Broken Frontier

A ray of hope from his son triggers a memory for Wolverine. One that involves a classic battle.

Wolverine: Origins was the title that launched after House of M. Or more important, after Logan had remembered everything. He was of course going to take the people who had done him wrong to task. However, the reader was left in the cold. Not only did we not know why he was after the characters he was after, in an odd choice, Daniel Way had chosen to take away the inner narration that has been a staple of every great Wolverine story. It was a frustrating choice that left the reader feeling cheated and lied to. To add insult to injury, the fan favorite artist Steve Dillon was not his best on the book. The pencils felt stiff and out of place.

Jump ahead to the present and we find a book where Wolverine has discovered that he has a son and is trying to save him from a mysterious figure that haunts the father’s own past. It is unknown how much the reader might now about Romulus if previous issues had been read, but from the scant information provided here and the wording of the recap, it is obvious that long time readers may not know much more than someone who came to this issue. When Daken, Logan’s son, shows a bit of hereto unseen restraint, the feral mutant decides that there may be a chance at saving the kid.

The rest of the issue, in a flashback that is ill explained in the narrative, the reader is transported to that historic first meeting between the Hulk and the guy who is the best at what he does. Seems this is all a retcon to show that Wolverine was placed with a certain mysterious group hinted at here. One would suppose that the nefarious plans of Romulus are to play out in following issues and the X-Men: Original Sin book.

The thing is that even though Way has wisely decided to abandon his experiment with a Wolverine who doesn’t explain himself to the reader, there is very little that is actually transparent here. Wolverine knows all about Romulus but isn’t informing the reader. There are scenes that make little sense as they are hints at what may happen later, but seem to be irrelevant to the story at hand. There are things in the flashback that seem interesting, but are just there as character moments and are left hanging. If this were a different writer, one would think there were seeds being left for future story lines, but Way has a habit of just trudging forward, leaving the reader skeptical of what future import any Easter eggs might have. It is possible that they are merely Easter eggs there for long time readers with encyclopedic knowledge of the character and his past. With the inner monologue, the book seems to be just a big a cheat, hinting at the mysterious past of the ubiquitous mutant, but not revealing anything.

That being said, the end of this issue does provide a glimpse of hope that while all this mysterious stuff may be left murky that the beginning of his time with the X-Men may have a broader canvas than previously thought. It is the matter in which such a retcon is handled that can make the book worth the effort. Especially given the fact that even this "prologue" to a new story arc seems to come in at the middle point of another story.

Deodato is probably a better fit for the book than Dillon. He is a superhero staple kind of artist. Used to illustrating the quick movements of the spandex clad set. There are some odd choices here and there. Wolverine seems to be a couple of different builds and sizes in the modern day stuff. All of the characters seem to be substantially different when angry, not just Bruce Banner. There is also a weird movement scene when Wolverine first meets Hulk that is a nice way of trying to show movement in progress but ultimately fails. Then there is the artist’s new style which involves breaking up pictures into separate panels to give it a kinetic feel. Here it is just a bit distracting and finds the reader trying to figure out if there is some subtle thing they are supposed to be noticing that seems not to be there.

Wolverine: Origins seems to be a better book then the last time this reader visited it, but it is still far from being added to my pull list.