Writer: Jason Aaron
\nPenciller: Adam Kubert
\nInkers: Mark Morales, Dexter Vines, Mark Roslan
\nColourist: Justin Ponsor
\nLetterer: Rob Steen
\nEditor: Nick Lowe<\/p>\n
You might have forgotten this, but the Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine<\/em> miniseries which wrapped up last week was supposed to be part of a whole Astonishing imprint. \u00a0The idea – and I quote here from Marvel’s own press release – was that “Each book in the imprint features all-star characters by top-tier creative teams and serves as the perfect jumping on point for both casual readers and hardcore fans.” \u00a0This was supposed to hark back to Astonishing X-Men<\/em>‘s days as the book that had Joss Whedon working on it.<\/p>\n What happened in practice was that the Astonishing minis didn’t do all that well in terms of sales. \u00a0The March issue of this book had estimated sales of around 24K in the North American direct market, which is the territory of X-Factor<\/em> and Wolverine: The Best There Is<\/em> – not exactly prestige numbers. \u00a0Astonishing Thor<\/em> doesn’t even clear 20K. \u00a0To judge from the solicitations, Marvel seem to have quietly given up on the imprint, and I can’t say I blame them.<\/p>\n But still, we have this – a six issue miniseries, strangely shipped on a bimonthly schedule which did it no real favours. \u00a0And while I’d struggle to describe it as a “jumping on point”, it is at least self-contained. \u00a0Jason Aaron seems to have taken the remit as an invitation to write something completely off the wall, freed from having to worry about broader continuity, at least as long as he doesn’t wreck the toys too badly.<\/p>\n Aaron’s clearly fond of working absurdity into his Wolverine stories, and a lot of the time it works well for him. \u00a0He’s got the knack of chucking in completely off the wall concepts, without derailing the story altogether. \u00a0He makes insanity part of the ground rules, instead of seeming like a parody.<\/p>\n Well, this series pushes that about as far as it can go. \u00a0There’s a plot – sort of – but this is a shamelessly demented book which goes out of its way to hammer home the fact that it doesn’t make sense. \u00a0It kicks off with Spider-Man and Wolverine stranded on prehistoric Earth, where they’ve apparently been stuck for several months. \u00a0A flashback fills us in that they ended up here after foiling a bank robbery by D-list villain the Orb, when something odd happened with some magic jewels. \u00a0From there on, the book keeps ratcheting up the nonsense. \u00a0The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs strikes. \u00a0The heroes are catapulted into the far future where humanity is dead, a robot version of Devil Dinosaur is stalking Manhattan, and Peter Parker is the last science teacher alive. \u00a0There’s a gun that fires the Phoenix Force. \u00a0There’s a ridiculous (and hilarious) twist on Ego the Living Planet. \u00a0There’s a crazy drug dealer called Czar with a time travel baseball bat who’s screwing with everyone Just Because. \u00a0There’s a brief trip into each other’s origin stories.<\/p>\n It’s mad, and it wants you to know that it’s mad. \u00a0It plays well to Adam Kubert’s strengths as an artist; he gets a lot of opportunities to go wild, but he also gets to do some world-building, and he’s able to shift gears when Aaron does want to give the characters a moment of lucidity. \u00a0A book like this needs an artist who’s willing to go big, and Kubert delivers that.<\/p>\n If anything, it’s a questionable move to bring out Mojo as the underlying villain, since he’s been playing this sort of role for so long that instead of making things weirder, he actually yanks the book back onto safe and familiar territory. \u00a0Spider-Man even says as much, so perhaps it’s a deliberate choice to try and give the main plot at least some<\/em> shape.<\/p>\n Except if the book was just intended to be lunacy, you’d expect it to build to a conventional climax. \u00a0And that’s not really what happens. \u00a0Issue #5 ends with Wolverine turning into Dark Phoenix, a typically over the top cliffhanger. \u00a0But issue #6 is pretty much a deliberate anticlimax. \u00a0We’re told that Spider-Man talked Wolverine down, but we don’t actually see much of it – and what we do get is only in flashback. \u00a0The rest of the issue turns out to be Peter and Logan stuck in the old west, along with a woman who Mojo threw in as an arbitrary love interest. \u00a0They’ve been there for three years. \u00a0They’re settling down and Peter declares that the point of the whole exercise must have been to bring him together with said love interest…<\/p>\n …and then the Time Variance Authority, of all people, show up to hit the cosmic reset button. \u00a0The end.<\/p>\n The last few pages are a montage of what various characters are up to, with Spider-Man delivering a depressed monologue to the effect that everything we’ve just read was meaningless.<\/p>\n Now that, by any standards, is an odd way to end a comic.<\/p>\n I think what Aaron was going for – given the last panel, with Wolverine looking at the palm of his hand in an echo of a “blood brothers” sequence from earlier in the issue – is that the two start off the series not talking to one another, and over time become friends, and Wolverine still remembers that. \u00a0The plot was insane and pointless; in Spider-Man’s mind, the only important thing was the girl who he didn’t get and who doesn’t remember him; but Wolverine remembers getting to like him more, and that’s enough<\/em>. \u00a0It’s a little oasis of meaning in a meaningless world, but it’s enough.<\/p>\n Does that work? \u00a0Well… Wolverine does<\/em> start off not talking to Spider-Man, and does<\/em> grow more friendly towards him over the course of the series. \u00a0That change is obscured by telling most of the story from the standpoint of Spider-Man, who was always willing to talk. \u00a0So yes, there is a change. \u00a0Does it feel like a particularly organic one? \u00a0Tricky. \u00a0Aaron’s had to introduce an artificial level of tension in the first place so that their relationship has somewhere to go over the course of the series, and that kind of undermines what he was going for. \u00a0Within the logic of these six issues, yes, there’s a change; but it’s really more of a restoration of the status quo.<\/p>\n Then again, the whole conceit here seems to be that it’s a very, very minor thing, but enough to give meaning to insanity. \u00a0If the change in their relationship was clearer, it wouldn’t work; at best, it would be schmaltzy. \u00a0It’s an ending that’s likely to infuriate some readers, but I think on balance Aaron pulls it off.<\/p>\n It should be said that the series seems to make two other attempts to give the story wider significance. \u00a0The epilogue seems to have Dog from Origin<\/em> showing up in the present day, presumably to cause trouble in Aaron’s Wolverine<\/em> series. \u00a0And then there’s the love interest, who is finally named in the last issue as Sara Bailey. \u00a0This could just be coincidence – and if it’s a deliberate reference, it’s one that Aaron can’t possibly have expected most readers to get – but Sara Bailey was the married name of Jean Grey’s sister. \u00a0Sara went missing in the early issues of X-Factor<\/em>, in a prominent subplot that was swiftly forgotten about, and she was never seen again. \u00a0(She was reported dead in 1994 during the Phalanx Covenant crossover, but we never saw a body. \u00a0The plot, if you can call it that, hasn’t been touched in 17 years.)<\/p>\n Is this supposed to be the same character? \u00a0Seems unlikely, given that she’s wearing a Star of David necklace, but on the other hand, it does make for an odd brother\/sister parallel with Wolverine and Jean. Perhaps it’s just Aaron’s way of teasing continuity wonks. Or maybe it’s just a really odd coincidence.<\/p>\n The overcrowded nature of Marvel continuity results in a lot of miniseries that can’t really do anything and don’t really matter. \u00a0With their remit of being standalone stories, the Astonishing imprint was always going to have trouble doing stories that “mattered”. \u00a0Rather cleverly, Aaron has turned that to his advantage by doing a story which doesn’t just Not Matter, but Doesn’t Matter on a cosmically pointless scale, openly challenging the reader to find some meaning in it anyway. \u00a0And, at the same time, it works simply on the level of being a lunatic parade of enjoyable nonsense. \u00a0Very eccentric, but by god, it commits to the idea and makes it work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Another Fine Mess” Writer: Jason Aaron Penciller: Adam Kubert Inkers: Mark Morales, Dexter Vines, Mark Roslan Colourist: Justin Ponsor Letterer: Rob Steen Editor: Nick Lowe You might have forgotten this, but the Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine miniseries which wrapped up last week was supposed to be part of a whole Astonishing imprint. \u00a0The idea – […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-856","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\/856","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=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":858,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}