{"id":3857,"date":"2017-08-18T22:58:18","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T21:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3857"},"modified":"2017-08-18T22:58:18","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T21:58:18","slug":"generations-wolverine-all-new-wolverine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3857","title":{"rendered":"Generations: Wolverine & All-New Wolverine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or\u00a0Generations: The Best<\/em>, if you prefer. \u00a0Which is a better title, and kind of sort of what it says on the cover, but I’ll go with the solicitations and the digital listings.<\/p>\n

So, just like last week’s\u00a0Phoenix<\/em> one-shot, this is a story in which a legacy character from the present goes back in time for no adequately (or even inadequately) explained reason, and meets the original. \u00a0Sort of. \u00a0I guess Phoenix wasn’t really the original Jean Grey. \u00a0An earlier version, anyway. \u00a0If there’s an explanation for any of this time travel stuff, it’s presumably going to show up somewhere else, and (plot mechanics aside) it’s of no relevance to this story, so let’s set it to one side.<\/p>\n

This is effectively an extra issue of\u00a0All-New Wolverine<\/em>, by regular writer Tom Taylor. \u00a0So that’s a good start. \u00a0At first glance, though,\u00a0All-New Wolverine<\/em> doesn’t lend itself to this format, because Laura has met the original Wolverine plenty of times. \u00a0They starred in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> together, for one thing. \u00a0What can you do with them?<\/p>\n

More than you’d think. \u00a0It’s mostly in the wrap-up, though – much of this issue is a runaround team-up exercise in which Wolverine helps Wolverine Classic rescue Akiko from the Hand and Sabretooth, because they were the main villains of the classic Wolverine period. \u00a0The Hand ninjas here are presented as undead, which I don’t think\u00a0really<\/em> took hold as a standard feature of the Hand until a bit later, but heck, why not.<\/p>\n

And it’s a very nice looking action issue. \u00a0Artist Ramon Rosanas worked on the last run of\u00a0Ant-Man<\/em>, which was more of a comedy-drama book (leaning comedy), and he was great there. \u00a0Here, playing it straight, he’s equally impressive – he’s a great storyteller, and he’s given a bit more room to play than he was on the relatively dense Ant-Man\u00a0<\/em>stories. \u00a0He’s got a nice clean line, and there are some bits here that remind me somewhat of Steve Dillon – though he does seem to struggle a little with making the old-style Sabretooth character design look intimidating. \u00a0Nolan Woodard’s colours are excellent; the sunset colouring on the opening sequence is just lovely.<\/p>\n

Remember Akiko? \u00a0She was the adopted daughter of Wolverine and Mariko Yashida, a plot thread introduced by Chris Claremont in the mid-1980s and instantly forgotten about. \u00a0And yes, she’s\u00a0usually<\/em> called Amiko, but this isn’t an error – or at least, not an error on Taylor’s part. \u00a0When she first showed up, in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #181, she was indeed “Amiko”. \u00a0But by her next appearance in\u00a0Kitty Pryde & Wolverine<\/em> #5, which is basically the time frame for this story, Claremont had changed it to “Akiko”. \u00a0Most likely, he was simply correcting an error, because “Akiko” is a common Japanese name, unlike “Amiko”, which is Esperanto for “friend”. \u00a0Somewhere along the line Larry Hama winds up doing a story where she changes her name to “Amiko”, but at this point in continuity she is indeed “Akiko”.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the point here is that Laura is\u00a0also<\/em> Wolverine’s daughter, at least in a sense. \u00a0When Taylor began his run, and Laura was suddenly taking up Wolverine’s mantle and standing for his legacy, I questioned whether she had ever really had that sort of relationship with him. \u00a0After a while I came round to thinking that this was precisely the idea – that she was overcompensating for a relationship that never really took place, and that Gabby’s role was to give Laura the chance to take the parent role and get it right.<\/p>\n

So this is Laura meeting Logan\u00a0after<\/em> she’s somewhat come to terms with their relationship and feels able to speak up about it. \u00a0And Logan, who’s been around the Marvel Universe and knows the tropes, also figures out that he’s very likely encountering his daughter from a future timeline. \u00a0The pay-off –\u00a0and stop reading here if you don’t want spoilers, because it’s a good scene –\u00a0is to have Wolverine explain his absence from Akiko’s life in the traditional manner of the time – I’m just too dangerous to be around, you’re better off without me, and so forth. \u00a0All of which is played entirely straight until Laura points out that they had to rescue Akiko precisely because she was attacked\u00a0without<\/em> him around to protect her, and basically accuses him outright of making excuses for not taking a proper interest in this girl who’s supposed to be his daughter. \u00a0Precisely why Logan is ducking his responsibilities is left more vague, but the general implication is that he’s unable or unwilling to shift gears to take on that role.<\/p>\n

In the background of all of this is Laura getting the chance to complain to Logan about his failure to really treat her as his daughter. \u00a0And it works because it’s very low key: using Akiko lets Laura be completely direct about it while leaving the relationship we actually care about, the one between Laura and Logan as the elephant in the room.<\/p>\n

I liked this one. \u00a0Sure, there’s a bit of filler in the first two thirds while the book plays the hits, but it’s still good fun. \u00a0And the pay off finds a clever way of making the\u00a0Generations\u00a0<\/em>gimmick work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or\u00a0Generations: The Best, if you prefer. \u00a0Which is a better title, and kind of sort of what it says on the cover, but I’ll go with the solicitations and the digital listings. So, just like last week’s\u00a0Phoenix one-shot, this is a story in which a legacy character from the present goes back in time for […]<\/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-3857","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\/3857","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=3857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3858,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions\/3858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}