{"id":2525,"date":"2014-05-07T22:41:38","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T21:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2525"},"modified":"2014-05-07T22:41:38","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T21:41:38","slug":"origin-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2525","title":{"rendered":"Origin II"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first Wolverine\u00a0Origin<\/em> miniseries came out some twelve years ago,\u00a0and time has not greatly altered my feelings about it. \u00a0In a nutshell, the nicest thing to be said about\u00a0Origin<\/em> is that it can be easily ignored,\u00a0because although it ads some pointless complications to the character’s history, none of them seem to matter sufficiently to require mentioning again. \u00a0But of course, the very fact that it can be so easily ignored\u00a0is testament to how ineffective it is as an origin story.<\/p>\n

Kieron Gillen and Adam\u00a0Kubert’s Origin II<\/em>\u00a0gestures\u00a0towards keeping the tone of the earlier series, but fortunately doesn’t have to\u00a0mess about with\u00a0country house costume drama. \u00a0It also comes somewhat closer to functioning as an actual origin story, in as much as it takes Logan from an outcast living with wolves in the wilderness through to a status somewhat closer to the way we know him today.<\/p>\n

And the\u00a0series certainly commits to that arc, resulting in a Wolverine story where Wolverine\u00a0is mute\u00a0and\u00a0often impassive for\u00a0much\u00a0of the first half. \u00a0Whether it’s the sort of material that’s likely to\u00a0embed itself in the core of the character is perhaps another matter; I suspect that\u00a0what’s more likely to take root\u00a0from this series is its new explanation for the origin of the feud between Wolverine and Sabretooth. \u00a0Since it’s a continuity\u00a0marshland, there’s much to be said for\u00a0starting fresh\u00a0on that one.<\/p>\n

The story\u00a0sees\u00a0Logan’s woodland life disrupted by an wandering polar bear, which is actually\u00a0a stray\u00a0creation of\u00a0Mr Sinister. \u00a0His encounter with\u00a0the bear leads to Sinister taking an interest in him and\u00a0trying to get hold of him for experimental purposes. \u00a0But\u00a0Logan instead ends up first in a circus, and then on the run with tracker Creed and his saintly\u00a0companion Clara, who\u00a0serves as this book’s love interest. \u00a0That sets up a\u00a0relationship triangle which ultimately leads to Creed trying to shop Logan to Sinister in order to get rid of him. \u00a0Somewhere amidst all this, Sinister has an exciting new drug\u00a0to help people forget their lives and become brainwashed soldiers; that\u00a0gives Logan\u00a0some degree of choice as to whether he wants to come to terms with his life and take control of it, or just throw in the towel.<\/p>\n

Gillen’s take on Sinister is familiar from\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em>,\u00a0and perhaps doesn’t get as\u00a0much screen time here as he deserves, considering he’s meant to be the main villain. \u00a0Of course, he’s more of a\u00a0means to an end so far as the\u00a0story is concerned, but\u00a0his Marauders feel like a slightly underdeveloped idea. \u00a0Even so,\u00a0the book has some fun with presenting him as a sort of\u00a0post-steampunk proto-supervillain.<\/p>\n

And there are some\u00a0beautiful pages in here – the white expanses of the first issue are lovely, and\u00a0Logan’s descent into a berserker rage\u00a0in issue #4 after he thinks he’s killed Clara is memorably\u00a0presented as a\u00a0series of ever-smaller, ever-redder panels as time slows to a crawl,\u00a0culminating in a double page spread of pure red.<\/p>\n

The material with Clara and Creed doesn’t quite feel as if it’s playing fair with the audience, though. \u00a0There’s a double twist here,\u00a0and the story ends up contorting a bit to accommodate them both. \u00a0First, it turns out that\u00a0Clara and Creed are siblings, not lovers. \u00a0But that makes a “Romeo and Juliet” reference in issue #2 look very odd. \u00a0And second, it turns out that this isn’t Sabretooth at all, but his younger brother. \u00a0Now, Creed is sufficiently out of character for Sabretooth throughout the story\u00a0to fit with the idea that he’s actually someone different; that’s\u00a0fair enough. \u00a0But\u00a0why is his own sister calling him “Creed” throughout the story, when that’s presumably her name too?<\/p>\n

I’m not sure\u00a0this is a story that’s really going to take roots as\u00a0a definitive part of Wolverine history, and\u00a0Sinister’s side of the story feels\u00a0like it could have done more. \u00a0But it’s certainly better than\u00a0the\u00a0first\u00a0Origin<\/em>, and rather more convincing as an early step in\u00a0Logan developing his signature hang-ups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first Wolverine\u00a0Origin miniseries came out some twelve years ago,\u00a0and time has not greatly altered my feelings about it. \u00a0In a nutshell, the nicest thing to be said about\u00a0Origin is that it can be easily ignored,\u00a0because although it ads some pointless complications to the character’s history, none of them seem to matter sufficiently to require […]<\/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-2525","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\/2525","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=2525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2526,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525\/revisions\/2526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}