5 out of 5

I remember when comics were fun.  Like, modern age fun, no grandpa stuff.  It wasn’t really super long ago, and it wasn’t kitsch or overly media savvy; some books – Marvel or DC we’re talking – were just a good time.  And maybe I’m wearing my me-tinted glasses, but my current mission in life being to just hole up, read this stuff, and review it, I’m going to give myself some “gol’ darnit you must be right!” credit, which I do expect to be able to cash in per my fancy in exchange for access to your poon*, any day or night.

*concept of ‘poon’ subject to change without notice

Anyhow, the time to which I refer is the early oughts, so, fine, getting close to twenty years ago, but still very much the modern age.  Comics were still committing shenanigans, of course – this is their default m.o. – but Marvel hadn’t yet upped their profile with Marvel Studios and DC hadn’t yet gone down their long rabbit hole of Identity Crisis / 52.  Plus, the internet was alive and well but some of us still had dumb phones; people still rented movies.  This isn’t me saying it was a “simpler” time, as it’s all relative, but the cultural tone was different.  And so comics were different.  And I liked a lot more Marvel and DC then than I do now.

Some guys have made a career of injecting simple enjoyment into complicated comic histories – like Mark Waid – but I feel like his approach always has that kitsch vibe.  Elsewhere, there’s a lot of ‘new school’ of fun that’s informed by media- and culture-savvy dudes (not surprisingly poached from web sources) like Ryan North or Chip Zdarsky.  That’s all fine and good, but today’s cool-speak is tomorrow’s dated.  That early 00s comics-and-proud fun is now tough to come back.

Maybe Tom Taylor has similar tastes to me, I dunno.  But he certainly writes comics like he does.  All-New Wolverine latches on to that very organic vibe and delivers (in this collection) six self-involved issues which are smart, exciting, entertaining as heck, modern – were dealing with a female Wolverine, so hot-button issues of gender are in there – look fantastic, and I think most importantly for maintaining that vibe, dont hinge on any kind of time bomb formula that’s sure to run out by issue X.  It’s simply Taylor’s voice for the book that makes it worthwhile, not some ‘All-New’ pitch or ‘Daredevil as a lawyer prodedural!’ setup that can only last one book before being rejiggered for super-villain match-ups.  We already have killer clones, Taskmaster, Doctor Strange, and Fantastic Journey rescue missions; seems pretty pure comic book to me.

And lest the gender topic send you running to the Hills of Discombobulation, your body and mind wrent asunder trying to combine such topic-ness with the care-free style I’m highlighting, it’s again down to Taylor: Laura Kinney, X-23, clone of Logan and having taken over the Wolverine mantle in lieu of The Hairy One’s (at the time of the series) death, is – in case mentions of it before slipped by you – female.  In this arc, Laura discovers that further clones were created based on her, that several have escaped, and that they seek revenge on their once-captors for treating them like cattle.  These were all also females, kept in cages by an evil male scientist and his evil male enforcer, General Mooney.  Wolverine – X-23 – decides to help the escapees, but makes them pledge not to kill; Laura’s own struggle with differentiating herself from her rage-fueled father informs this decision, as much as just wanting to not be the killer she was designed to be.  Did you just eye-roll yourself off your bed, typing OMG I GET IT WOMEN ARE HEROES AND MEN ARE MONSTERS into the post for your own, less-insightful-than-mine review site?   Except what I just wrote above is a purposefully slanted take.  You’re welcome to interpret the story that way, and indeed, it might be in the intention.  But while I was turning pages, all I was considering was that this character, gender-aside, had in-story logical reasons for acting the way she did, and the clone program functioned and existed within the believable constraints of comic morality / reality, making the scientist and captor’s actions similarly logical.  Laura makes a joke about internet posters not approving of her taking the title but it’s not a direct jab at my dick so much as a yuk about Long Live Logan; Laura has a boyfriend whose sole book purpose is to cart her around and worry, and yet there’s no direct call-out winking at his marginalization – he actually comes across as a full character.  All of the book’s narrative decisions made perfect sense within the context of the book.  Again, this is that ‘pure’ feeling.  And man, is it good to read it again.

Helping this out is one of my favorite artists, David Lopez.  Lopez’s work grabbed my eye – fittingly – during the same era I’m praising, whilst on Peter David’s Fallen Angel.  There’s a slight 90s-Disney influence to his character models, and some Quitely in the wide female faces, but the style is otherwise uniquely Looez, especially notable in his streamlined panels, which give full impressions of motion, emotion and setting with amazing commodity.  The art is also credited to David Navarrot; its unclear if that means finishes or inks, but either way, his contribution fully complements Lopez’s work, and Nathan Fairbairn’s subtly blended color flats are great for blending Wolvie’s garish blue-and-yellows into the grounded environments.

The 17.99 trade is pretty standard Marvel SC quality, floppy but solid, with a good spine gutter so you don’t have to crack the thing open to see the whole page, and though extras are limited to variant covers, there were a ton, so its a nice bonus all the same.  But I find that when the material is this good, I’m not so picky about the extras.