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I have now joined the ranks of Neville Barker and, it seems, nobody else here and actually read a copy of Loeb's Wolverine run. I realise that this is crazy of me, in the context of this thread and in fact in absolute terms, but there you go. I was curious.
It was great.
OK, not so much great as "not very good at all". There are a couple of problems with it.
1) It opens with a full-page spread of Cyclops holding a samurai sword. Now, the thing about Cyclops is that he can shoot beams of concussive force from his eyes. If you have persuaded Cyclops, who can shoot beams of concussive force from his eyes, to fight you with a samurai sword, especially if you are a totally awesome ninja, you have really won half the battle. So. Man with a sword - scary. Cyclops with a sword - slightly less scary than Cyclops without a sword.
2) The "Muramasa sword", which can harm Wolverine or Sabretooth (and presumably Wild Child, but who cares?) without their healing factor being able to repair the damage, is presumably an existing McGuffin. It's a bit of a silly idea. In particular, it would either have to be able to cut through adamantium, or one would have to immobilise Wolverine and then joint him (I know, that wouldn't actually work, either, because his joints are adamantium-infused - one would in fact have to pin him down and scrape all his flesh off, or get him in the heart, I suppose - since it is not going to happen, this is idle speculation), making Cyclops' fighting posture in the two-page splash on pages two and three particularly pointless, since he would be rather better advised to hit him with the force beams that come out of his eyes, and then take it from there.
3) Wolverine almost regrets allowing Emma to see into his mind to show how horrid Sabretooth is. Almost. What does this second "almost" mean? That he doesn't like Emma? That he actually likes on some level the thought of making Emma see naughty lady murder? The same certainly applies to us, as we get a full-page spread of Sabretooth putting women in refrigerators.
4) Another problem here - Wolverine uses the word "canucklehead". Not to get all John Byrne, but this is a recognisably awful word, which one probably would not use in reference to oneself. Even worse, however, he does not actually use it of himself, but of his own head. Strictly speaking, it should have been his "canucklehead head" or, to make clear that he is from Canada, his "Canuck canucklehead head".
5) Ah well. The revelation that Sabretooth is a meany persuades Cyclops to fork over the sword, and Wolverine goes off to hunt Sabretooth, after a women-in-refrigerators-again flashback to retrieving Feral's body (incidentally, Feral: give a shit). This flashback also shows Wolfsbane using the phrase "I dinnae can say", as apparently did the previous issue, so this may be a direct repeat of last issue's action.
6) A word on flashbacks. The issue is constructed as a series of flashbacks, theoretically moving ever closer to the present - with Emma's mind probe being a flashback in a flashback. However, these episodes are out of sequence, I believe, which messes with the device rather.
7) After which Wolverine kills Sabretooth, Wild Child turns up and exposits, and Wolverine says that when Romulus wants to do fighty, he'll be up for it. The end... for now.
So, what's the big? It's a pretty bad comic book. In fact, it's quite awful. There are a startling number of one-page panels, or pages in which Bianchi is expected to do the heavy lifting. A chunk of it appears to be a simple recap of the events of the previous issue, or remembrances of bad things Sabretooth has done (Emma's page, and then a couple of pages on Silver Fox, who rather underlines the problem with this sort of thing by maybe not actually being dead at all, having already been killed twice). Wild Child delivers the exposition on Romulus on a double-page spread made up of a single image, without even much of a background... the whole thing looks rushed and content-light, which is a shame, because the main point of buying the title would probably be Bianchi's artwork. However, it's done with. Wolverine has killed Sabretooth, but it won't stick - he'll come back, either through cloning, healing factor or that not actually being Sabretooth at all. The Romulus plot is not even, it seems, going to be advanced inside the pages of Wolverine's own comic, and is unlikely to be addressed anywhere else, not least because it is toss, so will probably be ignored or forgotten.
There is something interesting here about continuity, though. In Loeb's run, Sabretooth is free to wander around the X-mansion, not imprisoned on a floating battleship. This, I think, helps to illustrate one of the key points - that Marvel continuity is not so much consistent as floating-point. Cassandra Nova is in-continuity in New X-Men and Astonishing X-Men, but the latter ignores the fairly obvious element of Nova being Ernst. She turns up very briefly in Chuck Austen's X-Men, and is then ignored, and the idea of Mummudrai crops up in Casey's, but as long as you don't break it you can do pretty much what you want with the character. Likewise, here we have Wolverine as leading brunette Lupine, Wild Child turned into Edward Claweyhands (not that anyone cares) and Sabretooth dead, all of which will eventually be retconned or forgotten. In the meantime, a principled objection to Loeb's writing might best be expressed, as has been expressed more or less douchetastically within this thread, by not buying the comics he is writing.
There's a broader issue with the Wolverine comic book concept, which is that it is, ultimately, pointless, for the reasons outlined above by Flyboy. Wolverine works as an abrasive face in a team environment, and outside that there isn't an awful lot to do with him. Consider his rogue's gallery, all of whom are basically bits of him. Sabretooth - claws, healing factor, intermittently adamantium bones. Wild Child - claws, healing fact, amazing nobody cares power. Cyber - adamantium skin. Omega Red - bargain-basement adamantium tentacles (carbonadium is Latin for whatever). If you like Wolverine and want to see what Wolverine was doing at any given period in the last few hundred years, or Wolverine killing some ninjas, fair enough. Some of the stuff with Albert and Elsie-Dee was quite fun, if bonkers. The no-adamantium bit was all right, but the resolution - Apocalypse's son gives him his adamanntium back! No he doesn't! Oh, but Apocalypse does. OK - was textbook Wolverine - overlong and overwrought, and with faintly absurd amounts of adamantium bouncing around. I can't think of any time, really, when this would not be considered a somewhat guilty pleasure. |
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