The exigencies of event\u00a0storytelling (and shared-universe storytelling more generally) can lead to some weird\u00a0ways of constructing stories;\u00a0a format\u00a0that sees the same overall story pursued\u00a0through\u00a0multiple parallel narratives that aren’t even appearing in chronological sequence would normally be regarded as at least an interesting creative choice.<\/p>\n
In\u00a0this case, we have a rather odd transition going on between\u00a0what are in effect two versions of the ongoing\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> series – the\u00a0Death of Wolverine<\/em> mini, and the\u00a0Wolverines<\/em> weekly. \u00a0Bridging the gap between those\u00a0titles are\u00a0two separate minis, each serving to\u00a0introduce (or at least set up) half of the cast of the weekly, and to collectively establish the premise:\u00a0a bunch of characters, some\u00a0established and some new, have all been the victim of potentially fatal experimentation by Dr Cornelius, and must join forces to find a cure.<\/p>\n Logan Legacy<\/em> deals with the established half of the cast – X-23, Sabretooth, Daken,\u00a0Lady Deathstrike and,\u00a0somewhat incongruously, Mystique. \u00a0The other book,\u00a0Weapon X Project<\/em>,\u00a0deals with the new characters –\u00a0experimental subjects who escape from Cornelius’ base in the confusion\u00a0immediately after Wolverine’s death. \u00a0That book started and finished second, but takes place first, thus allowing the same characters to appear as mystery villains in\u00a0Logan Legacy\u00a0<\/em>when they’re\u00a0kidnapping the other half of the \u00a0cast. \u00a0(In their own book, of course, they’re rather more sympathetic.) \u00a0Complicating matters still further, the seven-issue\u00a0Logan Legacy<\/em> actually consists of a two-issue framing sequence,\u00a0which surrounds\u00a0five flashback one-shots\u00a0in which different guest creative teams establish the status quo of each of the five cast members as\u00a0Wolverines<\/em> begins.<\/p>\n The issues that actually matter in plot terms are the framing sequence and the Mystique issue. \u00a0In fact, the framing sequence is probably the least\u00a0convincing at this stage, partly because the first issue grinds to a halt in order to meticulously advertise the stories to come in issues #2-6, but mainly because\u00a0the premise of\u00a0Wolverines<\/em> is a wildly contrived one of which\u00a0Charles Soule has yet to fully\u00a0convince me.<\/p>\n Let’s leave aside the\u00a0awkwardness of elevating Cornelius to master villain status, which is a bit like referencing the Silver Age X-Men stories and claiming that the archenemy\u00a0of the piece was the Toad. \u00a0There\u00a0are practical reasons why Soule had to use Cornelius – essentially, that the alternatives would have involved needlessly complicating\u00a0matters by bringing back dead characters only to kill them off again immediately –\u00a0so while it’s not an ideal choice, I can see why it’s been made. \u00a0Cornelius, we’re told,\u00a0was obsessed with trying to\u00a0healing powers and\u00a0at some indeterminate point kidnapped and experimented on all of\u00a0the cast members. \u00a0None of them remember this, but there\u00a0is<\/em> a precedent for Weapon X using memory alteration, so that’s not too much of a stretch – though it doesn’t explain why he released them back into the wild after.<\/p>\n At any rate, we’re told that as a control mechanism, Cornelius has implanted all five with\u00a0post-hypnotic control words that allow anyone (such as the\u00a0Weapon X Project<\/em> cast) to control them, put them to sleep, kill them, or erase the programming on the spot. \u00a0The\u00a0Project<\/em> cast members\u00a0are going to die\u00a0as a result of their own experiments unless a\u00a0cure is found;\u00a0if the established characters help them,\u00a0in return they’ll erase the programming. \u00a0Alternatively, of course, they could just force them to help, but\u00a0that wouldn’t be as effective because they’d all be reduced to minions with no initiative.<\/p>\n The whole concept of control words that can kill characters on the spot is silly, in a way that doesn’t seem to fit very neatly with a story that generally feels as if it’s taking itself desperately seriously. \u00a0I suspect, to be fair, that\u00a0the story was going for a sort of deadpan over-the-topness, but I’m not sure that’s the tone it’s actually hit. \u00a0It ends up feeling self-consciously grim in a very mid-nineties way. \u00a0Nor is there a very coherent idea of\u00a0how the\u00a0Legacy<\/em> characters are actually supposed to help the\u00a0Project<\/em>\u00a0ones. \u00a0The early issues of\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> suggest that the idea is to retrieve Wolverine’s body and experiment on that, but\u00a0quite how that’s supposed to help is entirely unclear.<\/p>\n In fairness, the\u00a0Project<\/em> cast are working from information in Cornelius’ files, and Cornelius never had time to update them to reflect the fact that Wolverine had lost his healing factor. \u00a0So perhaps the idea is that it will indeed turn out to be a wasted effort. \u00a0But the\u00a0Legacy<\/em> characters\u00a0do<\/em> know that\u00a0he had lost his powers, so you’d think it would have come up somewhere. \u00a0Still, there’s enough evidence of planning in terms of the interaction between the various stories to suggest that I ought to give it at least a little more opportunity to set out its stall in these areas.<\/p>\n At any rate, while the framing sequence isn’t altogether persuasive, the one-shots are more interesting. \u00a0For the most part, they do succeed in establishing pretty clearly each character’s agenda and status quo\u00a0at the outset of this story. \u00a0Whether\u00a0what’s established is in any way coherent with anything that came before is, in some cases, rather more doubtful. \u00a0But we are at least left with a\u00a0very clear idea of\u00a0the position as this story is going to take it, and if you’re prepared to run with that, the individual issues aren’t bad at all.<\/p>\n The X-23\u00a0story, by Tim Seeley and Ariela Kristantina,\u00a0takes as its starting point the idea that she’s devastated by Wolverine’s death and processes it as the death of a father figure who, being immortal and all, she had trusted to always be there for her. \u00a0That leads her to bitterly reject\u00a0him as a\u00a0supposed\u00a0larger than life legend who turned out to be\u00a0just a guy in a silly costume, only for her\u00a0to cross\u00a0paths with an outrageously low-level superhero (the former Alpha Flight member Windshear, of all people) and come to appreciate the importance of the symbolism even at his lowly point on the superhero pecking order.<\/p>\n Parts of her reaction don’t really make logical sense, but\u00a0in this case I think it’s the right kind of irrationality. \u00a0We never saw X-23 develop any sort of significant relationship with Wolverine, but it’s not too hard to believe that\u00a0it was quietly important to her in her own mind, and that she never\u00a0knew how to take it any further. \u00a0More dubious is a scene in a bar where a guy tries to pick her up as a prostitute and she responds by giving him a moral lecture. \u00a0Yes, the story makes pretty clear that he’s a pathetic schlub who would take no for an answer\u00a0(and that he’s still trying to take advantage of the desperate and confused, whether he knows it or not) – but for X-23 to react to him with anything other than outright contempt, let alone give him a speech about her feelings, strikes me as calling for a level of empathy that the character is fundamentally incapable of\u00a0showing.<\/p>\n Still,\u00a0the core idea of the story works,\u00a0and the villains – a bunch of angst-ridden kids who are shooting up nightclubs in what they conceive to be some sort of performance art point about emotional pain –\u00a0feels like something that could have wandered out of a Steve Gerber comic. \u00a0It’s an unexpectedly odd thing to find in this series, and fits in quite neatly as a parody of self-pity taken to ludicrous extremes. \u00a0Kristiana’s art is good stuff, with strong character work\u00a0helped by subtle colouring \u00a0from Sonia Oback (though she does sometimes seem a bit awkward\u00a0in rendering\u00a0Windshear’s grand heroic gestures), and I’d be happy to see her back.<\/p>\n The Sabretooth issue, by Kyle Higgins and Jonathan Marks, is basically Sabretooth sulking around Mogadishu\u00a0where he’s supposed to be helping out a bunch of rebel fighters. \u00a0In reality, he’s taking out his frustration at never having\u00a0managed to prove his point that\u00a0Wolverine is a mere pale copy of him,\u00a0by\u00a0picking off guys who could pass for Wolverine if you squint really, really hard, dressing them in a makeshift Wolverine costume, and then killing them. \u00a0The largely monochrome colouring is atmospheric but the art has some serious intelligibility problems where action is concerned, and the basic\u00a0concept manages to combine being Sabretooth 101 with failing to flow convincingly\u00a0either from Paul Cornell’s depiction of the character, or Soule’s own take in\u00a0Death of Wolverine<\/em>, which weren’t compatible with each other either.<\/p>\n