Thursday, April 20, 2006

Weekly comic review

I guess I need to start picking up more titles as I only read the one book this week and yet again, it's not one of my regular titles. This week it was Wolverine Origins #1.

So fans of the original Origin series (a six issue limitted series with the Origin of Wolverine going back to his childhood) have been looking for a sequel for a while now and this new series is supposed to fill that need... somewhat. Instead of having a second limitted series start off where the first ended we get an ongoing series that starts off in the current day (in comic terms at least) where Logan has got all his memories back and I guess the story will jump from current day to different times in Logan's past. And instead of getting someone with the talent of Paul Jenkins to write it we have Daniel Way, a guy who Marvel keeps claiming is the next big thing yet everything he touches ranges from being a slight disappointment to a huge disappointment. And instead of getting cool art like Andy Kubert pencils painted over by Isanove we get Steve Dillon, who's not that bad an artist but it's a huge step down. Personally, I would have taken the limitted series over this, it would have been easier to hype up the limitted series as something special. This is just another Wolverine series but I guess if Spidey can have more than one book to himself so can Wolverine. Oh yeah, and for some reason Wolverine has decided to wear his old brown costume in this series while still in his new yellow and blue one in the other books. *sigh*

As for this issue, I just wasn't impressed. The art got the story across but was rather dull. Even the fight between Wolverine and the samurai robot thing came across as boring. And as for the story, lame. I absolutely hate the idea of presenting Wolverine's history in this way. They tried this, before Origin they kept giving snippits of his past with each writer saying "Wouldn't it be cool if Logan was married in Australia at some point", "wouldn't it be cool if Logan was married in Japan at some point", "wouldn't it be cool if Logan joined the circus".... and it became a huge mess. So what do they do? They wipe the slate clean only to do the same thing again. Learn from your mistakes, if you're going to present his history get it all straightened out and present it. Don't fly by the seat of your pants again. Way's dialog is amateurish, I really don't see what Marvel sees in this guy.

Okay, Logan was thought to be in the White House and a missile landed on the front lawn and the secret service either just happens to leave this one very high ranking woman who knows something about Logan's history behind? You would think she'd have had guards on her at all times to begin with, where did they go? And would her reaction really be to just stand there and wonder why everyone left her? So maybe they left her there on purpose and some higher authority is at work, but that doesn't make sense either. Why give Logan a chance to talk to her? And if you are going to kill her and had that power why make the big production? You'd be able to make her disappear quietly without dropping a missile on the front lawn of the white house. And I expect there will be no answers to these questions which is why I'll not be picking up issue #2 of this series. Maybe I'll pick up the TPB if I start to hear good things about the series but for now, Marvel is losing me on this one.

1 comment:

carlhume said...

No need to start collecting more comics until you finish the next issue of Divine Leap :)