No, I’m not quite sure why this exists either. \u00a0It’s a one-shot anthology with three Wolverine stories, which would normally scream “completist fodder”. \u00a0But it’s an unusually high end one, since at least it’s using creators who are strongly associated with Wolverine: Larry Hama, Chris Claremont, and (admittedly more of a stretch) Sam Kieth. \u00a0Apparently it’s something to do with Marvel’s 80th birthday celebrations, so I guess the idea is to let these guys play to the nostalgia.<\/p>\n
It’s still a book that’s unlikely to trouble the attention of anyone other than completists and big fans of the creators, though. \u00a0Larry Hama leads off with “Red in Tooth and Claw”, illustrated by Scot Eaton and Sean Parsons, which is a flashback to the old memory-implant idea that he made so much of during his early 90s\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> run. \u00a0Hama always enjoyed the potential for surrealism in Wolverine’s altered memories, particularly when he had Mark Texeira on art.<\/p>\n But this story feels just as indebted to Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X”, particularly visually, as the Professor and his familiar two sidekicks discuss what’s going on in Logan’s mind while he’s being brainwashed. \u00a0They’re no more able to distinguish between real and false memories than he is, and there are flashes in here of familiar Hama tropes like the death of Silver Fox, or the radiator chained to a tree, that won’t make a huge amount of sense unless you’re familiar with the original stories. \u00a0To be honest, the radiator didn’t make a tremendous amount of sense at the time either.<\/p>\n The very rough idea seems to be that even in this state, Logan’s rage – however useful it might be to the Professor – is still driven by his anger about Sabretooth killing Silver Fox, which I guess is why his identity is never entirely eradicated, or something. \u00a0But at the end of the day, it’s the usual Weapon X schtick: the amoral Professor, and the two sidekick scientists who seem to have at least a little more concern about what they’re doing, even if it never runs to the length of actually saying no, because they seem to have convinced themselves that it’s all in a good cause. \u00a0Or a legitimate cause, at any rate. \u00a0It’s a good routine, but this story feels like simply a reprise, without bringing much new to it.<\/p>\n Chris Claremont’s “Aftermath” is drawn by Salvador Larroca – who’s currently working on an ongoing title, which makes you wonder how long ago this was drawn? \u00a0 It’s a postscript to the Kitty Pryde & Wolverine<\/em> mini. \u00a0Since Claremont’s Logan has friends everywhere, he takes Kitty and Yukio to visit a friend whose noodle restaurant is under threat from rival ramen shops. \u00a0Naturally, not only is Wolverine a badass, he is also a reflective master of Japanese cuisine.<\/p>\n It’s not a genre I’m familiar with, to put it mildly, but I think the joke here is Claremont extending his Wolverine-in-Japan theme by doing it as a cooking manga. \u00a0Which is quite a funny idea. \u00a0The result is\u00a0very<\/em> Claremont – but then that’s the point of the exercise, isn’t it? – and this has quite a bit of charm to it.<\/p>\n Finally, Sam Kieth’s Wolverine stories in\u00a0Marvel Comics Presents<\/em> are better remembered for their visual style than for anything that actually happened in them, and so he does indeed give us an exercise in style. \u00a0Ostensibly, it’s a story about Wolverine being stuck in a South American swamp on a mission gone wrong, and crossing paths with Venom, who just happens to be passing for whatever reason, don’t ask. \u00a0I’m not entirely sure about Kieth as a Venom artist – for me, Venom works best when he’s a grotesquely distorted figure in an otherwise fairly normal world, while Kieth likes to exaggerate across the board. \u00a0There’s virtually zero plot to this – it doesn’t even end so much as gesture vaguely in the direction of finishing – and while Kieth’s art can be lovely, you can see it elsewhere on vastly better material than this.<\/p>\n Overall, there are a few decent moments in here, and it’s aiming a little higher than the completist fodder you might expect, but it’s very eminently skippable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No, I’m not quite sure why this exists either. \u00a0It’s a one-shot anthology with three Wolverine stories, which would normally scream “completist fodder”. \u00a0But it’s an unusually high end one, since at least it’s using creators who are strongly associated with Wolverine: Larry Hama, Chris Claremont, and (admittedly more of a stretch) Sam Kieth. \u00a0Apparently […]<\/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-4642","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\/4642","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=4642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4644,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4642\/revisions\/4644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}