{"id":2093,"date":"2014-01-12T21:45:47","date_gmt":"2014-01-12T21:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2093"},"modified":"2014-01-12T21:45:47","modified_gmt":"2014-01-12T21:45:47","slug":"wolverine-8-13-killable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2093","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine #8-13 – “Killable”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much like the North Korean military, Marvel believes that if you keep relaunching long enough, eventually the damn thing will stay up. \u00a0Hence the upcoming yet-another-revamp of the Ultimate books, and the likes of\u00a0Fantastic Four<\/em>,\u00a0X-Force<\/em>,\u00a0Other X-Force<\/em>, Hulk<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Wolverine\u00a0<\/em>all being slated for fresh issue #1s only a year or so after the last one.<\/p>\n

In fact, I don’t have a particular problem with starting from #1 when you have a genuinely fresh start on the book. \u00a0At least that’s drawing attention to the first issue of\u00a0a story. \u00a0Other books like Daredevil\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Hulk\u00a0<\/em>are keeping the writer but changing the set-up, which is a bit tenuous, but it’s something. \u00a0And then we have Wolverine<\/em>, which is rebooting its numbering in the middle of a storyline.<\/p>\n

“Killable” is, in reality, act two of a much longer plot that is nowhere near finished. \u00a0Passing off these thirteen issues as any sort of “complete” era of the book is absurd. \u00a0We have now officially reached the stage of applying the “issue #1” tag to\u00a0turning points<\/em>. \u00a0With the best will in the world, this can’t help but look a bit desperate.<\/p>\n

It’s a pretty good arc, though, at least when read as a whole. \u00a0It felt a bit wonky as a serial, but by the end, its main apparent problem feels like a deliberate choice after all.<\/p>\n

In the opening seven issues, a mind-controlling virus from the Microverse turned up on Earth and had a big fight with Wolverine, which led to the virus shutting down his healing factor. \u00a0You might expect, then, that this arc would be about defeating the virus and Wolverine trying to get his powers back – and in the first issue that seems to be where it’s going. \u00a0But, almost immediately, Wolverine gets completely sidetracked by going after Sabretooth and Mystique, who have stolen his sword. \u00a0Wolverine and Kitty (who tags along after him) spend the rest of the arc being pinned down and hunted by Sabretooth and his crew, while SHIELD simply get on with the job of defeating the virus without them.<\/p>\n

Yes, in the final issue Wolverine does refuse to let them take refuge in his body, even though they offer to restore his healing factor if he agrees. \u00a0That’s his token moment of heroism in the final issue. \u00a0But he doesn’t actually beat<\/em> them. \u00a0The world-threatening ubervillain from the previous arc is simply shunted into a subplot, and beaten there.<\/p>\n

This seems weird at first, but eventually it’s clear that Paul Cornell is making a point. \u00a0The sword Wolverine is chasing after has no real intrinsic worth; it’s simply something he associates with his attempts to be an honourable warrior, and by stealing it, Sabretooth and Mystique are prodding at his sense of identity, already a little rattled by the loss of his signature power. \u00a0Sabretooth’s entire purpose here is to break Wolverine’s spirit by luring him completely off the track of the villain he ought<\/em> to be fighting, and manipulating him into endangering innocents, all for the sake of hunting down an empty metaphor. \u00a0Having thoroughly made his point, Sabretooth gives back the sword and leaves.<\/p>\n

As a direction for Sabretooth, I think it works. \u00a0His status as Wolverine’s arch-enemy has been rather undermined over the years, as Wolverine himself has been powered up to the point where Sabretooth no longer poses a credible threat to him. \u00a0Depowering Wolverine goes some way to solving that problem, as does having Sabretooth return to a focus on the mental torment, but the story is also working hard to re-establish Sabretooth as Wolverine’s opposite number, a character with the same impulses but without the self-control. \u00a0But since that self-control is itself something of a charade in this story, Sabretooth ends up able to claim with some credibility that he’s simply the Wolverine who’s true to himself. \u00a0It all loops back to re-establishing some of the key elements of their relationship that have been muddied over the years.<\/p>\n

Alan Davis’ artwork remains as beautifully clean as ever; his style isn’t the most obvious choice for a Wolverine comic, but he can tell a story and sell expression like few people out there. \u00a0You could make a case for the story being a bit overlong – there’s a lot<\/em> of running around with Sabretooth’s henchmen – but on balance I think the build is needed, and some of the details do play into his point.<\/p>\n

Perhaps a bigger problem is that the final chapter is rather on the nose; it features an extended speech in which Sabretooth explains his point for some seven pages, before Kitty’s narration chips in to say “he’s got a point, you know”. \u00a0I get what the story is going for, and yes, it’s essential not just that the reader gets the point but that Wolverine does too, but I do wonder whether this veers a little too close to just spelling things out. \u00a0Still, the point itself is a promising enough direction for the character, and ties together enough of the otherwise curious elements of the “Killable” arc, to make it work for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much like the North Korean military, Marvel believes that if you keep relaunching long enough, eventually the damn thing will stay up. \u00a0Hence the upcoming yet-another-revamp of the Ultimate books, and the likes of\u00a0Fantastic Four,\u00a0X-Force,\u00a0Other X-Force, Hulk\u00a0and\u00a0Wolverine\u00a0all being slated for fresh issue #1s only a year or so after the last one. In fact, I […]<\/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-2093","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\/2093","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=2093"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2361,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093\/revisions\/2361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}