All-New Wolverine #22-24: “Hive”
The backlog needs hammered through, so let’s knock this one off quickly.
This is something of an extended coda to the previous storyline, in which a space virus infected Roosevelt Island and Laura saved the day because her healing powers conveniently let her absorb and kill the virus. That still leaves the stray plot thread of why a girl plummeted to earth with a space virus asking for Laura in the first place. Since the alien girl died of the virus, Laura can’t simply ask her. And so Laura and Gabby head into space with the Guardians of the Galaxy to retrace her steps and find out what was going on. In other words, it’s a three-issue team-up with the Guardians of the Galaxy.
What we find is a base under siege by the Brood, who promptly cart off Gabby to provide a bit of tension. The base turns out to be under the control of Fang, of all people – which I think is the first time anyone’s mentioned Charles Soule’s Wolverines miniseries since it ended on an unresolved cliffhanger. And the virus turns out to be something that the scientists in the base came up with in a wholly failed attempt to kill off the Brood. Conveniently, all communications were down, so naturally the solution is to fire a sick child in a rocket in the general direction of Wolverine…
Are you getting the sense that I’m not particularly taken by this arc? Now, granted, I’m no huge fan of X-Men space stories to begin with, but Wolverine seems like a particularly unsuited character. Sure, you can always play up the fish out of water angle, but that’s not the story here. It’s just a fairly routine base under siege deal, with the Brood to help make it an X-Men story. Even the creators seem to lose interest in the base rather quickly, as attention turns to Gabby being infected by the Brood, and the Guardians want to just blow up the moon in the interests of quarantine.
You all know where this is heading, and that’s exactly where it heads. Laura won’t give up on her sister and insists on heroically rescuing her before the big boom. Gabby’s healing factor means everything is okay after all. Everyone goes home. Oh, and the scientists turn out to be to blame for the Brood as well, so everyone gives them a kicking and Rocket blows up the now-uninhabited moon just for the hell of it. There’s a weird coda where everyone argues about what to do with the bad scientist and Rocket just cuts the debate short by killing him, which is sort of interesting. But it also feels unearned, because it’s taking something that was really just plot engine for most of the story and suddenly trying to elevate it into a “makes you think” thematic moment.
Quite honestly, this feels like a time-killing exercise while waiting for Marvel Legacy, so that the next major storyline can begin. It’s not bad, it’s just rather average from a book which normally scores higher than that.
Snarky Paul is best Paul.
Well there you have it. Not paying for this one.
This and the virus plot itself was weaker than we usually get from Taylor on ANW. Like Paul said, not awful, but just kinda meh outside of some genuinely funny moments with Gabby, Deadpool, and Jonathan. In hindsight, the most important element of the whole thing seems to be bringing Daken back into Laura’s orbit for Orphans of X.
I’m kind of frustrated with what looks to be a complete lack of faith in Laura as a solo character. She’s been teaming up with someone different every arc of her solo so far.
Can we talk about the absolutely mediocre team for Jean Grey’s upcoming X-Men: Red team? Both X-23 and her clone will be bringing more of the obnoxious repetitive characters that have plagued the X-Books since Bendis took over.
And apparently Namor is back to being an X-Men, which…
Yes. The X-Men Red lineup looks awful and the costumes look even worse. I understand that Marvel is dead-set on denying Fox any more usable source material, but the mind boggles that after like 15 years this of all things is what she’s back for.
I think I’d prefer to stay dead.
“Are you getting the sense that I’m not particularly taken by this arc? Now, granted, I’m no huge fan of X-Men space stories to begin with, but Wolverine seems like a particularly unsuited character. Sure, you can always play up the fish out of water angle, but that’s not the story here. It’s just a fairly routine base under siege deal, with the Brood to help make it an X-Men story.”
Why do I get the sense that, once upon a time, Claremont saw Star Wars and wanted to do a single space story (and LOSH alum Cockrum was all for it, so as to use his backlog of designs) and an unfortunate pattern of ‘the X-Men are the space team’ was born?
Bringing OG Jean back is scrapping the bottom of the barrel. On a some-what related note; Axel Alonso. Reading between the lines, it doesn’t seem he stepped down voluntarily
“naturally the solution is to fire a sick child in a rocket in the general direction of Wolverine”
Only in comics is this a plausible solution to anything. I love the idea, but it sounds like the story just didn’t live up to the wonderful ideas it was based on.
“Why do I get the sense that, once upon a time, Claremont saw Star Wars and wanted to do a single space story (and LOSH alum Cockrum was all for it, so as to use his backlog of designs) and an unfortunate pattern of ‘the X-Men are the space team’ was born?”
I believe Claremont drew a lot of his ideas from movies that he saw and books that he read that were relatively recent and popular at the time.
The Exorcist (1973) > Jean Grey/Phoenix (1976)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (remake 1978) > Proteus (1979)
An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Wolfen (all in 1981) > Wolfsbane (1982)
And when he introduced Lila Cheney I said to myself “Oh, Chris just read an article about Dyson Spheres.”
Lila Cheney was probably the stupidest idea he ever had for a mutant, by the way. A mutant teleportation power that relies on the existence of an artificial construct? That’s like having a mutation that gives you super-strength, but only when you happen to be within one-hundred yards of a Best Buy.
Chris Claremont wanted to do a number of space stories.
The man loved “space opera”. When he had a chance to write his own sci-fi novels, he wrote some “space opera” novels.
Yes, he liked Star Wars, so we got the original Phoenix saga.
Don’t forget how much he wanted to homage the Alien movie.
Having a creature that looked a lot like the Alien, in the N’Garai, wasn’t enough. As that also had Lovecraftian elements to it.
So, he created the Brood too.
I’m sure the attention Claremont gave to the Phoenix and Shi’ar later had a lot to do with the popularity of Star Wars, but both concepts actually predate Star Wars.