This week's picks!

Not a bad week for comics, you guys! I will admit to not being particularly thrilled for the comics that were coming out this week; it feels like it had been long enough since some of my most anticipated books (INFINITY, NEW AVENGERS, HAWKEYE, YOUNG AVENGERS, etc) had last come out that we'd have a fuller slate for this week but instead we got a pretty barebones week which nonetheless managed to pull out some really good books.

Captain America Living Legend 3

I've liked this series a great deal but this one still only barely managed to edge out MARVEL KNIGHTS: X-MEN and AVENGERS ARENA for one of the top spots this week. That's right, there were five books (at least) worthy of this list this week. Cap makes the cut here because I'm a sucker for book with strong character moments and choices and for books that thematically plant seeds then bring them to harvest successfully. In this case, as I've said so many times, Andy Diggle has made it clear that the background characters, while sometimes still being less important to the plot, are real characters, people who would probably go home to their families at night if they survived the day (they tend not to). The level of care Diggle puts into that has been great and it reminds me of Kelly Sue DeConnick's CAPTAIN MARVEL, which spread little lines of dialogue to establish more minor characters in Carol's life throughout the early books to be picked up on later, confirming that Carol had a real connection to these people and that we'd care if they were threatened. Diggle's done fine work with this mini and it's heading to an interesting place.

Deadpool 19

Another time DEADPOOL has made the cut after starting this series on my absolute most hated list. I don't take back what I said about early DEADPOOL issues in this volume but I'm extremely happy to see that it's soared over all of that. This arc has had a nice emotional bent to it for Deadpool which could probably have felt extremely heavy-handed and weak but managed to pretty regularly stay away from that. On top of it, Posehn and Duggan again brought out other major characters from the Marvel Universe and wrote them well. Even when I wasn't liking the series, I did like a lot of the characterizations for other Marvel staples. Shalvey and Bellaire really complete this book and make it something definitely worth picking up, a nicely written and characterized book with truly gorgeous and fitting art. There's a lot of really cool stuff in here both on the writing end and on the art end and it's a pretty complete book for it.

Savage Wolverine 11

Jock's writing debut with Marvel is a success as his SAVAGE WOLVERINE arc comes to a close and gives us a nice, complete-enough story to really sink our teeth into. I talked in my review about how it doesn't really clear up who specifically it is that brought Wolverine here, how they captured him, where this place is, and who is trying so desperately to recreate him, but, in truth, I'm not sure that any of that would have improved this book. It's a complete story and it works particularly well for a character like Wolverine, who is so used to not knowing huge swaths of his own history and who is also pretty used to people trying to experiment on him and recreate him. So we find Wolverine landing on this planet and just kind of making do with what he knows and what he can do. On top of all that and on top of the classic Wolverine violence and rage we see at the forefront here, we get to see the somewhat softer side of Wolverine, the side that almost instantly takes to Kouen and who understands what's going to happen to him and understands the decision Kouen makes to destroy his test-tube brothers before they can suffer through what he's going to suffer through even when Wolverine himself couldn't bring himself to do it. Gorgeous art, nice story, good characterization, can't ask for anything more. Oh, and I just realized I picked a book by Jock and a book by Andy Diggle in the same week. So exciting!


Coolest art decision

I absolutely love this little sequence. In DEADPOOL 19, Deadpool and Wolverine attempt to enter Butler's little fortress while Captain America goes to stand guard topside and cover them from the should-be-advancing North Korean army. We haven't seen Cap since the first page or so of the issue but then, about ten pages in, a clearly-nervous Butler bursts out asking where the North Korean army is and why it hasn't stopped Deadpool's team yet. Smash cut to Cap standing in front of the collected army (obviously not at full force but full enough), viewed from the binoculars of an NK soldier, standing perfectly upright, shield behind his back. Not only is it a pretty great Cap, looking very much like the soldier we know and love, he's standing, waiting for an entire army, with his shield behind his back. Awesome, you guys.

Wolverine 11, Savage Wolverine 11

Wolverine 11
Cornell (w) and Davis and Farmer (a) and Hollingsworth (c)

Wolverine is still mortal and his chances at becoming invincible again are seemingly dwindling, both as Fury and his team use the Host to try to attack the virus and as Wolverine's new series rounds the corner. Context clues, you guys. Anyway, he and Kitty are still trapped in the mall with human security guards and members of the Hand and Sabretooth's strange gang (including Lord Deathstrike and the Silver Samurai) still coming from all directions. To add insult to actual injury, apparently the weird acupuncture guy who showed up before also opened avenues of pain previously unknown to Wolverine. Wolvy has always felt pain but he's pretty used to it by now. Unfortunately, this guy amplified Wolverine's pain, making his fighting that much more reserved. The intense pain is making him more feral and, in his moments of clarity, he decides to set out by himself to lure the other villains to him and protect the people he's with. It's by himself that he's attacked by the Silver Samurai as the issue ends.

This mall thing feels like it's been going on for months and I know that it hasn't. One of my biggest issues with this series has been the pacing of the stories and of the individual issues, which have dragged tremendously. There's an excess of exposition, needed or not, and it's crushing the flow of this book. I will say, particularly on the heels of the new WOLVERINE book announcement, that I think that Alan Davis' art isn't necessarily the best fit for Cornell's somewhat slow book because it makes Davis' art feel slow and dramatic, but not in the good way where it actually creates drama. Overall, I think the book itself is just slow, which is too bad because I think there are some decent ideas in here and some neat little character pieces here and there (I continue to not need Wolverine's super secret group of smart friends or whatever they are. Happy he's been pretty reserved with using them). I'm hoping that the start of the next series will find a more dedicated book, one that's more sure of itself and that needs less explanation, then. I also hope that it sees a bit of an adrenaline boost from Stegman's art.

Savage Wolverine 11
Jock (w and a) and Loughridge (c)

Wolverine has found a lab on this mysterious planet that seems to answer some of his questions about exactly what sort of experiments were going on here. Like Wolverine's young friend, who he seems to have named Kouen, the lab is full of more children in stasis meant to be a new Wolverine, as it were. Almost immediately upon seeing these kids, Kouen enters and is even more immediately speared through the chest and lifted up off the ground by one of the creatures running the lab. Wolverine yells while the man soliloquies about how all of these children are imperfect copies which can be disposed of now that Wolverine himself is here. Meanwhile, Kouen learns that he can heal and bares his own claws and frees himself from the pike, giving Wolverine an opening to run over split the man in two. Wolverine and Kouen talk about the children in stasis and Wolverine admits that, since they're only kids but their skeleton is metal, their bodies likely won't hold up. Kouen produces a syringe that the scientists had said would cure the children, which Wolverine doubts. He tests it on himself and reveals that it's just poison, a powerful poison at that. Kouen uses the poison on the mainframe of the tubes to end the lives of the other children before they can suffer his pain. He and Wolverine escape the lab and wait for more scientists to show up, as the man warned they would, ready to attack.

Really beautiful and fairly haunting final issue for Jock here. There was a neat thing happening with this run where it was a little hard to kind of follow and keep up, leaving a sense of mystery and a sense of the ominous to it. It wouldn't have worked long-term, I don't think, but this was a fairly short arc and thus the mystery has the perfect amount of time to kind of sit and make you curious before really clearing up. Of course, not everything cleared up (who were these scientists? Where is Wolverine? How did they bring him here? etc.) but I think we don't need everything cleared up. This is a story, and an interesting one at that, and it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Unlike WOLVERINE above, this set of issues has moved remarkably well, allowing exposition to pave the way when it's needed but preferring to show and not tell, which also gave Jock, who is a tremendous artist, a chance to shine. I read this issue through once a couple days ago so that I would be ready to review it but I read it through again when the time came to actually review it. Typically I do that with books but oftentimes I'll end up just flipping through the book the second time to remind myself of things I wanted to say or little plot points here and there. This time I read the whole book through a couple more times to get the whole feel of the book. It's a really good story and I think a great show of Wolverine as a character. Solid stuff.

Wolverine and the X-Men 37, Savage Wolverine 10

Wolverine and the X-Men 37
Aaron (w) and Camuncoli and Currie (a) and Milla w/ Silva (c)

A big fight breaks out as Scott's Uncanny X-Men arrive on the scene of the future's Brotherhood trying to send the original X-Men back to the past. Or, to be more precise, one doesn't break out because Xorn goes into Scott's head and stalls him there while they escape. The Brotherhood bring the original X-Men to Cape Citadel, the site of their first fight with Magneto, and are pretty public about their appearance, drawing the other X-Men teams and SHIELD to the base. Amidst all the fighting, Maria Hill appears in her helicarrier and tells the mutants to stand down. Xorn, unbeknownst to the other mutants, takes control of the helicarrier's weapons and fires down on all the mutants, showing the original X-Men that humans hate and fear them.

Guys, this is still stupid. There's still too much winking about the future, there's still way, way too much banter in these fights, there are still too many fights, there's still too much craziness in the plot, there are still too many characters, and this is still stupid. I can't add too much more than that, honestly, because I can't say more than I've already said, both here and in all my other posts about Battle of the Atom. One more, though. One more.

Savage Wolverine 10
Jock (w and a) and Loughridge (c)

Wolverine is still on the foreign planet and still awfully confused about it. He gets some answers but mostly questions from the kid he's now traveling with but they do manage to find themselves squared off against a giant ship. Wolverine, the kid in tow, hurls himself at the ship and manages to grab hold, tossing the kid aboard before pulling himself in. It's apparently the kid the people in the ship are after and Wolverine ends up having to fight out through the henchmen loaded up on the ship. It's easy enough for him but still one of the bad guys manages to pull the kid into an escape pod and leave the ship. Wolverine follows them and, with a great deal of pain, brings the ship down, killing the pilot and rescuing the kid. Their crash-landing throws them under the surface of the planet, where they happen upon a lab of some sort with a whole bunch of stasis tubes.

Like last issue, this one's a little hard to judge as we still don't have a ton of information on the plot of the arc. It seems like most of it will be revealed in the arc's conclusion next issue. Still, this one's not bad for the intense Wolverine-ing we get as Wolvy does his best to keep the kid's spirits up and to fight his way viciously through whatever enemies he runs into. The art is pretty gorgeous (as are Loughridge's colors, the second time this week I've pointed that out) and Jock uses his time on the book to illustrate the violent side of Wolverine, the one that dives at would-be assailants with his claws out. Weirdly, it seems, Wolverine doesn't feel the same when he's able to be wounded, as in Cornell's book right now. This Wolverine feels pretty classic; brooding, more than a little lost, and just really, really violent. I'm not complaining.