Wolverine's SHOCKING ORIGIN and more

Pete Mortensen frowned when I bought Wolverine: Origins #1 yesterday. I hadn't been planning on it, especially since writer Daniel Way's four-issue run on The Incredible Hulk was so godawful, but sometimes, as they say, the spirit catches you.

"Do you really think that's gonna be good?" he asked.

"Not really."

"Then why are you picking it up?"

"Well, because I really, really liked Wolverine comics back in the day, and I'm just wondering if I still do."

I mean, it's not like I'm destitute, Pete. I can afford three bucks to check in on an old favorite, low expectations or high. Four jobs, buddy.

Plus, Steve Dillon buys a whole lot of slack, for any book he's on.

The book's not brilliant, and it's not at all what I was expecting, but I enjoyed it.

I'd imagined - from the cover, anyway - Logan back in the Canadian wilderness, wondering from town to town, wolf pack to wolverine tribe, fishing in icy streams with his bone claws, wavering between his civilized and feral selves, bringing raw animal justice wherever he may go and wrestling with his own torn psyche.

I mean, those are cool Wolverine stories, right? Didn't you always want to see more of those?

What we get here instead is Wolverine taking down the White House, looking for answers.

Which, itself, is also a pretty cool Wolverine story, even if it's not what I wanted going in. Way's script is an Ennis-lite take on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Dugan, who does some great gruff grumbling and answer-demanding, and on a mostly silent Wolverine going around being a badass. Dillon draws pissed off men better than probably anybody else on the scene today, and there are plenty of opportunities for him to draw them.

It's a really solid first issue; I'm not sure where they're going with the series, but as far as introducing the creators' take on the character, it's entertaining and tells a full, satisfying issue's worth of story.

*****

Heh heh heh... taking a quick look around Yelp yesterday, I discovered this review of Kimo's:

"Strange bar with even stranger bartenders and stranger still customers. I went to a private party held upstairs several months ago and that was cool, but their downstairs... Wow."

Monica L.

Ah, the places I go. She could well have been talking about me, I guess, but it's more fun to imagine which of the other nutjobs I work with was on shift that night...

*****

Only discovered artist and creator Mike Hawthorne's comment on my review of Hysteria: One Man Gang #1, where he links us all to a page from his upcoming The Goon back-up. It goes a little something like this:



*****

Arvid Nelson and Juan Ferreyra discuss the future of Rex Mundi - moving soon from Image to Dark Horse - with Brandon Thomas over at Silver Bullet. "No more scheduling problems," Nelson writes.

This is a recent favorite of mine, and I'm glad to see the book doing well.

*****

Ooh, pretty! CBR's got a big preview of Flight, Volume 3 up, including pages by Kazu Kabuishi and Becky Cloonan. Fuck yeah!





*****

Jason Latour begins releasing digital versions of the first four issues of The Expatriate on his website today, and while I'm getting pretty frustrated with B. Clay Moore books never coming out, I gotta say again how much I love Latour's work - it's work taking a look here for the aesthetic value alone.