This started as a capsule for this week’s X-Axis but seems to have grown a bit, so let’s give it its own post.<\/p>\n
Wolverine: In the<\/strong> Flesh<\/strong><\/em> –<\/strong>\u00a0This\u00a0is a comic written by celebrity chef Chris Cosentino, in which Wolverine teams up with celebrity chef Chris Cosentino. \u00a0I’ve never heard of celebrity chef Chris Cosentino, who is, in British terms, not a celebrity at all, thus lending an added veneer of weirdness to a comic which is already flagrantly bizarre. \u00a0I don’t even have much of a clue of where celebrity chef Chris Cosentino sits on the American celebrity pecking order, although since his resume seems to consist mainly of appearances on reality shows, it sounds as though in UK terms we’re talking about someone significantly further down the pecking order than, say, Gregg Wallace.<\/p>\n (Though Wolverine and Gregg Wallace is a comic I could get behind. \u00a0“Sabretooth nearly got me there! \u00a0If only there was somebody who could distract him by vividly describing a cake!”)<\/p>\n As if the San Francisco setting wasn’t enough of a clue, this thing has been in the works for years. \u00a0It was announced way back at WonderCon in April 2011, when it was supposed to be coming later that year, and when the cover art was already in circulation. \u00a0That explains a lot, since Marvel stopped commissioning this sort of blatant shelf-filler a while back – but presumably are willing to bung out a completed story in the hope of recouping some of their costs.<\/p>\n The plot – and, perhaps surprisingly, it does actually have one – involves Wolverine investigating a serial killer in San Francisco. \u00a0It is apparently of the most tremendous urgency that this serial killer should be caught, because there could be riots or something otherwise, though quite why people would be rioting about that isn’t really explained. \u00a0The presence of celebrity chef Chris Cosentino is justified on the basis that he can comment in an informed way on the killer’s dismemberment of his victims, thanks to his expert knowledge of butchery. \u00a0Which actually might have worked as a plot device if celebrity chef Chris Cosentino had contributed anything more elaborate than saying, in effect, yup, those are butchery techniques. \u00a0Ultimately it turns out that the killer has some plan involving mutants or something, but it’s really academic, since when he gets hold of Wolverine, he can (in theory) keep butchering him indefinitely because of the whole healing factor – the implication seems to be that he’s selling his victims from a well-reviewed food truck, which is hardly the grandest plan in villaindom, but hey, we can’t all be Dr Doom. \u00a0Celebrity chef Chris Cosentino naturally returns at the last minute to help Wolverine beat the bad guy.<\/p>\n But let’s pause there lest this fly by too fast to savour. \u00a0I reiterate: this is a novelty team-up comic in which Wolverine joins forces with a celebrity chef whose contribution is to offer informed comment on a serial killer’s butchery skills. \u00a0This is a real thing that really exists. \u00a0You can buy it!<\/p>\n In fact, the end product isn’t completely incompetent – somebody, whether the credited writer or otherwise, has at least hammered it into a passably structured story. \u00a0The art by Dalibor Talajic is never less than acceptable and at times really quite good. \u00a0But none of that is ever going to overcome the sheer WTF factor of watching the plot manfully strain to justify a team-up between Wolverine and a guy whose main claim to fame is that he won season 4 of something called\u00a0Top Chef Masters<\/em>. \u00a0In the manner of stories written by people who know what shape a story is supposed to have but don’t really have anything to say, it ends up gesturing vaguely in the direction of a moral that “you don’t need super-powers to be a hero. \u00a0You just need to care.”<\/p>\n Quite right. \u00a0It’s not just the Wolverines of this world who are heroes. \u00a0There are also the celebrity chefs who write stories where they team up with Wolverine to fight serial killers using their knowledge of butchery. \u00a0I think we can all agree that these are the true heroes.<\/p>\n Still, let’s be absolutely fair to this comic. \u00a0What it does have going for it is perfectly good artwork, a passable understanding of what a plot looks like (and frankly, it shows more sense of structure and discipline in that department than most of the books that come out of the X-office), and an unshakeable commitment to the bafflingly surreal premise of a team-up comic between Wolverine and celebrity chef Chris Cosentino. \u00a0In its combination of a wildly misconceived premise and surprisingly competent execution, it often winds up being perversely entertaining, though not necessarily for the right reasons.<\/p>\n It’s very far from the best thing the X-office put out this week. \u00a0But it’s definitely the most memorable.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This started as a capsule for this week’s X-Axis but seems to have grown a bit, so let’s give it its own post. Wolverine: In the Flesh –\u00a0This\u00a0is a comic written by celebrity chef Chris Cosentino, in which Wolverine teams up with celebrity chef Chris Cosentino. \u00a0I’ve never heard of celebrity chef Chris Cosentino, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2062"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2064,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions\/2064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}