on a smaller scale. Its focus was more on putting more pieces on the board to keep the electric pace moving. The big moment of violence centred on Wolverine and Sabretooth squaring off! Yes, it seems we have had a lot of this, this year yet I never get bored of it. It is not a big sequence but Capullo kills it! From the gritted teeth of the two combatants to Sabretooths maniacal eyes, it is not long before claws are slashing and blood is flowing. The battle and the issue end on what is going to become a gallery of stunning splash pages from this series. I was collecting comics that made his name on Spawn back in the day. The buzz around his Batman run in the New52 put him on my radar. I am convinced the motorbike Wolverine rides in this issue is the same one Batman has in the Zero Year story arc. The fun part of doing a story in a different universe is seeing how and why characters appear. This time around adding to the characters already established in the first issues we get Dani Moonstar and Forge providing good moments to add to the plot. Having Mastermind be the villainous centre of attention is a master stroke! In the main Marvel Universe he is perhaps best known for orchestrating the beginning of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Perhaps the most intriguing thing of all is the appearance of Colossus. The stunning cover image eludes to the direction the rest of the series will take as Wolverine moves through a hit list of enemies working up to the final boss. After two issues I have had a great time reading it. Here is to hoping Hickman can keep up the pace, mystery and entertainment levels throughout the series. The excitement around Capullo on one of comic’s biggest characters is fully justified, as you read you can not wait for the page turn to see what he is going to do. Just so glad we have four more issues of this!

Wolverine: Deep Cut #2 – #3

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

After three issues I’m pretty happy with how things are shaping up. Stories of this nature have the tendency to start strong, then meander and then it is 50/50 whether they end strong. I like how Claremont came up with a clever plot device, that being Wolverine facing off against clones of The Marauders. These made it feel less generic to other stories like this have have been retroactively squeezed into continuity. He can now tell a story that has risk and not have it affect what already exists. Whether he can do that for two more issues, still entertain and not upset continuity is the big question now. As I mentioned in the first issue I am impressed by Claremonts writing here, it seems much sharper for a newer era. It would have been easy for him to do what gave him a successful career, but it feels different. I suspect he won’t mess up, after all, it is all his continuity anyway! I enjoyed the boldness of #2 starting with a training montage akin to Rocky 4. It caught the reader up on not only the events of the first issue but on the wider X-Men story it is attached to, that being The Mutant Massacre. The sequence takes place over seven pages and it really also allows Salazar to flex as an artist. With the narration picking out the events of The Mutant Massacre story arc it allows Salazar to display his two distinct styles on the page. I would actually like to see a whole issue in the style he uses for flashbacks. Then the training montage shows off his skills at drawing Wolverine in a number of fighting stances. Actually, throughout all the fight scenes in the issue, Salazar puts Wolverine in a number of unique poses, expanding his fighting style to the reader. I must shout out the fact all the Marauders come with unique facial features, doing this highlights individual characters within the team dynamic. Just a word on the two covers by Philip Tan. I really didn’t like the one for #2, you could have held that in my face all weekend I wouldn’t have guessed that was The Marauders! The cover for #3 was much better, although it does foreshadow a villainous appearance we don’t get in the issue. Tan draws a good battle, bloodied Wolverine, as does Salazar across both issues. The opening page to #3 may look simple, but I found it a visually appealing way to start a Wolverine story. Again #3 has well-orchestrated action, with Salazar knowing when to pull in and out of action and go big with double pagers, half and full splashes. The Dynamism in Wolverine and Greycrow is a highlight. I get the impression he enjoyed depicting Scrambler’s abilities as it came up a few times across the two issues. A big part of why this series is functioning in my opinion is because Claremont is focusing on the action element and not tying Wolverine down to the superhero soap opera he is famous for. I have enjoyed what has been on offer in the story so far. It is entertaining, despite perhaps having a lack of consequence come the endgame. But we are not at that stage yet so you can only really mark it on entertainment factor and as story and art combined it is delivering on that. Hopefully, we can see the same standard for the remainder of the series.