Wolverine: Origins #14

May 6, 2007

Quick Rating: Below Average
Title: Swift and Terrible Part Four
Rating: Parental Advisory

Cyber versus Daken – who hasn’t been waiting for it?

Writer: Daniel Way
Art: Steve Dillon
Colors: Matt Milla
Letters: Cory Petit
Editor: Axel Alonso
Cover Art: Marko Djurdjevic
Publisher: Marvel Comics

As Wolverine lies around bleeding, Daken and Cyber face off. (Apparently these two have some history.) The fight is made a bit more complicated, however, when we learn something about Cyber’s new host that he, apparently, didn’t know.

Sadly, “complicated” is about the best thing I can say about this fight. Daken and Cyber are two singularly uninteresting characters. It’s even less engaging when Cyber decides to start whipping around Wolverine – a character who, considering that he regenerated an entire body from a single drop of blood not too long ago, probably should be recovering from his injuries a lot faster. The inconsistencies with this character are really enormous.

Steve Dillion isn’t even enough to make this book more palatable. He’s done fantastic work on books like Preacher and The Punisher, but neither of those books really relied on the sort of more traditional superhero action this book demands. His fight scenes don’t quite work, there’s something unrealistic about the composition that weakens pages that should be much better.

This book still doesn’t work. It’s a superfluous comic for a character whose overexposure has finally started to come under control.

Rating: 4/10

Wolverine: Origins #13

April 10, 2007

Quick Rating: Below Average
Title: Swift and Terrible Part Three
Rating: Parental Advisory

Logan finally faces his son.

Writer: Daniel Way
Art: Steve Dillon
Colors: Matt Milla
Letters: Cory Petit
Editor: Axel Alonso
Cover Art: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Marvel Comics

After setting up a ridiculously over-the-top distraction, Wolverine breaks into the vault that he believes holds Black Widow’s stash of C-Synth, the element which can be refined into the power-negating Carbonadium. What he didn’t know, though, is that Daken has set his sights on the same prize.

The centerpiece of this issue is the long-awaited and entirely lackluster battle between Wolverine and Daken. As he’s been doing since he introduced the character, Way tries really hard to convince the writer that Daken is a character to be reckoned with instead of just a plot device. He even goes so far as to add new claws in completely improbable areas (hey, it worked with X-23, I guess) to amp up the “cool factor.” The result is a story that feels like one of those tales that gets conceived in a comic shop, when someone says, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” Unfortunately, in the comic shop there’s usually someone to say, “No, it wouldn’t.”

Steve Dillon continues to do competent work on a misplaced book. His style is ok, it’s always good. It’s just completely wrong for this book.

There isn’t much else to say here – this series, frankly, is totally superfluous, and not even entertaining to make up for it. How long can they keep this up?

Rating: 4/10

Wolverine: Origins #12

March 13, 2007

Quick Rating: Dull
Title: Swift and Terrible Part Two
Rating: Parental Advisory

An old foe returns – and Wolverine’s son is out for blood.

Writer: Daniel Way
Art: Steve Dillon
Colors: Matt Milla
Letters: Cory Petit
Editor: Axel Alonso
Cover Art: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Marvel Comics

This issue promises to reveal “the secret of Wolverine’s son!” I’ll save you some trouble: the secret is that he’s boring and derivative. But then, if you’ve been reading for 12 issues, chances are you know that already.

Last issue, Daniel Way introduced a new mutant. This issue, he has an encounter with an old villain. Wolverine, meanwhile, continues trying to hunt down his son, who gets a new set of orders and replies in what I can only assume is the customary fashion.

I just don’t care about any of this, that’s the real problem here. I’m tired of characters – even villains — who kill people for no reason other than to demonstrate how heartless and tough they are. Even Wolverine himself suffers from a dose of that this issue (not killing someone, mind you, but he does other things that could easily have been accomplished without terrorizing innocent bystanders).

Steve Dillon’s art helps to elevate the story – he’s got a favorite style, but I still feel like he’s not really a perfect match for this book. I don’t care for him on a superhero comic – he seems a better fit for a fantasy or an adventure. It’s not that his art is bad here, it just feels… off.

Ultimately, this is a book that simply doesn’t matter to the reader, and when you get right down to it, that’s probably even worse than simply being bad.

Rating: 3/10

Wolverine: Origins #11

February 11, 2007

Quick Rating: Below Average
Title: Swift and Terrible
Rating: Parental Advisory

The son of Wolverine cuts loose, while Wolverine cuts himself free.

Writer: Daniel Way
Art: Steve Dillon
Colors: Avalon Studios
Letters: Randy Gentile
Editor: Axel Alonso
Cover Art: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Marvel Comics

As a captive Wolverine tries to carve his way out of SHIELD custody, his son returns to his life, where he’s carving out a name for himself. This book is told in three acts, each of which has at most a shoestring connection to the others, none of which is particularly interesting. Wolverine escaping SHIELD is okay for what it is, but what it is isn’t all that engaging.

Then there’s the segment with his son encountering a lover who evidently had some serious delusions about what kind of man she was getting involved with. For the life of me, I can’t figure out who the son is supposed to appeal to as a character. What was the pitch for this story? “Okay, X-23 seems to have gotten some fans. Let’s give Wolverine a son! With a mohawk! And let’s make hum entirely unlikable, even as a villain!” He’s simply a boring character.

Then we get introduced to a new character at the end that I simply don’t know what to make of. If he’s supposed to be a serious character, he’s too goofy. If he’s a parody, he’s not funny enough. Either way, the cliffhanger doesn’t bode well for the story.

On the other hand, it finally has become clear why Steve Dillon is doing the art on this book – because, judging by a few scenes, Daniel Way is trying to write Preacher. Some of the things that happen in the second and third act could have fallen right out of that comic, except that they would have fit the story better than they ever could in a Wolverine comic.

This continues to be a totally superfluous comic, and it’s not adding anything to an already overexposed character.

Rating: 4/10

Wolverine: Origins #9

December 26, 2006

Quick Rating: Meh
Title: Savior Part Four
Rating: Parental Advisory

Seeking the Carbonadium Synthesizer, Wolverine remembers his past with the Black Widow.

Writer: Daniel Way
Art: Steve Dillon
Colors: Dan Kemp
Letters: Randy Gentile
Editor: Axel Alonso
Cover Art: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Marvel

So let’s recap here – Wolverine has found out about some son he never knew he had who is currently being mind controlled by some obscure evil people. Omega Red, meanwhile, is dying, so he’s kidnapped Jubilee because somehow this will help him get his hands on a device that the Black Widow has. Wolverine wants the device too, because it can synthesize the mysterious element that can negate his son’s healing factor without killing him, the same element that’s killing Omega Red – Kryptoni… um… “Carbonadium.” Wolverine stops during all this, of course, to remember a time he trained the little girl who would grow up to become the Black Widow.

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

There only seem to be two purposes behind this series: show Wolverine in his brown and orange costume that everybody likes so much and work in as many continuity shoehorns as possible. The problem is, all of these continuity implants are only serving to make even more confusing a character whose past is responsible for half of the Tylenol purchased by Marvel readers annually, most of it pretty much out of the blue.

Elevating a frustrating storyline is Steve Dillon’s artwork, which is always good. Dillon’s strengths lie in characterization and storytelling. The only caveat, unfortunately, is that (Punisher notwithstanding), Dillon’s style isn’t particularly effective on a straight-up superhero story, so that brown costume that is in fact half the reason for this title’s existence doesn’t actually look that good.

This whole book feels superfluous to me.

Rating:5/10