Wolverine on the New York Times Best Seller List?

In a brilliant marketing move anticipating the release of the new Hugh Jackman movie that hits theaters at the end of this month, Marvel has collected Mark Millar's run on Wolverine into an Omnibus. This 576 page deluxe edition contains Wolverine 20-32, 66-72, and the Giant-Size Old Man Logan special–and it currently ranks fifth on the New York Times Best Sellers list of Hardcover Graphic Books.

The first half is the "Enemy of the State" story-line illustrated by Millar's Kick-Ass colleague John Romita Jr. which pits a rabid and brain-washed Wolverine against the entire Marvel Universe. It was a blood-thirsty romp, considered the ultimate Wolverine tale by fans. After a four-year absence from the title, Millar returned with a post-apocalyptic vision of tragic pathos that followed an elderly, retired, and pacifistic Wolverine, and it doesn’t get any better than this. Millar’s Civil War penciler Steve McNiven enhanced his usual adrenaline-rush theatrics with a rougher edge that captures archetypal Clint Eastwood at his wild-western best via Mad Max.

WOLVERINE: OLD MAN LOGAN (2010)
by Mark Millar & Steve McNiven
Issue #71, Cover Rough (gore cover)
Graphite on paper
Signed by Steve McNiven
8.5" x 11"
$2,000.00

Foreign orders please add an additional $20 for postage.

The page above is a cover study for issue #71; the rough, pencil outline of the cover that would eventually be published. An extreme close-up of the titular hero’s face (with bullet wounds exposing the adamantium skull beneath his flesh before his mutant healing factor can repair the damage) reveals the quiet rage that has long been building in Old Man Logan, who long ago vowed to sheath his mighty claws. It’s one of the goriest superhero comic covers ever, and it epitomizes the best of Millar and McNiven’s work together: tough, gritty and barely containing the violence that percolates just beneath the surface. The team that shattered the status quo with the mega-hit Civil War reunited to tell the greatest Wolverine tale of them all –a sort of Unforgiven meets Dark Knight. This page was included in the Pop Sequentialism exhibition and the accompanying published catalog.

Wolverine has been a fan favorite ever since his introduction in the Incredible Hulk back in 1974, but it was the Frank Miller mini-series by Uncanny X-Men scribe Chris Claremont that established the character as a genuine, marquee name. And ever since Frank Miller's back-to-back prestige format books Ronin and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, fanboys have been praying that he would do a retirement age tale of the most savage mutant in all of comicdom. As the years stretched on and Miller's output became more erratic and less satisfying, Mark Millar became the go-to guy for well-written machismo.

Mark Millar has been one of the key figures of 21st century comics. Following a series of well-received collaborations with fellow Scotsman Grant Morrison at DC, Millar went solo in 2000 replacing powerhouse writer Warren Ellis on Wildstorm’s hit series The Authority. His controversial, over-the-top approach to the already dynamic superhero action garnered a heap of awards in the UK and America, but caused a bit of friction with publisher DC and Warner Bros, who greatly censored his scripts in an era of post 9/11 sensitivity. This led to his departure from DC, and offers of lucrative work at Marvel. In 2001, following the success of Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man, he launched Ultimate X-Men. It was huge. The following year he rebooted The Avengers via the title The Ultimates, which proved more popular than the X-Men. It became something of a phenomenon and the brass at Marvel’s film division used it as the source template for no less than four films, including Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers. He’s also had two big-budget, big-screen blockbusters adapted from his creator-owned titles Wanted and Kick-Ass–with a Kick-Ass sequel set for release next month.

So congrats to Mark Millar, John Romita Jr., and Steve McNiven for their continued success with a classic tale from the modern age. And congrats also to Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner who nabbed the New York Times Best Seller list's top spot with their Before Watchmen: Minutemen / Silk Spectre split hardcover collection, which represents the best of an otherwise mixed endeavor in telling new stories with characters created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons*. Cooke's New Frontier treatment of the Watchmen's under-represented characters is classy, reverent and enriching, while Conner's decidedly female perspective was fresh, light and endearing.

*scroll back through this blog for my take on the entire Before Watchmen line.

For Mature Readers

The last two weeks saw the release of the third installments of the first two titles to kick-off the Before Watchmen line. Both comics were devised at the keyboard of writer Darwyn Cooke, who handled illustration as well on MINUTEMEN, while tasking Amanda Connor with art duties on SILK SPECTRE.

Three issues into it, these titles still represent the high watermark for the entire relaunch campaign, making it a shame that we are limited to six and four issues, respectively.

In MINUTEMEN #3, the story turns a bit nasty as The Comedian gets another chance to show his true colors–and is seemingly rewarded for it. The Silhouette's romantic life is revealed and the division between the real heroes and the publicity mongers widens. Cooke is once again dead-on in capturing a vintage feel that seems more inspired by the pulps than by the comics. His narrative is multidimensional and sophisticated without being verbose or pretentious. This is honest-to-goodness storytelling at its best.

With SILK SPECTRE #3, the summer of love comes to a violent conclusion with a clever cameo from The Comedian, but not before supplying copious amounts of hippy sex and nudity. If you'd have bet me that a teenaged Silk Spectre in the hands of Cooke & Conner would be the most salacious title in a Before Watchmen line that includes Brian Azzarello penned adventures of Rorschach and The Comedian, an Adam Hughes rendering of Dr. Manhattan, and Jae Lee's vision of Ozymandias, I'd have lost money. Of course if you'd told me that SILK SPECTRE was going to be one of the best books in that line, I'd have never believed that, either.

For some reason, I've not been paying attention to the number of issues granted each series, and it bums me out that we'll be getting only four issues of SILK SPECTRE and RORSCHACH, while being force-fed six issues of OZYMANDIAS. Maybe we'll get lucky and Len Wein will quit the reboots like he quit the original series, and Jae Lee will get a real writer worthy of his extraordinary talents. I'm glad that NITE OWL has been limited to four issues, as there has barely been enough of him in his own title to warrant much more, but judging from the superb DR. MANHATTAN I'll be missing a longer JMS script on that. I'd rather read six issues of RORSCACH than the COMEDIAN, but maybe those extra forty+ pages will give Azzarello and J.G. Jones the space they need to bring Eddie Blake's story back home. What started as cameo-laden mess has gotten more textured and I'm willing to stick it out.

Speaking of which, it seemed like fans of Grant Morrisson's FLEX MENTALLO would be tasked with tracking down the very expensive back issues of that seminal series forever, but sixteen years later and in a svelte $23 hardcover, DC finally reprinted it. My Amazon pre-order took an inexplicable month to arrive (as did my INVISIBLES omnibus), so I missed the rather unfriendly review that The Comics Journal posted back at the start of August. That didn't stop me from replying, however, so if you want to read my opinion of their review, you can click here.

FLEX was Morrison's first collaboration with artist Frank Quitely, and was the first book in the author's hypersigil trilogy that also includes THE INVISIBLES and THE FILTH. The impact of breaking the fourth wall begun with ANIMAL MAN was further twisted with this highly original take on what was in essence a proto-meme: the Charles Atlas ad. False history taken as fact mixed with other chaos magick elements like sigils and recontextualization make the Man of Muscle Mystery an important chapter in the annals of the greater comcidom.
The fact that it's so enjoyable to read, too, is a great bonus.

And if some of the salaciousness of SILK SPECTRE comes under fire, DC can always redirect that attention from their Before Watchmen line to their new National Comics line and this amazing LOOKER cover, penciled by Guillem March. Looker was created by Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo as a frequent ally of The Outsiders who went vampiric, became a talk show host, and apparently survived a satellite bombing by Talia al Ghul before re-entering DC continuity as a sanctioned agent of Batman Incorporated. This new version of Looker is a psionic vampire supermodel. The interior art by Mike S. Miller reminds me of the Luna Brothers and their work on ULTRA. The story is pure escapism, so as a one-shot, I think it succeeds. At the very least, it should get fanboys acquainted with Guillem's previous work on CATWOMAN or GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS. I, for one, am excited for more March.

If you want to pick up an original published drawing by this talented Spanish artist, he's just launched a crowd-funded sketchbook project that allows you to dictate the pose of your favorite scantily clad heroine.

For mature readers, indeed!

Silk Spectre Goes Psychedelic

Joshua Middleton variant cover

Darwyn Cooke & Amanda Conner's SILK SPECTRE #2 trips headlong into the id of the psychedelic 60s via a sinister plot right out of... Josie and the Pussycats?

While not as strong as the debut issue in relaying Laurie's inner monologue, there's a playful use of irony in which the visuals conflict with the narration (something that would have benefited OZYMANDIAS greatly). Conner's artwork is as expressive as ever and Cooke has abandoned the incidental song lyrics that served little purpose in issue number one, so this second volume of SILK SPECTRE stays the course as the plot gets a little more far out. In other words, it's a resounding sequential success for the Before Watchmen line, which has had little else to champion thus far.

The Pussycat reference is not hyperbole. In the heart of Haight-Ashbury, dark forces are manipulating the love generation via programmed narcotics that subliminally encourage rabid consumption. If that sounds familiar, it's because this is a similar conspiracy to the one addressed in the Josie and the Pussycats film from 2001. Cooke has expanded the theme of compromised-integrity-on-the-road-to-commercial-success into a veritable indictment of the consequence of selling out as a culture (as opposed to just going Hollywood). If the Hippies were compromised in their later incarnation as Yuppies, this narrative serves up a scathing social critique (albeit, a heavy-handed one) of misguided idealism. Whether or not this reflects the writer's feelings about either the Occupy Movement or the Tea Party is for him to say, but it's easy to draw parallels between the subjugation of the 60s Peaceniks and the recent overthrow of grassroots movements on the right and left of today's political landscape. Some might even conjecture that Cooke has served up a thinly veiled mea culpa for his own participation in DC's crass commercialization of the original WATCHMEN series. Whichever way you take it, his message is not delivered as a sermon, but as satire in the Swiftian vein. 

Amanda's colorful pencils appear in direct contrast to the dark motives at work behind the scenes at the Sand Doze nightclub, and this is a juxtaposition that works. Her classic nine-panel layout lends a certain sobriety to this tale of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll that never sinks to cheap exploitation even though Laurie is presented as a minor when she leaves town with her high-school boyfriend. In other words, all the sex and partial nudity presented in this comic is actually between two, underage characters, so while it isn't cheap, it is technically exploitation.

The artwork in the ongoing backup story, Curse of the Crimson Corsair, has been getting progressively better, but as such is getting further and further away from the look of a classic EC PIRACY comic. Joe Orlando's Tales of the Black Freighter in the original WATCHMEN was pitch perfect because Orlando had actually worked at EC. John Higgins' pencils are far more reminiscent of his 80s contemporaries Stan Woch, Steve Bissette and John Tottleben, which is fine, but anachronistic. The plot continues to meander, but in two-page installments, what else can be expected? In point of fact, we've never been told that this new swashbuckling, gore story is supposed to be from any specific era, so any criticism of how contemporary looking the art is or isn't may be moot. But the line is called Before Watchmen, so speculating that the backup story should match the era presented in the imprint in which it appears is valid. Of course, if a sub-genre of popular comic books based on EC's PIRACY had proven incredibly influential, it is possible that Ghastly Graham Ingels might have had the impact on pirate and horror comic illustrators that Jack Kirby had on superhero pencilers. Higgins' graphic and gruesome style might represent a natural evolution of the prevailing look of those earlier comics –just as Bernie Wrightson and Richard Corben were doing comics in the late 60s and early 70s that channeled Ingels' work from the 50s. Len Wein has done a good job of replicating the feel of his early work for Warren Publications like CREEPY and EERIE, so in a way, he is the man for the job today in much the same way that Orlando was the natural choice back in 1987. That may make an argument for authenticity, but it doesn't make much of a case for quality. Crimson Corsair neither enriches or detracts from the feature, which makes one question its necessity.