{"id":2980,"date":"2015-04-26T12:17:38","date_gmt":"2015-04-26T11:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2980"},"modified":"2015-04-26T19:09:11","modified_gmt":"2015-04-26T18:09:11","slug":"wolverines-vol-3-the-living-and-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2980","title":{"rendered":"Wolverines vol 3 – “The Living and the Dead”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know quite what I was expecting from a weekly series following on from Wolverine’s death\u00a0and starring\u00a0the likes of X-23, Daken and Sabretooth. \u00a0But it probably wasn’t\u00a0Wolverines<\/em>, which, if nothing else, is at least the most cheerfully insane thing that the X-office has produced in\u00a0ages.<\/p>\n

Having started off with a relatively coherent premise –\u00a0five other test subjects of Dr Cornelius exploit his hypnotic programming to\u00a0forcibly enlist\u00a0Wolverine’s associates\u00a0in the search for a cure\u00a0for their own\u00a0fatal modifications –\u00a0Wolverines<\/em>\u00a0has meandered wildly off course. \u00a0A big chunk of the cast disappeared during volume 2. \u00a0Mystique seized control of the remaining group and wandered off on a vaguely-defined agenda of her own (seemingly something to do with bringing Destiny\u00a0back from the dead). \u00a0Fang, of all people, showed up to torment Wolverine’s rogue’s gallery.<\/p>\n

And the whole idea of actually hunting down Wolverine’s body, or indeed doing anything else to address the original problem that started off this series, seems to have fallen by the wayside altogether. \u00a0Reading the series is like\u00a0watching a noisily clanking, alarmingly lopsided machine which whirrs and spins at tremendous speed,\u00a0appears\u00a0not to\u00a0actually do anything in particular, and occasionally\u00a0sheds a\u00a0component that flies\u00a0off into a convenient wall or floor, where it embeds itself\u00a0and is forgotten.<\/p>\n

Even leaving aside the rambling\u00a0and diffuse plot, the\u00a0problem I identified in volume 2 remains pronounced. \u00a0The series seems to be pulling in two entirely different directions. \u00a0Sometimes it wants to be a relatively serious, if melodramatic, story of scheming, plotting and shifting alliances. \u00a0The rest of the time it wants to\u00a0go completely nuts, with ludicrous villains, crazy\u00a0story points, and random jaunts to the other side of the universe so that Fang can get people intravenously drunk. \u00a0You could try to do both at once, of course. \u00a0This sort of gleeful trashiness isn’t inherently irreconcilable with\u00a0character-driven melodrama. \u00a0But\u00a0Wolverines<\/em> fails to reconcile it, and fails\u00a0pretty badly at that.<\/p>\n

Once again, the actual grouping of issues in this volume\u00a0doesn’t match up with any particular storyline. \u00a0Issue #11, by Charles Soule and Ariela Kristantina, kicks off with Fang continuing his\u00a0exercise of\u00a0taking the Wolverines off one at a time to talk to them. \u00a0This time it’s X-23, and since she’s the only one of the group who\u00a0was\u00a0a\u00a0Wolverine supporting character rather than a villain, he’s\u00a0only really interested in talking to her. \u00a0Loosely, the idea is to point out that X-23 is clearly staying with the group voluntarily even if\u00a0she’s using the control words as an excuse to herself, which is the sort of reasonably subtle character point that sits hopelessly at odds with a crazily exaggerated flashback to Fang and Wolverine’s drinking sessions – so exaggerated, in fact, that X-23 simply responds by denying\u00a0that it could remotely be plausible. \u00a0A relatively subdued character like her is particularly ill-suited for the book’s more surreal flights of fancy, but Kristantina is at least an artist who can shift to cover both\u00a0the book’s tones.<\/p>\n

Issue #12, by Ray Fawkes and Ario Anindito, sees Mystique take\u00a0Fang down – thus cutting off the episodic structure of his arc in mid-flow. \u00a0Instead, it ends with the wounded Fang dragging Shogun away to another world so that Shogun can blame himself for Wolverine’s death, on the extraordinarily tenuous ground that he was the masked henchman in the final issue of\u00a0Death of Wolverine<\/em>. \u00a0Somewhere in here\u00a0Fang’s death scene is\u00a0played as if we’re supposed to find it moving, but everything that’s been done with him up to this point has been so aggressively ridiculous that it’s impossible to switch gears like that now. \u00a0In fact, with his contribution to the story complete, it’s pretty clear that Fang was a serious error of judgment from start to finish. \u00a0Leave aside whatever continuity problems he causes; he’s just pitched so far over the top that he destabilises the whole series in a way it never recovers from. \u00a0As for the art, it’s competent at best.<\/p>\n

The next issue, with Soule and Jason Masters,\u00a0goes on a complete detour, as Deadpool uses a collection of Wolverine memorabilia assembled for him by Fantomelle to try and\u00a0become the new Wolverine. \u00a0This involves wearing a set of strap-on claws which he keeps misjudging and maiming himself with, and trying to fight the She-Hulk because that’s what Wolverine did in his first appearance. \u00a0(Of course, Wolverine fought the actual Hulk, but even Deadpool’s not stupid enough to try that.)\u00a0 This is largely pretty funny; it helps that Deadpool has no “serious” plot thread to accommodate, and in fact he never even gets to interact with the rest of the cast, so his issue can go nuts with impunity. \u00a0If the\u00a0series had otherwise\u00a0been keeping a relatively straight tone, this would have worked as a comic relied issue.<\/p>\n

It also keeps up another thread of this series: that the regular cast seem to be the people\u00a0with the least actual interest in\u00a0Wolverine himself,\u00a0even though he’s the absentee star of the book. \u00a0That’s an interesting idea in theory, but the book doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. \u00a0Daken appears to be the exception, as by the time of issue #14 he’s\u00a0started wearing his hair in Wolverine’s style,\u00a0something nobody actually comments upon.<\/p>\n

With issue #14, Fawkes and Salvador Larroca have Mystique starting to move her plan into some sort of motion. \u00a0The thing about this plan is that it’s basically\u00a0her arranging a series of seemingly\u00a0unrelated things just so, because Destiny told her to do so. \u00a0One gets the impression that it’s building towards some sort of complicated\u00a0Mousetrap scenario where things line up precisely and bring about\u00a0a result that\u00a0would otherwise be a\u00a0fluke. \u00a0And that’s an unfortunate impression to have when the story seems to want us to speculate on what she’s up to, since the obvious conclusion to draw is that it won’t be guessable anyway.<\/p>\n

Anyhow,\u00a0Mystique manipulates Daken into going\u00a0after Siphon, so that she can capture him for the benefit of\u00a0her overall plan. \u00a0Quite why this requires the manipulation of Daken,\u00a0who would presumably have been happy enough to fight Siphon anyway; and quite why it’s particularly desirable to send Daken, who is missing a limb and eye, rather than one of her healthier cohorts\u2026 none of that is altogether clear. \u00a0But hey, it means Daken and X-23 (who goes after him) get to team up with Blade because Siphon is randomly hanging out with vampires, since he’s a bit like a vampire, even though he’s not a vampire.<\/p>\n

Siphon turns out to have a reasonably cute concept, which is that he’s only sane when he’s fully charged with siphoned energy. \u00a0In that condition, he’s a\u00a0largely personable fellow, but the more damage he takes (and thus the more energy he needs to use in healing himself), the more he regresses to animal form. \u00a0The resulting fight continues into issue #15, where Juan\u00a0Doe is on art, and gets to do a fight scene that lasts about half the issue. \u00a0Doe is not a subtle artist – he’s all about the big grand sweeping gestures – but nobody’s calling for subtlety here. \u00a0Quite what Blade’s involvement is supposed to add to this, beyond padding out the page count, is beyond me.<\/p>\n

The series does improve somewhat once Fang is out of the way, and there is at least some sense that it’s trying to build to something, albeit something you have no\u00a0realistic shot of predicting. \u00a0But there’s no particularly satisfying through line to be found here, either in plot or character. \u00a0That’s not to say that it feels phoned in; it’s far too bizarre for that. \u00a0In fact,\u00a0the sheer weirdness of the book might\u00a0at least qualify it for the “noble failure” category; but\u00a0the spasmodic plotting and overdose of 90s grit makes it an increasingly wearing book to actually read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know quite what I was expecting from a weekly series following on from Wolverine’s death\u00a0and starring\u00a0the likes of X-23, Daken and Sabretooth. \u00a0But it probably wasn’t\u00a0Wolverines, which, if nothing else, is at least the most cheerfully insane thing that the X-office has produced in\u00a0ages. Having started off with a relatively coherent premise –\u00a0five […]<\/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-2980","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\/2980","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=2980"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3023,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980\/revisions\/3023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}