{"id":715,"date":"2011-02-06T19:21:35","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T19:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=715"},"modified":"2011-02-06T19:21:35","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T19:21:35","slug":"wolverine-goes-to-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=715","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine Goes To Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I already mentioned on Twitter<\/a>, I haven’t got this week’s comics yet, and so, in a fit of critical integrity, I’m not going to review them. \u00a0For once, however, this coincides with a weekend when I do have time to write some reviews, and so I’m going to take the opportunity to look at length at the first arcs of two recently relaunched titles. \u00a0Heavy spoilers ahead, by the way – I’m assuming that either you’ve read these arcs, or you’re not planning to.<\/p>\n

Coming up in the next day or two, the first arc of Uncanny X-Force<\/em>. \u00a0But first…<\/p>\n

Wolverine Goes to Hell<\/h1>\n

Wolverine<\/em> #1-5
\nWriter: Jason Aaron
\nMain story penciller: Renato Guedes
\nMain story inkers: Jose Wilson Magalhaes and Oclair Albert
\nMain story colourist: Matt Wilson
\nBack-up story artists: Jason Latour and Rico Renzi (#1 and #5), Steven Sanders and Ronda Pattison (#2), Michael Gaydos (#3), Jamie McKelvie and John Rauch (#4)
\nLetterer: Cory Petit
\nEditor: Jeanine Schaefer<\/p>\n

The recent relaunch of Wolverine<\/em> has been driven more by commercial than creative factors. \u00a0The last<\/em> big relaunch, a little over a year earlier, misfired spectacularly – more through overly tricksy marketing than due to any fault of the creative team. \u00a0The idea was to soft-launch a new spin-off title featuring Wolverine’s son Daken. \u00a0But rather than just launch Dark Wolverine<\/em> #1, some bright spark thought it would be a terribly good idea to turn the existing Wolverine<\/em> series into a Daken title, and shunt Wolverine himself off into a new title, Wolverine: Weapon X<\/em>. \u00a0Unfortunately, the way everything was timed meant that Weapon X<\/em>, which was meant to be the lead Wolverine book, was universally perceived as his C-title, and sales duly crashed into oblivion.<\/p>\n

While it may be heartening in some respects to see a needlessly complicated promotional stunt blow up in Marvel’s face, the result was rather unfair to Jason Aaron, who was writing rather good stories over on Weapon X<\/em>. \u00a0He’s got a good handle not just on the character, but also on the style that makes his stories work – shamelessly over the top, but still sane enough to shift gears and carry some dramatic weight when it’s needed. \u00a0If nothing else, this latest relaunch gives him a well deserved second chance to find an audience.<\/p>\n

But it also means that this isn’t really a fresh start for the character in any meaningful sense; it’s Jason Aaron’s Wolverine run, joined in progress. \u00a0Commercial reality, however, dictates that this has to be a particularly big story arc, something that’s manifest both in the unusually epic (or operatic) scale of the thing, and also in the decision to make it a crossover with the newly launched Daken<\/em> and X-23<\/em> titles.<\/p>\n

The less said about the crossover, the better. \u00a0The tie-ins are basically redundant to this story, and generally came across as unwelcome intrusions in the other two books as well. \u00a0As is often the case with Marvel crossovers, the actual story is contained in this book, and the other two titles are simply written in the margins. \u00a0(If you’re looking for any acknowledgement of events in the tie-in books, you’ll find them on page 8 of chapter 3. \u00a0In two panels.) \u00a0Actually, on one view the Daken<\/em> stories shed some light on Mystique’s motivations in the main story – but evidently nothing that was considered significant enough to be worth repeating.<\/p>\n

So let’s ignore the crossover and focus on the story itself. \u00a0It’s a high concept affair. \u00a0Aaron introduces new villains, the Red Right Hand – a sect out for revenge on Wolverine, apparently because they consider themselves his victims. \u00a0The general implication seems to be that these guys are the relatives of the assorted redshirts he’s casually despatched over the years. \u00a0In what’s eventually revealed to be merely the first phase of a master plan, they arrange to have Wolverine’s soul mystically hijacked to hell, while a demon takes over his body. \u00a0What follows over the next few issues is Wolverine fighting hordes of old enemies in Hell while resisting Satan’s attempts to break him, while the demon impostor wanders around attacking his associates on the surface, and his girlfriend Melita Garner hooks up with Mystique and some mystical guest stars in an attempt to sort it all out. \u00a0(Melita is a new character introduced earlier in Aaron’s run, who serves a variety of useful purposes – aside from having the traditional plot-driving profession of local journalist, she also gives Wolverine a connection to somebody in the real world who isn’t in any way linked to his insanely convoluted back story.) \u00a0Ultimately Wolverine overcomes Satan, learns that the whole thing has also in some way been engineered by the spirit of his late father (of which more later), and returns to the real world thanks partly to his own strength of will and partly to the assistance of Melita.<\/span><\/p>\n

Accompanying the whole thing is a series of back-up strips drawn by guest artists, most of which focus on members of Wolverine’s supporting cast. \u00a0They’re a handy way of allowing Aaron to break away for lengthy subplots setting up future stories without strictly cutting into his main story; the final one provides the missing exposition to explain how Wolverine ended up in Hell in the first place, but a couple of others appear to be introducing new villains or setting up dormant supporting characters for a role in future stories.<\/p>\n

Often, when you re-read a completed arc, it’s an improvement. \u00a0You can see the shape of it more clearly than when you’re reading it in instalments over a period of months. \u00a0It’s easier to see when later issues are referring back to throwaway moments in the earlier ones. \u00a0And so forth. \u00a0But sometimes you re-read an arc and it doesn’t really seem to fall into place after all. \u00a0Unfortunately, this is one of those stories which seems to be missing a few elements to make it really work.<\/p>\n

The idea has a lot going for it, for a number of reasons. \u00a0For a start, it fits in with Aaron’s subplot in which the atheist Wolverine appears to be discovering God. \u00a0Quite where you go with that in the long run, I’m not sure, but it does make some sense in character terms, and I’ll keep an open mind about it for now. \u00a0More importantly, though, if you want to confront Wolverine with the state of his life and give him a reason to try and make a change, this allows Aaron to make use of some of the major and minor characters who have been written out over the years. \u00a0Wolverine’s Hell is, from one perspective, essentially his life boiled down to its essence – an endless treadmill of fights against a sequence of basically interchangeable villains. \u00a0He wants to break that cycle, which is why (a) he rejects the idea of staying and trying to become the alpha male of that world, and (b) Aaron has equipped him with a love interest who thus far remains clearly separate from that world. \u00a0(The basic tension of their subplot is whether she helps him out of his rather narrow world, or just gets sucked in herself.)<\/p>\n

All this is fine. \u00a0And the conceit of having the demon Wolverine race around going after supporting characters, some of whom are long un-used, helps Aaron to get some of these people back into circulation without just bringing them in cold. \u00a0It’s pretty obvious, for example, that he’s trying to set up a significant role for Amiko, Wolverine’s notional adoptive daughter who was banished to the backwaters of continuity years ago and barely ever gets mentioned. \u00a0(A happy side effect of never being used is that her history is also relatively straightforward, making her a good candidate for Aaron’s stories.)<\/p>\n

So what’s the difficulty? \u00a0It’s two-fold, I think. \u00a0Firstly, while the themes are all present and correct, it doesn’t really coalesce into a satisfactory story. \u00a0Plot mechanics are glossed over; explanations are hand-waved through. \u00a0I’ll ignore the fact that this story’s Satan bears no resemblance to the normal Marvel Universe version; that’s artistic licence. \u00a0But how does Wolverine actually beat him? \u00a0The suggestion seems to be that Satan’s inability to break Wolverine’s spirit inspires rebellion among the inhabitants of Hell (both demons and damned), and that this in turn somehow weakens Satan so that Wolverine can beat him in a fight. \u00a0Okay, but the story kind of hints in this direction without really doing the legwork of showing it. \u00a0It’s rushed through in exposition instead of being dramatised. \u00a0In fact, the story never really gets to grips with what the inhabitants of Hell are doing at all. \u00a0There’s no real sense of it as a place. \u00a0Do they spend all their time being tortured? \u00a0If so, how come Wolverine’s father and the guest star Puck are apparently able to wander around freely? \u00a0How did they get to form a plan in the first place? \u00a0And since their spirits don’t seem to have been broken, why wasn’t that a similar challenge to Satan’s authority? \u00a0All of this is, if not outright incoherent, certainly too vague and protean to let the story build to an effective climax.<\/p>\n

And secondly, there’s something rather literal about Renato Guedes’ rendition of Hell. \u00a0It’s not bad by any means, and it does manage an operatic sense of scale from time to time, but it’s very much your standard “demons and tortured souls on rocky outcrops” schtick. \u00a0I can’t help thinking that the story would have benefitted from a more surreal or dreamlike take. \u00a0The point is brought home by the selection of artists for the back-up strips, which are all set in the real world, but generally have a much woozier and off-kilter feel than the hell segments. \u00a0It feels a bit backwards.<\/p>\n

Now, I like Jason Aaron’s approach to the character, and while I’ve got reservations about the religion angle, it’s a perfectly valid thing to try. \u00a0 I think he’s generally got the right idea when it comes to the big crazy ideas, and there’s nothing wrong with the idea of “Wolverine Goes To Hell” (even though there’s a lot wrong with the “Biggles Climbs a Tree” title). \u00a0Thematically, I can see where he’s coming from, and it’s a bold idea that might have worked. \u00a0It could still be a worthwhile part of Aaron’s bigger picture for the character. \u00a0The Red Right Hand are promising villains, and their anonymous leader is creepily banal in a way that’s very effective. \u00a0As a five-issue arc, though, this doesn’t click; the plotting isn’t quite tight enough to pull off the climax, nor is its version of Hell inventive enough to make up for that.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I’ve seen enough of Aaron’s Wolverine stories to know that this isn’t a regular problem, and this story does keep my interest in his broader direction for the title. \u00a0The Red Right Hand are clearly long-term villains for this book, and I’m glad to see him bringing some new antagonists who (at least from what we’ve seen so far) play off Wolverine without being weighed down by any continuity baggage. \u00a0The book needs some new blood in its supporting cast, and Aaron’s addressing that very well. \u00a0In all those respects, there’s plenty here to be optimistic about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I already mentioned on Twitter, I haven’t got this week’s comics yet, and so, in a fit of critical integrity, I’m not going to review them. \u00a0For once, however, this coincides with a weekend when I do have time to write some reviews, and so I’m going to take the opportunity to look at […]<\/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-715","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\/715","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=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":718,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions\/718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}