The Incomplete Wolverine – 2006
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
2004 |2005
We left off in the aftermath of House of M. Almost all mutants have been depowered by the Scarlet Witch – though by a happy coincidence, almost all the main characters happen to be exceptions, including Wolverine. On top of that, Wolverine has regained all of his memories. That took us through to the “Origins and Endings” arc from Wolverine vol 3 #36-40, where Daniel Way kicked off his Wolverine: Origins storyline. That arc already took us through to March 2006, but it continues into Origins itself. And that arc runs for a good long while before allowing a break in the action. So…
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #1-5
“Born in Blood”
by Daniel Way, Steve Dillon & Dan Kemp
April to August 2006
Origins is Wolverine’s second ongoing monthly series, running for 50 issues and attempting to tie his back story into a coherent whole. On that score, it was a failure. It ties everything into a byzantine conspiracy arc involving Romulus, which has barely been mentioned since, presumably because nobody finds Romulus very inspiring. But it would be unfair to say that nothing in Origins matters. It also introduced Daken, and he’s still appearing prominently today.
In the opening arc, Wolverine starts hunting down people who were part of the conspiracy that exploited him in the past. He feels that he’s done terrible things in his life, that it’s no excuse that he wasn’t in control of his mind, and that he’s beyond redemption – but that’s not going to stop him from taking revenge. We establish that Logan started as a thug for the conspiracy, but went on to become a handler who treated other people the same way in a cycle of abuse. One of his victims, Nuke, resurfaces to lure Wolverine out. Wolverine defeats Nuke, but Captain America shows up to stop Wolverine from killing him. Wolverine beats up Cap, then gives the Muramasa Blade (which he retrieved in the previous arc) to the X-Men for safe keeping. Finally, he heads off in search of his long lost son Daken, believing that the conspirators are planning to engineer a fight between them.
This really isn’t good. Steve Dillon, a legendary artist, was appallingly miscast on this book; the script simply doesn’t have the sort of humour and subtlety that he’s good at bringing out, and he’s left drawing fight scenes that don’t play to his strengths. Frankly, much of this arc feels like a bunch of people wandering around a field. Perversely, the book is actually improved when, some way down the line, Dillon’s successors just draw the damn thing to look as cool as possible.
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #6-10
“Savior”
by Daniel Way, Steve Dillon & Dan Kemp
September 2006 to January 2007
Wolverine decides that carbonadium might be the key to saving Daken from the conspiracy’s control (presumably because it eventually turns out to have played a part in clearing his own mind). So he decides to retrieve the carbonadium synthesizer (“C-synth”) that he gave Maverick years ago. He tracks Maverick down at a makeshift clinic for depowered mutants, run by Jubilee. By apparent coincidence, Omega Red also shows up looking for the C-synth, which he needs to control his powers. He takes Jubilee hostage, reminding Wolverine of his failures as a father figure. Maverick no longer has the C-synth, but directs Wolverine to Berlin. There, Wolverine teams up with the Black Widow (presented as an ersatz daughter, with flashbacks to their past). She tells him that the real C-synth is now in a safety deposit box in Brussels. They use a fake C-synth to lure out Omega Red and rescue Jubilee. She’s badly injured, and Wolverine surrenders to SHIELD in order to get her treated. Daken then makes his debut by breaking Logan out, slashing him, and mocking him as weak. He promises that they’ll meet again. This is better than the first arc, in that the espionage plots work well enough, but the emotional beats still don’t land.
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #11-15
“Swift & Terrible”
by Daniel Way, Steve Dillon & Matt Milla
February to June 2007
Wolverine concludes that Daken blames him for the death of his mother and wants revenge, in a parallel of his own quest for revenge on the conspiracy. In Brussels, the two fight again. Daken insists that Wolverine is just his biological father, and derides him for wearing a mask. At this point, Daken is also obsessed with retaining his self-control, so that he can prove himself better than his father. Daken defeats Wolverine, only for Cyber to show up. (Cyber returned from the dead by possessing the body of super-strong Milo Gunderson, and got the Tinkerer to attach his adamantium plating to the new body.) Cyber is another former agent of the conspiracy, also out for revenge, and he wants Daken to give up the location of his employer. Wolverine offers to team with Daken against Cyber, but Daken just leaves. Cyber’s new heart gives out, and Wolverine grudgingly takes him to an underworld scientist for treatment. Cyber gives up various information about the conspiracy, including the implication that James Hudson was part of it. The scientist fits Cyber with a carbonadium pacemaker, unaware that this will be lethally radioactive; Wolverine disposes of the C-synth by throwing it into a river.
This is the point where Origins stops being about a generic spy conspiracy, and starts building up the role of Romulus – who, at the same time, is being introduced over in Wolverine. It’s certainly possible that Origins gets derailed by the need to incorporate the ludicrous Romulus into Wolverine’s history somewhere. But more of that in due course.
After 15 issues, Origins finally has a break in the action – so we won’t be returning to it for quite some time.
THE PULSE #12-13
“Fear, parts 2-3”
by Brian Michael Bendis, Michael Gaydos & Matt Hollingsworth
November 2005 to January 2006
The Avengers rush Jessica Jones to Dr Strange in time for the birth of Danielle Cage.
MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2005 (Avengers story)
“Yes, Virginia, There is a Santron”
by Jeff Parker, Reilly Brown, Pat Davidson, Dave Lanphear & Christina Strain
November 2005
Mad scientist Virgie Hanlon rebuilds Ultron as Santa Claus, and it attacks the Avengers Christmas Party. The Avengers defeat it, then capture Virgie. If you’ve ever wanted a panel of Wolverine brutally attacking Santa Claus, this comic has you covered. Among the otherwise familiar party guests is rookie hero Gravity (Greg Willis).
THE OTHER – EVOLVE OR DIE
Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 #525 by Peter David, Mike Deodato Jr, Joe Pimental & Matt Milla
Marvel Knights Spider-Man #20 by Reginald Hudlin, Pat Lee & Dream Engine
Marvel Knights Spider-Man #21 by J Michael Straczynski, Pat Lee & Dream Engine
Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 #527 by J Michael Straczynski, Mike Deodato Jr, Joe Pimental & Matt Milla
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man vol 1 #4 by Peter David, Mike Wieringo, Karl Kesel & Paul Mounts
Marvel Knights Spider-Man #22 by Reginald Hudlin, Pat Lee & Dream Engine
October 2005 to January 2006
A sprawling Spider-Man event crossover, in which the Avengers appear because Spider-Man is living with them at the time. It’s a 12-part story, but Wolverine is only in half of the issues, and most of those are cameos. He has a chat about Spider-Man’s obsessive pursuit of Morlun, and (in a very Straczynski take on the character) deliberately winds up Mary Jane to distract her from her concern for Peter. That’s about it, really. We’ll have a lot of this sort of thing now that Wolverine is in the Avengers.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #470-471
“Wand’ring Star, parts 2 and 3”
by Chris Claremont, Billy Tan, Jon Sibal & Brian Haberlin
March 2006
In a sub-plot, Storm and Wolverine investigate Sudanese guerrillas who are enslaving depowered mutants. This leads into…
BLACK PANTHER vol 4 #14
“Bride of the Panther, part 1”
by Reginald Hudlin, Scot Eaton & Klaus Janson
March 2006
After Storm and Wolverine defeat the slavers, the Black Panther shows up to propose to Storm. There are editorial crossed wires here, since the plot details don’t match up with Claremont’s story. At any rate, Wolverine seems to be here in order to tacitly bury the romance with Storm that Claremont had been trying to set up. In a sense, he’s symbolically giving her away at the altar on behalf of the X-books (though we won’t reach the actual marriage for a bit).
WOLVERINE vol 3 #41
“The Package”
by Stuart Moore & CP Smith
April 2006
At the Black Panther’s request, Wolverine rescues the baby daughter of assassinated President Mayamba from the wartorn African nation of Zwartheid. She symbolises the country’s hope of a peaceful future. This is a curious issue, since it’s a double-sized fill-in; the fact that it can slot neatly after Black Panther #14 appears to be just a coincidence. It’s mainly a showcase for Smith’s wonderful art, and a monologue for Wolverine, with the other characters being just generics.
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN vol 1 #6
“Masks, part 1”
by Peter David, Roger Cruz, Oclair Albrt, Victor Olazaba & Chris Sotomayor
March 2006
Another cameo. Wolverine and Mary Jane watch on TV as Spider-Man fights El Muerto (Juan-Carlos Sanchez).
A flashback in Bullseye: Perfect Game #2 has been placed here for some reason – it’s just a single panel cameo of the Avengers watching a baseball game.
BLACK PANTHER vol 4 #16
“Bride of the Panther, part 3”
by Reginald Hudlin, Scot Eaton, Klaus Janson & Dean White
May 2006
The X-Men react to the announcement of Storm’s engagement to the Black Panther. Mostly, they’re disappointed to be losing her as a teammate. Kitty isn’t much impressed by that reaction; Wolverine insists that “I gave her my blessing, for what it’s worth.”
X-MEN vol 2 #189 (Masked Marvel story)
by Karl Kesel, David Hahn & Pete Pantazis
September 2006
Hesitant rookie superhero the Masked Marvel (Adam Austin) comes to Avengers Tower hoping to speak to Spider-Man. He gets Wolverine instead, who advises him that the superhero life isn’t for everyone, but that he won’t know what he can do until he tries. This was one of two “Masked Marvel” back-up strips which appeared in Marvel books in 2006. For some reason, it’s missing from the Marvel Unlimited edition of X-Men #189, but can be found instead under Masked Marvel Digital Comic #2.
X-MEN vol 2 #186
“The Blood of Apocalypse, part 5”
by Peter Milligan, Salvador Larroca & Jason Keith
May 2006
Wolverine appears briefly with the Avengers (sic), dealing with Apocalypse’s attack on New York. He gets to see Polaris as Pestilence, but otherwise has no involvement in the main plot.
X-MEN / RUNAWAYS
One-shot
by Brian K Vaughan & Skottie Young
May 2006
This was a Free Comic Book Day giveaway. The Runaways – Molly Hayes, Victor Mancha, Nico Minoru, Chase Stein and Gertrude Yorke – are hunting for Gertrude’s missing dinosaur Old Lace when the X-Men show up to recruit Molly, as one of the world’s few remaining fully-powered mutants. The Runaways want nothing to do with the X-Men who are, after all, a bunch of losers. The X-Men are absolute Silver Age dicks in this story, and eventually Emma Frost (!) has to tell them to leave Molly alone.
MARVEL TEAM-UP vol 3 #21
“Freedom Ring, part 2 of 5”
by Robert Kirkman, Andy Kuhn & Marte Gracia
June 2006
The X-Men defeat the Abomination, mainly off panel.
X-MEN: DEADLY GENESIS
6-issue miniseries
by Ed Brubaker, Trevor Hairsine, Kris Justice & Val Staples
November 2005 to April 2006
Cyclops’s previously unknown brother Vulcan (Gabriel Summers) returns, and the X-Men learn that he was part of a secret team of X-Men who died on Krakoa – including Sway (Suzanne Chan), Petra and Darwin (Armando Munoz). Professor X turns out to have wiped this from memory and tricked the X-Men into thinking that Krakoa was a sentient being rather than just a monster. This retcon no longer makes sense in the Krakoan era, but as of yet, nobody has tried to explain it away. Wolverine’s around as part of the group, but he doesn’t do much.
A week or so later, Wolverine is among the mourners at the funerals of Sway, Banshee and Petra.
NEW AVENGERS vol 1 #17-20
“The Collective”
by Brian Michael Bendis, Mike Deodato Jr, Joe Pimentel & Dave Stewart
March to June 2006
The Avengers are called in by S.H.I.E.L.D. director Maria Hill to fight the Collective (Michael Pointer), a massively powerful new villain who is empowered by the energies of many of the depowered mutants, and has been driven mad as a result. Alpha Flight seemingly get killed along the way, but Wolverine makes very little contribution beyond yelling a bit once Pointer has been brought back to his senses. It’s a feeble story anyway; Pointer is a non-character.
NEW AVENGERS ANNUAL #1
by Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel, seven inkers and three colourists
April 2006
The Avengers defeat the new Adaptoid (Yelena Belova, probably the Skrull imposter version), then attend the wedding of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. Once again, Wolverine’s contribution is minimal.
MARVEL TEAM-UP vol 3 #23-25
“Freedom Ring, parts 4-5” / “Titannus Lives!, part 2”
by Robert Kirkman, Roger Cruz, Andy Kuhn, Victor Olazaba & Marte Gracia
August & September 2006
Wolverine and Spider-Man fight Iron Maniac (an alternate Tony Stark), get knocked out, and show up at the finale just in time to see the other Avengers dealing with the corpse of Freedom Ring (Curtis Doyle) in the aftermath of Iron Maniac’s defeat. Then, Wolverine is among an array of random heroes who help the Crusader (Z’Reg) to defeat Titannus. (“Titannus Lives!, part 1” was the back-up strip in issue #24, if you’re wondering how this numbering works.) Not remotely important to Wolverine, but “Iron Maniac” is a great name, isn’t it?
THING vol 2 #8
“Last Hand”
by Dan Slott, Kieron Dwyer & Laura Villari
July 2006
Wolverine has a one-panel cameo as one of many, many superheroes attending Ben Grimm’s belated bar mitzvah. He meets Wundarr the Aquarian there. Later, he shows up as one of the guests at Ben’s superhero poker tournament. This is his first on-panel meeting with Alicia Masters, Goliath (Bill Foster), Squirrel Girl (Doreen Green) with her squirrel Tippy-Toe, and Great Lakes Avengers members Big Bertha (Ashley Crawford), Mr Immortal (Craig Hollis) and Flatman (Val Ventura), who somehow wins the tournament. New Avengers will eventually retcon in an unseen history between Wolverine and Squirrel Girl, which may or may not come before this point.
IRON MAN vol 4 #8 and #10-12
“Execute Program, parts 2 & 4-6”
by Daniel Knauf, Charles Knauf, Patrick Zircher, Scott Hanna & Antonio Fabela
May to September 2006
In issue #8, Wolverine yells at Iron Man for showing up late to a fight (which is due to blackouts that Iron Man doesn’t realise he’s having). In issue #11, the Avengers serve as bodyguards during the speech of Karim Mahwash Najeeb, “director of the Muslim Peace Authority”; they protect him from Iron Man, who is being controlled by the son of Ho Yinsen. Aside from that, it’s just cameos with the Avengers.
WOLVERINE & THE BLACK CAT: CLAWS
3-issue miniseries
by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Joe Linsner & Jason Keith
August to October 2006
A blatantly fake Kraven the Hunter – who turns out to be one of Arcade’s robots – kidnaps Wolverine and Black Cat to a desert island and challenges them to reach a boat before a volcano erupts. Amid much odd-couple squabbling and sexual tension, they escape, capture Arcade and his sidekick White Rabbit (Lorina Dodson), and dump them in the Savage Land. It’s meant to be funny, and it’s nowhere near as cute as it thinks it is. Issue #3 has a bit where Wolverine throws Black Cat far enough into the sky for her to catch a flying helicopter, which is, er, interesting.
Anyway, at the end of that they go for a meal together, which leads directly into…
WOLVERINE & THE BLACK CAT: CLAWS II
3-issue miniseries
by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Joe Linsner, Dan Brown & Nick Filardi
July to September 2011
Yes, a sequel five years later that picks up directly from the original. Arcade and White Rabbit escape the Savage Land almost immediately by stealing a teleporter from Civa. They trick Black Cat into grabbing the device; it transports her and Wolverine to an alternate timeline where they meet Killraven (Jonathan Killraven), his allies M’Shulla, Carmilla, Mint Julep and Volcana Ash, and the invading alien Martians. They get back home by rescuing Civa from a different point in her personal timeline, and create a time loop so that the whole story gets cancelled out and Arcade and White Rabbit wind up back in the Savage Land. You either find this stuff charmingly freewheeling or irritatingly pointless, and you can guess which camp I’m in.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #42-47
“Vendetta”
by Mark Guggenheim, Humberto Ramos, Carlos Cuevas & Edgar Delgado
May to October 2006
This is basically the first half of the Guggenheim/Ramos run, which has a whole other story arc spliced into the middle. It’s also a tie-in to Civil War, though it doesn’t really need to be. There’s an awful lot going on in this arc, so buckle up.
When the Crusader (Artie Blackwood) and his men hijack a Federal Treasury plane, Wolverine fights them. The plane crashes, and Wolverine is seemingly the sole survivor. This is set-up for the next arc – a flashback in issue #48 expands on this scene, showing Logan’s experiences while dead, and another encounter with Lazaer. Wolverine finally comes round just in time to learn about the New Warriors’ catastrophic battle with Nitro in Stamford, Connecticut (from Civil War #1). He joins the other Avengers and X-Men in the rescue effort.
Days later, the heroes gather at Avengers Tower to discuss the situation. Wolverine is angry that nobody is pursuing Nitro, and compares the Superhero Registration Act to Nazism – which is so over the top that even Luke Cage doesn’t agree. That said, Wolverine does follow it up by arguing that the same government has already parked Sentinels on his lawn, which he sees as a hate crime. Specifically, he compares it to cross-burning, which is questionable territory, but at least makes sense in-universe. Despite all this, Wolverine isn’t a fugitive in Civil War, because the X-Men are already in a state of uneasy co-operation with O*N*E, so they’re treated as having already registered.
Iron Man tries to persuade Wolverine to leave Nitro to the authorities, but Wolverine points out that Iron Man hired him for the Avengers in the first place so that he could kill people when it was needed. Eventually they compromise on having Wolverine tag along with the S.H.I.E.L.D. task force. Naturally, Nitro blows himself up and kills everyone. Again, a flashback in issue #48 expands on this – he has a vision of Jean Grey, and then confronts Lazaer again. The art goes ludicrously overboard here, showing Wolverine regenerating from an adamantium skeleton, which I suspect may have been more than Guggenheim actually intended. Wolverine recovers remarkably quickly in the circumstances, and catches up with Nitro (whose explosions don’t affect things right next to him, and therefore can’t use his powers to defend himself once Wolverine has caught him).
Wolverine really just wants to torture Nitro, who tries to buy him off: he explains that he was powered up with Mutant Growth Hormone as part of a wider conspiracy, and offers information in exchange for his life. Wolverine agrees, but before Nitro can give up the name, he’s captured by Atlantean agents Janus, Politus and Aamir, who have been sent to avenge the death of Namorita (in Civil War #1). Wolverine follows them to Atlantis (using armour borrowed from Iron Man) only to find that the Atlanteans have already extracted the information themselves: Nitro was working with Walter Declun, the new owner-CEO of Damage Control. Nitro escapes and kills Politus; Wolverine quickly recaptures him, but decides to honour his previous bargain and let Nitro live.
Wolverine then goes after Declun, who has been engineering disasters for Damage Control to repair. Previous owner Anne-Marie Hoag, who is still company President, is shocked to learn this. Wolverine starts a vendetta against Damage Control, to the increasing irritation of Scott and Emma, who really, really want to keep out of all non-mutant affairs right now. Maria Hill also warns Wolverine away from Declun, who is a friend of the President. But Wolverine escapes the SHIELD Helicarrier and – according to another flashback in issue #48 – gets himself killed in the process, having yet another fight with Lazaer. A flashback in issue #59 is also placed here, presumably one of the generic images of Wolverine dying. Finally, Wolverine confronts Declun in person and publicly kills him in front of a crowd onlookers. Later, he tells Registration Act campaigner Miriam Sharp that he doesn’t regret doing so at all.
This is a much better arc than I remember, if you’re willing to overlook the ridiculous excesses of the death scenes and the fact that there’s a very protracted fight in the middle. It really is trying to do something with the question of how far Wolverine is a man of principle and how far he’s just a very angry man who’s able to rationalise his behaviour by mostly fighting baddies. The Civil War tie-in gets decidedly tenuous by the end, but that’s no bad thing.
A bunch of other appearances fit in here:
- The rescue effort at Stamford, and the meeting at Avengers Tower, also appear in Civil War #1.
- Somewhere before he sets off after Nitro, Wolverine attends the Black Panther’s stag night (!) in Black Panther vol 4 #17 (and meets T’Shan).
- Wolverine can be seen reacting to Spider-Man’s unmasking press conference in a cameo in Civil War #2 and (if you’re feeling generous) in a symbolic montage in Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 #533.
- Wolverine’s escape from the Helicarrier is also shown in flashback in Blade vol 5 #5.
X-FACTOR vol 3 #9
by Peter David, Dennis Calero & Jose Villarrubia
June 2006
Another Civil War tie-in. The X-Men show up in Mutant Town to try and persuade X-Factor Investigations (Madrox, Rictor, Siryn, Wolfsbane and M) to keep quiet about the Mutant Registration Act and the true cause of M-Day. X-Factor tell them to get lost.
NEW X-MEN vol 2 #26
“Crusade, part 3”
by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco
May 2006
Just a cameo. Wolverine tries to restrain Elixir when he flies into a rage after Wallflower is shot dead. The X-Men head off to investigate, but only so that the plot can get them out of the way.
NEW X-MEN vol 2 #29
“Nimrod, part 2 of 4”
by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, Duncan Rouleau & Brian Reber
August 2006
Prodigy tells the X-Men about his theory that Reverend Stryker has got information about the future from Nimrod, but Cyclops doesn’t believe him. Then the X-Men head off for Storm’s wedding.
BLACK PANTHER vol 4 #18
“Bride of the Panther, part 5”
by Reginald Hudlin, Scot Eaton, Klaus Janson, Dean White & Kaare Andrews
July 2006
The X-Men attend the wedding of Storm and the Black Panther – a tense affair, since many of the guests are superheroes on opposite sides of the Civil War. As neutrals, the X-Men just act like regular guests. During the reception, Luke Cage spots Isaiah Bradley and tells Wolverine about him; Wolverine presumably also sees the Dora Milaje and Shuri at this event, and he’s bound to spot the Man-Ape (M’Baku) having a fight with Spider-Man.
This may be the only Marvel comic to contain a “special thanks” credit for Procter & Gamble and CBS Daytime, both of whom are on a list of people who somehow contributed to “the design of Storm’s wedding gown”.
The X-Men’s plane can be seen returning from Wakanda in New X-Men vol 2 #31; presumably Wolverine is aboard, though we don’t see him.
GIANT-SIZE WOLVERINE #1
One-shot
by David Lapham, David Aja & Jose Villarrubia
October 2006
After fighting HYDRA, a badly burned Logan falls out of the sky into the garden of young Leelee Buchman, who nurses him back to health. Logan picks up on her bruising and draw the obvious conclusion, but it turns out that her father is actually possessed by a giant tumour monster which used to be her mother. When HYDRA show up looking for Wolverine, the creature defends its home before escaping into a water main, but Leelee is convinced the monster will die without her. A weird but intriguing little horror story.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #48
“Vendetta – Epilogue”
by Marc Guggenheim, Humberto Ramos, Carlos Cuevas & Edgar Delgado
November 2006
Wolverine is now sleeping with Amir the Atlantean spy – despite the fact that her husband has only just been killed by Nitro, which makes it seem wholly unnecessary. This issue largely consists of Logan telling her about his recent string of resurrections; the flashbacks were already covered in the main “Vendetta” entry above.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #49
“Better to Give…”
by Rob Williams, Laurence Campbell, Kris Justice & Paul Mounts
December 2006
Double-sized Christmas fill-in story. Irritating heiress Toulouse Lexington is kidnapped by Black Christmess, a group of villains posing as Santa and his elves. They claim to be religious extremists and threaten to blow up Lacy’s department store to send a message about the commercialisation of Christmas, but in fact they just want to hold her to ransom and prove that normal crooks can still pull off such an audacious stunt in Marvel New York. Most of her bodyguards abandon her, but she’s rescued by Wolverine and the one guard who took his job seriously. The bad guys set off their bomb but Wolverine takes the blast. Surprisingly good.
NEW X-MEN vol 2 #32
“Whatever Happened to Wither?”
by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, Mike Norton, Dave Meikis & Brian Reber
November 2006
A cameo as a mourner at Icarus’s funeral.
X-MEN vol 2 #189-191 and #193
“Supernovas, parts 2-4 and 6”
by Mike Carey, Chris Bachalo, Clay Henry, Tim Townsend, Mark Morales, Antonio Fabela & Christina Strain
July to November 2006
This is the debut of the Children of the Vault. After they wipe out the city of Nogales, Sabretooth shows up at the Mansion looking for sanctuary. Rogue takes him in, and when Wolverine finds out, he naturally has a good yell at her. Karima Shapandar is also brought to the Mansion after being found partly dismantled. Wolverine isn’t a main character in this title, but he does get to help deal with Serafina when she infiltrates the Mansion, and he’s among the force that’s mobilised at the end to deal with the Children’s attack; he’ll encounter Sangre, Cadena, Aguja, Fuego and Perro here. The Children are defeated thanks to the efforts of Rogue’s team.
[…] But more on Origins next time, when that series gets underway, and Marc Guggenheim takes over the m… […]
Why does Deadly Genesis not fit anymore? What am I missing?
Next time: “the start of New Avengers”?
Great reading as always, a herculean work.
@Jaymes : presumably the issue is Krakoa being portrayed as “non-sentient”.
(Of course, the retcon had already been put to bed with Wolverine & the X-Men, although I think that was an offshoot and not the original one ?)
I think Deadly Genesis works if you read it as Charles not *knowing* that Krakoa is sentient. He can’t really read its mind in House of X/Powers of X after all, which is why he needs Cypher. The dialogue that Krakoa speaks in Giant-Size X-Men certainly doesn’t fit with the way it communicates now, and I buy that Charles is essentially putting words in the mouth of an entity that he doesn’t understand.
@JD
AH, right! My reading comprehension rolled a critical miss there! Of course trhat’s what was meant.
Looking back, it’s kind of insane how often Dillon ended up working with Daniel Way, when their respective styles didn’t really mesh at all.
If you told me that Wolverine Origins was meant to be drawn by JRJR but they accidentally emailed Dillon instead and were then too embarrassed to take it back, I’d believe you. It’d still be a badly written, fundamentally misconceived series, but at least it would’ve looked right.
Also, it never stops amazing me how much it gets hyped up any time Wolverine joins the Avengers, compared to how little he actually does once he’s there.
Really getting into the Photoshop typography tutorial era of logo design here.
I’ve always been amused by that Black Panther cover implying Susan Richards, wife of one of T’Challa’s closest friends, was in the running for his queen.
It seems odd Scott and Emma would consider chasing Nitro as not mutant business. Of a couple hundred powered mutants left, Nitro killed two of them.
I’m not a huge fan of this era, which largely seems to reduce the X-Men to small moving parts of larger storylines and crossovers.
House of M ends, only for everything to spill within a handful of months into Civil War (which, due to delays in the main series drags well into 2007) while the X-men are bogged down in the immediate post House of M status quo.
I generally like Brubaker’s two-year run through this period and Mike Carey’s stuff is pretty good too but Marvel felt like an absolute mess at the time.
DC weren’t much better – They had an epic late 2004 through early 2006 with the lead-up to and execution of Infinite Crisis but, outside of a handful of books (Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern and Superman, Brad Metzler’s JLA and Grant morrison’s Batman), the One Year Later stuff fell completely flat.
@Allan M: It really is peculiar that after finally breaking that taboo (RIP countless forum threads about Wolverine not being Avengers material), they couldn’t think of any interesting stories to tell about it. I suppose part of the problem is that, as Paul has well documented, Wolverine was long since integrated into the wider Marvel Universe, and Bendis’s Avengers cast was so nontraditional that he didn’t even fit the odd-man-out role.
In the end, it seems the writers concluded that he was not, in fact, Avengers material. By contrast, Spider-Man (both Peter and Miles) has left a much bigger mark on those books.
So Wolverine is in Avengers, 2 x-teams but does nothing of any note in either of them because he is just there for a sales bump. Sustaining 2 solos alongside 3 team books and one shots, mini’s and cameos, it’s no wonder so many people got bored of Logan.
Aw geez, 2007 is next? That was a rather bleak year for comics. We had a whole year of Iron Man appearing in like every comic, the Romulus stuff, the horrid Mighty Avengers comic, more Vulcan garbage, and let’s not forget at the competition, the 52-issue Countdown series, the endless and pointless Countdown tie-ins, the horrid lateness of the Superman books, everything involving the Flash and Mark Waid swearing off DC for a decade . . . what else?
New Avengers comes in the next entry? I thought it was covered in the previous one.
Yes, that’s completely wrong – I’ve no idea how that stayed in there. Fixed now.
Trying to think of what good comics did come out in 2007. The Black Casebook and Black Glove storylines of Morrison’s Batman are all that come to mind.
Jenny said: Trying to think of what good comics did come out in 2007. The Black Casebook and Black Glove storylines of Morrison’s Batman are all that come to mind.
Paul Dini’s Detective Comics was putting out some good stories, especially the stuff with the Riddler as an insufferable private detective competing with Batman, but the quality really varied from issue to issue.
Kurt Busiek was doing some nice work on the Superman titles around this time.
And Morrison’s All-Star Superman was still coming out, too.
Oh, and Ed Brubaker’s Daredevil run was still happening.
But, yeah, pretty bleak stuff, and even the good books were often terminally delayed.
the wartorn African nation of Zwartheid
Really?! Zwartheid?!
Just, ugh.
In the beginning, Wolverine was the scrapper–hairtrigger temper, violent, very physical in nature, and good for causing conflict. That worked well on a team with a strongman, an acrobatic teleporter, an elemental goddess, a psychic-with-energy-powers, and a guy with laser eyes. This is famously one of the reasons Thunderbird was killed–he was redundant with Wolverine around.
Now compare this to the Avengers team Wolverine joined: a super-soldier, a guy in a techno suit, a strongman, a martial artist, an acrobatic vigilante, an acrobatic spy, and a messed-up powerhouse. You don’t need Wolverine to act as the scrapper on a team like that, and by this point, he’s LONG past the “create conflict for the sake of conflicting personalities” especially when the closest thing he has to his traditional straight man (Cyclops) is Captain America (whose traditional conflict partner was Hawkeye).
So Wolverine is out of place in that roster, -especially- when his role is “do the things no one else can… i.e. stab em.”
While constructing team rosters doesn’t -need- to check off a number of different boxes and power sets, it helps for storytelling sake. And for a character like Wolverine, he needs a specific role, otherwise he’s just crowd scene fodder.
(This is why he works when he’s playing Experienced Mentor, or Stabby Guy, or Conflict Guy, or Leader of Team of Stabby People…)
(This is also why the New Fantastic Four of Wolverine, Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, and Grey Hulk did not actually work as a team, was never intended to work as a team, and should continue to be regarded as a gimmick…)
Wolverine himself is a gimmick. He ought to have been an early Image character, and in many ways he is indeed a strong influence to those.
In 2007, Vaughan leaves Runaways. Whedon takes over and somehow absolutely nobody notices or cares. Ellis takes over Thunderbolts, but I wasn’t a fan of this iteration, and it’s soured further by subsequent runs and Dark Avengers. World War Hulk came out, but it was hugely anticlimactic and leads into the awful Loeb run. Oh at DC, we had the godawful Amazons Attack. If I recall, Batman and the Outsiders went through some editorial shenanigans prior to launching, as did Dwayne McDuffie’s Justice League run.
Josie
Wow, I’d totally forgotten about the Whedon Runaways run. I picked it and vaguely remember enjoy it this is easily the first time I’ve thought about that since about 20008.
I’m glad it’s not just me who didn’t especially enjoy this era of comics!
I’d say the drastic dip in quality of Marvel during this era is part of what pushed me into more independent comics and graphic novels. I particularly remembering hating the Daniel Way and Chuck Austin and Jeph Loeb stuff so much that it was the first time I dropped on-going titles I’d been collecting for years, and didn’t pick up new X-stuff that was coming out. I found Daken and Vampire Jubilee (and Chuck Austin in general) really off-putting and staged a little personal boycott.
I remember an interview with Joe Quesada on Newsarama (or a similar site) where it was announced that Whedon would be taking over Runaways after leaving Astonishing X-Men, and Quesada implied that they strongly believed this would be the push that the critically-acclaimed Runaways needed, and that it would end up as Marvel’s new best-selling series.
Then the Whedon run was of course met with general indifference, and Runaways became a strange, niche property that’s essentially become forgotten despite having several well-received runs and a television show.
I don’t remember this as a great time for X-Men comics. After Morrison left, the line had no clear direction. Astonishing had been positioned as the flagship, but it never came out, and many of the books were forced to deal with the M-Day plot-line. Wolverine stands around in a ton of books, but does very little.
Josie said: Ellis takes over Thunderbolts, but I wasn’t a fan of this iteration, and it’s soured further by subsequent runs and Dark Avengers.
I quite liked most of Ellis’s Thunderbolts on its own terms, since it was equal parts vicious satire of the War on Terror and solid character work (and, in the case of the ill-advised Penance, an excellent deconstruction of a crappy concept Ellis had been saddled with).
I think that it does suffer a lot because Bendis basically yoinked the concept for the Avengers titles and then did much less interesting things with it.
You can almost see the last issue or two of the Ellis run getting dragged in that direction by editorial, and the writers who came after Ellis felt like placeholders while Bendis set up his Dark Reign storyline.
I think one of the bigger issues at Marvel and DC at this point was that most of the books were in constant event mode, with lots of externally imposed status quo changes, many of them poorly thought out.
And almost every event was built around the same franchises and characters, again and again. Every Marvel event was an Avengers story; every DC event was about Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman and full of references to 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, by then a 20+-year-old comic.
The Big Two just went all in on servicing middle-aged fans and their paradoxical nostalgia for the iconic characters and situations along with a demand for shock and darkness.
“The Big Two just went all in on servicing middle-aged fans and their paradoxical nostalgia for the iconic characters and situations along with a demand for shock and darkness.”
I said something similar the other day, specifically about Geoff Johns. It seemed important for him to bring back all the Silver Age DC characters, but also to write “edgy” material where arms were being pulled off left and right.
It didn’t occur to me that it was a general trend in comics or that fans particularly wanted it. Probably because I found the tonal clash really jarring and avoided his work in particular.
But that does make a lot of sense given that Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis was just a couple of years earlier than Johns’ Infinite Crisis. DC in particular seemed to lean into making their iconic characters darker and more “adult,” in terms of shocking violence at least. Yech.
Did Wolverine #349 have any explicit Die Hard callbacks? The plot seems vaguely Die Hard-ish, with the X-Mas setting and the villains w/hostages who espouse to bigger ideologies but are really just there for the money.
(I suppose I could look it up myself if I was really curious.)
I was trying to explain to someone recently why I soured on Johns work and it’s overuse of hyperviolence and darkening of characters. And I’m one of the old white guys who did not want Barry back, since it effectively negated his sacrifice in Crisis.
Of course, this is when we thought Bucky would be staying dead. Same with uncle Ben and the Waynes.
I also think it’s both cathartic and a little odd that Johns modeled a character after his deceased sister. (Same with Loeb and Nova).
2007 was when Abnett and Lanning started their Nova ongoing. I liked a lot of the cosmic Marvel stuff that was going on in that 2006-2010 stretch.
Immortal Iron Fist started in late 2006. It was probably better in theory than in practice, but I enjoyed it pretty well.
In general, from Civil War on through the next couple of years, the books at Marvel I liked best were the ones that could mostly stay away from whatever Big Event I was supposed to care about that week.
With hindsight, Whedon was clearly using Runaways to test out the idea that eventually became The Nevers – low-level superhumans, some in gangs, around the turn of the century.
The Nevers even had the same poor reception.
Mark Coale said: I was trying to explain to someone recently why I soured on Johns work and it’s overuse of hyperviolence and darkening of characters. And I’m one of the old white guys who did not want Barry back, since it effectively negated his sacrifice in Crisis
And now Johns spends most of his time trying to write back at old Alan Moore stories. He has some fixations. He really does seem to be stuck on all the late-1980s DC Comics that haunt his Silver Age imagination.
Johns is not a very good writer. His dialogue sucks, he fixates on fanboy nonsense (“ACTUALLY, AQUAMAN IS SO TOUGH YOU GUYS” “THE LAST TIME SUPERMAN INSPIRED PEOPLE WAS WHEN HE DIED OH SNAP!”) and he’s terrible with humor. His strength is in making connections between characters and concepts inherent in the DC universe. He has been rewarded for that strength, but plenty of the failures of modern DC fall at his feet. Not as many as Didio’s, but he’s a guilty party for sure.
Anyway, Wolverine: the best use of Wolverine in an Avengers story will come in the Ellis/McKone Avengers OGN Endless Warfare. I forget when it was published, but it gives the Avengers a reason to keep Logan on the roster. It’s a bleak story.
Re Thunderbolts: the Jeff Parker/ Declan Shalvey et al issues were great. It ended weirdly in the pages of a later Dark Avengers run, but I really liked the bulk of the run.
When I originally read that issue I was certain that they retconned Nitro’s powers in a way that specifically allowed a stabby guy to actually win.
I should look that up. Maybe someone else should look that up.
Whenever I look up the Blob’s power set I get the notion that different writers and editors just get confused by the previous writers’ take on the character.
Is it not so that in most comics Nitro himself becomes the explosive energy and then reforms?
The plot does involve Nitro’s powers being altered by MGH, so it’s not too difficult to explain away any inconsistencies with the past. Guggenheim’s rationale is basically that Nitro’s powers must in some way protect things that are very close to him, since otherwise he’d destroy his clothes and belongings, which he doesn’t. (The previous established answer to that was that things very close to him are re-constituted by his powers in the same way that his body is, which comes to the same thing for plot purposes, so you can choose to believe that MGH made the explosions more powerful but also increased the zone of de facto protection.)
Paul said: The plot does involve Nitro’s powers being altered by MGH, so it’s not too difficult to explain away any inconsistencies with the past.
This might also be connected to the way Brian Bendis used Nitro as a cameo villain in Daredevil only a couple of years before this story, where Nitro was portrayed as much weaker than in past stories (so Daredevil could actually beat him) and was drawn as if he was projecting some kind of explosive waves rather than actually exploding his own body. (This last part may have been down to artist Alex Maleev; I’m not sure how Nitro’s “classic” powerset would even look in Maleev’s distinctive style.)
I suspect that was where Guggenheim saw Nitro last, and that his powers were therefore written to match that last pre-Civil War appearance. Or maybe this story is meant to explain that Nitro appearance in a quiet way.
Nitro’s old-school powers certainly can’t work with some sort of “safety zone” around is body, since his 1970-s and early 1980s appearances not only have him turning into gas — which is even how the heroes beat him half the time — but also have him using “exploding punches” as a combat trick.
“Johns is not a very good writer. His dialogue sucks, he fixates on fanboy nonsense”
Hard half-disagree, because it depends on which era of Geoff Johns you’re talking about.
I was rereading parts of his original Flash run the other day and it’s just a perfect little comic. Great pacing and plotting, distinct and fun characters, good dialogue that doesn’t lunge at cliches the way his later stuff did/does. His JSA stuff was a lot of fun and did some great character work despite such a massive cast. And I still contend that his Green Lantern run is great despite Hal Jordan being consistently terrible and unlikeable.
But there is plenty of stuff by Johns I cannot defend. I hated Legion of Three Worlds. His Superman stuff was more miss than hit. His Justice League stories were almost all ill conceived.
Anyway, his New Golden Age one-shot came out this week and I rather liked it. It’s still written by New 52-era Johns, but this is balanced out by a ton of interesting new (old?) concepts.
Josie said: I was rereading parts of his original Flash run the other day and it’s just a perfect little comic. Great pacing and plotting, distinct and fun characters, good dialogue that doesn’t lunge at cliches the way his later stuff did/does. His JSA stuff was a lot of fun and did some great character work despite such a massive cast. And I still contend that his Green Lantern run is great despite Hal Jordan being consistently terrible and unlikeable.
I liked bothy of those books as well, perhaps up until a certain point. “Rogue War,” Johns’s final Flash arc (before he went all in on bringing back Barry Allen to diminishing returns), strikes me as having a some of the same problems as Legion of Three Worlds, and I think whatever Johns was planning for it was derailed by the need to stop the run and move on to Infinite Crisis, one of Johns’s worst projects.
I jumped off of his Green Lantern after the Blackest Night event; while I liked Larfleeze and the Sinestro Corps, all the rainbow corps stuff and his take on the Star Sapphires — all women, representing “love” by becoming obsessed with the male Lanterns — kind of turned me off. Six Lantern corps stuffed with background characters just felt like a dilution of the concept.
I think both “Rogue War” and “Blackest Night” and its follow-ups reflect an issue in Johns’s writing, where he introduces and connects so many characters that none of them have much in the way of narrative arcs. He also can’t ever kill his darlings, so tons of characters turn up, do their clever shtick, and then never quite go away.
I did think the two rogues-focused miniseries he did later works; not coincidentally, they had tightly focused casts, flawed characters, and tied off some outstanding plots and some characters that really had overstayed their welcome, like Hunter Zolomon and Captain Boomerang, Jr.
Blackest Night was also the point at which Johns got especially obnoxious about building on Alan Moore stories and high concepts without actually understanding why they worked.
Oh, I think Johns’s Flash run started to lose steam as far back as Crossfire. The Thinker and Blacksmith stuff just didn’t really work. However, I don’t think the problems with the post-Crossfire half of his Flash run really resembled his later problems. And not every JSA arc was a winner either (the year following Stealing Thunder was a slog). I agree that Rogues’ Revenge and the Blackest Night Flash miniseries were pretty great, in that they recaptured some of the magic earlier in his Flash run.
And I don’t get the shit people give DC for milking the work of Alan Moore. I get the criticism of Watchmen, but that’s a debate about rights and ownership (not who has them, obviously, but what the ethical practice should be). But for anything else, I mean, is anyone at DC working on characters they themselves created? Aren’t they all milking concepts and stories of the past? I mean, Scott Snyder gave his pet evil Batman villain the powers of Dr. Manhattan in the nonsense Death Metal series and I didn’t hear people knocking him for incorporating Watchmen the same way people criticize Johns.
Anyway, even if there is plenty of recent Geoff Johns work I really don’t like (Three Jokers), he, like Bendis, has earned the benefit of the doubt from me and the goodwill to try new stuff he puts out, because I know he has at various times been a capable writer of stories I enjoyed.
I’m reminded of the recent interview with Chris Claremont that Cartoonist Kayfabe did. There was a lot going on when Claremont was on X-Men, or when Claremont was at Marvel but not on X-Men, that annoyed him, such as having Pete Wisdom date Kitty Pryde. But he also acknowledged that despite his history with these characters, he did not own them and it was up to new creators to tell their own stories with them. He didn’t have to agree with or like those stories, but he also didn’t pretend he had any authority to say what stories should or shouldn’t be told.
Josie: to be fair, I haven’t read most of Johns’s initial Flash run. I didn’t like the Cicada story, so I never went back. I also liked a good chunk of JSA, but didn’t care for a lot of the dialogue & characterization. I almost dropped it several times, and finally did so with the story arc that followed “Black Reign.” I liked the Superman & the Legion story, although not the Brainiac follow-up.
I sampled or read a lot of other Johns comics (some of all of GL, Hawkman, Titans, Infinite Crisis, JL, Legion of 3 Worlds, 3 Jokers, Flashpoint, probably a few others I’m forgetting). The plotting can be well-done, but I just don’t like how he writes characters. He can also be obnoxious when he wants to make a point (see: Aquaman, Superboy Prime, almost every time he writes Batman, his uses of extreme violence).
As for Johns & others mining Watchmen – it is, technically, no different than writing new stories about Batman or Spider-Man. I find it desperate and almost always artistically bankrupt, but why don’t I feel the same way about new Superman stories? Moore & Gibbons got shafted just like Siegel & Shuster. Different degrees, certainly (S&S got it way worse)… Maybe I’m used to there being no such thing as ethical consumption? Maybe because the Watchmen rights issues happened in my lifetime so they feel less like ancient history? Maybe because of all the fanboys who scream “you signed the contract!” every time a creative person outlines how Marvel & DC screwed them over? Something to think about…
Josie said: And I don’t get the shit people give DC for milking the work of Alan Moore. I get the criticism of Watchmen, but that’s a debate about rights and ownership (not who has them, obviously, but what the ethical practice should be). But for anything else, I mean, is anyone at DC working on characters they themselves created? Aren’t they all milking concepts and stories of the past?
I mean, I don’t have a problem with writers using old Alan Moore DC work as a basis for new stories. But it’s almost always asking to be compared to the Moore stories.
In Johns’s case, my take is that he does especially badly at it, often because his use of Moore’s work is basically an argument with it, and usually not a very good argument on Johns’s side.
I also think Johns tends to miss some of what Moore is doing. So, for example, he takes a Moore character called Q’ull of the Five Inversions, who was played as a subtle manipulator from a world of Lovecraftian horrors. Q’Ull, using only his words, gets inside Abin Sur’s death, planting a little seed of doubt that leads to Sur making a mistake, years later, that gets him killed.
Johns turns that into Q’Ull being part of a terrorist group called the “Five Inversions” who used magic to try to get back at the Guardians for a terrible crime the Guardians committed, and then Q’Ull is summarily killed off to make way for a character with the thuddingly on-the-nose name “Atrocitus.”
So Moore starts stuff off with mind-bending horrors who got inside a hero’s head and doomed him as a clever bit of take-it-or-leave it backstory. And Johns sees that as a setup for a dude who vomits blood on people because of his rage-y rage.
It’s not so much that Johns is milking Alan Moore work, it’s that he doesn’t do much good with it. His stuff just comes across as hackwork or bad fanfiction by comparison, and it’s a comparison Johns is inviting.
There are definitely writers who have effectively built on or mined Moore’s DC work. Plenty of writers have effectively played off of concepts from Moore’s Swamp Thing and his other Green Lantern stories, for example.
But I do think it’s hard, because so much of Moore’s DC work consists of little one-off short stories; he didn’t have a substantial run on a continuing character aside from Swamp Thing.
And Moore often approaches these one-offs as short stories, aiming fo r a central, high concept and playing it out to thematic closure.
As such, it’s hard to revisit specific characters and plot points without either “undoing” the plot points or rehashing them.
For me, at least, building well on most of Moore’s DC work usually means playing off of the concepts, like using the “elementals” concept or extrapolating from “the Green’ to see how it applies to other characters or what other archetypal, communal life forces might be out there.
“Plenty of writers have effectively played off of concepts from Moore’s Swamp Thing and his other Green Lantern stories, for example.”
The F-Sharp Bell is absolutely my favorite Moore Green Lantern short story. If anyone’s written more about that character, I’d love to read it. Unless he’s getting his arms ripped off, I guess.
“It’s not so much that Johns is milking Alan Moore work, it’s that he doesn’t do much good with it. His stuff just comes across as hackwork or bad fanfiction by comparison, and it’s a comparison Johns is inviting.”
This, 100%.
I’m not denying Johns has his strengths, but he’s never going to be Alan Moore. Between his love of old comics, desire to make the DCU make sense, wooden dialogue, and tendency to write unlikable characters, he’s a modern day Roy Thomas. In the ’80s, Thomas didn’t root around in Steve Gerber or Jim Starlin concepts, he wrote to his interests. Johns might be better off doing the same. Given that his upcoming series is Stargirl, he might have reached that realization.
Thom H – the ft sharp Bell is great, up there with Mogo Doesn’t Socialize.
Ive long maintained, while Moore is obviously very talented, most of his notable work is either reinventing other peoples characters (swamp thing, miracle man, watchmen, Tom strong, 1959) or using public domain characters or historical figures LXG, Lost Girls, From Hell). And then stuff just in the existing IP that didnt break anything (GL, Whatever Happened, Man Who Has Everything).
Even Promethea started using the WW template.
Besides Top Ten and Maxwell the Magic Cat, how many original concepts immediately come to mind?
There’s John Constantine, but that’s a case where other creators really got the most out of the character.
“most of his notable work is either reinventing other peoples characters or using public domain characters or historical figures”
Right? It strikes me that the criticism of Johns is just that people prefer Alan Moore’s versions and stories. And that’s fine! But it’s always framed like it’s Geoff Johns trying to be Alan Moore and failing at it (and never, I don’t know, Alan Moore trying to be Len Wein and failing at it), and I don’t see it that way at all.
I guess I’m still open to an argument about why Geoff Johns writing stories about Mogo is a bad thing, but I really don’t find anything I’ve heard so far terribly convincing.
What’s kind of funny is you don’t hear people slamming Grant Morrison for his Pax Americana one-shot which was explicitly trying to mimic Watchmen aesthetically (well, not “mimic,” but trying to get the most of out an 8-panel grid in the way that Watchmen utilized a 9-panel grid). Is it because Morrison was successful? Was it because Morrison was explicit in this endeavor? Is it that the utilization of the original Charlton characters made it explicitly Not Watchmen?
Something to think about.
Maybe because Morrison has done a lot more original works, hit or Miss, than Moore, even though both of them did a lot of POMO continuity revivals.
Not a criticism, as Animal Man was heavily influential on my love and academic study of metatext in college.
And look at Kieron’s great Pete Cannon book, which was meta on meta on Watchmen, the grid and more.
Geoff Johns is someone who’s done a lot of work I like but has a lot of things I don’t like as well.
His Flash run is pretty good and I’m a big fan of his JSA work (that book was a huge high point of DC’s really weird early 2000s era).
His Green Lantern work is great and it finally injected some excitement into a book which has been largely very underwhelming for several years.
Even Infinite Crisis is a lot of fun (Though it’s been at least 15 years since I last read it).
That said, his Barry Allen obsession and the whole thing around reviving that character was where I began to sour on him. That and his obsession with resetting Superman back to the Silver Age was hugely off putting. I really like the Up Up and Away arc (with Kurt Busiek) and Last Son but the rest is Johns disappearing up his own arse.
I don’t mind the early bits of his JLA run in the New 52 but that goes off the rails after about a year..