We’ve accumulated quite the backlog while I’ve been otherwise occupied.  So let’s start with Wolverines vol. 1, which covers the first five issues of the series.  For one thing, it’s the longest-outstanding review.  And for another, it’s a weekly series, so the book is already halfway through volume 2.

Marvel aren’t generally that keen on the weekly format.  They tried it with Amazing Spider-Man for a while, but for the most part they’ve been content to leave it to DC.  DC, in turn, has had mixed results with it both commercially and (even more) creatively.

It’s not the volume of material that causes difficulties.  Wolverines is only running through to the launch of Secret Wars, so it’s a mere twenty issues.  And of course Marvel are more than happy to churn out an X-Men comic a week, whether they have anything to go in it or not.  But that takes multiple creative teams, and traditionally Marvel prefer to solve the problem by having multiple titles running in parallel.  Another approach is to start far enough in advance that creative teams can still do an entire story.  Amazing had a go at that, and one senses it was considered to be more hassle than it was worth.

Wolverines takes the other approach – outright rotation of creators from issue to issue.  The story is by Charles Soule and Ray Fawkes (who’s previously done some work for DC), but they’re credited with writing alternate issues.  As for the art, these first five issues have five different artists – Nick Bradshaw, Alisson Borges, Juan Doe, Ariela Kristantina, and Jonathan Marks.  And admittedly, there’s plenty of talent on that list.

The plus side of the weekly format is that, as I never tire of reminding people, pacing is not just a matter of the page count, it’s a matter of the publishing schedule too.  It’s the one aspect of comics that, at least on initial release, is intractably linked to real time.  The American format of serialisation in 22 page chapters is, in that respect, far better suited to the weekly than to the monthly, as the non-obsessive reader is far more likely to have the story fresh in his mind, and a leisurely pace (in page count terms) is less likely to feel like it drags.  The industry seems to generally consider that these factors are outweighed by practical considerations on the production side, and their potential knock-on effects for quality.  And hell, some of DC’s weeklies may suggest that the concern is a legitimate one.

In fact, the first five issues of Wolverines wouldn’t have been too out of place in a regular format.  It’s the trade paperbacks – which, of course, will come out more or less monthly – that seem to be leaning more into the serial format here.  This first five-issue collection ends with a mid-story cliffhanger, which is a very unusual choice for a trade paperback, particularly as a much more natural end point for the first volume can be found at the end of issue #6.  Presumably Marvel want trade buyers to get something of a serialised experience with this one.

So, with two writers and five artists, is this doomed to be comics by committee?  Not necessarily.  In fact, it seems to be comics by two writers and whichever artists were free.  Compare the TV show runner model, which demonstrates that a department’s worth of creative types doesn’t have to be inconsistent with a coherent vision.  True, several of the artists seem to be toning down their individual styles here – Juan Doe’s issue is downright conventional, which is not necessarily what you’d expect from him – but since the alternative would have been wild visual swings from chapter to chapter, that’s ultimately the right call.

There are still swings, mind you.  We’ve still got the curvy cartooning of Bradshaw, a house style effort from Borges, the angular exaggerations of Doe, a decidedly rough issue from Kristantina which could charitably be described as Klaus Janson on a bad day and with a tight deadline, and the more delicate prettiness of Marks.  But I’ve seen many of these artists push their style a lot further than this, and they’re at least operating within the same ballpark as one another.

That still leaves two writers on alternate issues, though, and combined with the range of artists, we have a book which is tonally wonky.

The plot doesn’t make a great deal of sense, to put it mildly.  It starts out clearly enough.  The escaped test subjects from Paradise are going to die in the near future unless they can find a cure to what Dr Cornelius did to them.  The key to that cure rests in people with healing factors.  They also know the post-hypnotic suggestions that he implanted in order test subjects – Daken, X-23, Sabretooth, Mystique and Lady Deathstrike – and so they can force those five to help.

For reasons which are not entirely apparent, this leads to everyone trying to retrieve Wolverine’s corpse, which Mr Sinister is also after.  This is where it rather stops making sense.  For one thing, we know that Wolverine didn’t have a healing factor when he died, so the whole thing seems to be a bit of a red herring anyway. But in any event, once you’ve reached the stage where trying to retrieve the body involves storming Mr Sinister’s citadel, something the characters repeatedly tell us is out of their league, why not just change plans and ask Sabretooth for a cell sample?  For that matter, since nobody on the Paradise team is actually a scientist, what are they planning to do with Wolverine’s body even if they find it?

In his issues, Soule seems to largely shrug his shoulders, run with this and embrace the madness.  He introduces Fantomelle, a playful Fantomex knock-off (though his name is never mentioned) who delights in stealing harmless superhero memorabilia as a challenge.  And he fills his issue in Sinister’s fortress with utter nonsense that’s a stone’s throw from Nextwave – a cloned Fin Fang Foom who carries a Thor in his mouth for bonus firepower, or a room full of Scarlet Spiders who all think they’re the original.  This is not the work of a man who is taking this stuff too seriously.

But Fawkes, in issue #4, seems to be taking it terribly seriously, with scenes of Mystique’s manipulation of her teammates that suggests he views this as some sort of psychological drama.  It doesn’t help that that issue features some really confusing cutting between scenes and a couple of instances of characters seemingly teleporting – though since this is also the issue with dodgy art, it’s hard to say for sure how many of the problems stem from the script.

A curious side effect is that the book and its characters have remarkably little interest in Wolverine himself.  The Paradise characters treat him as a means to an end, but even their unwilling helpers seem more concerned about getting rid of their code words and freeing themselves for the future.  Only Daken actually expresses any particular concern about the treatment of Wolverine’s corpse.  X-23 makes a few mutterings about feeling closer to him now that he’s the closest thing she has to a living relative.  And that’s about it.

The result is that even though this is the continuation of his series, the focus isn’t on Wolverine’s absence at all.  He’s reduced to the status of a Macguffin.  That’s surely a deliberate choice, and quite an interesting one – the thing that’s probably of the greatest interest to a lot of the readers is simply of no concern to most of the characters, perhaps because the story is trying to focus on things which aren’t quite so predictable as his inevitable return, or perhaps because it would be a show of bad faith to start building his return too explicitly at this stage, even if we all know perfectly well that that’s where the story will ultimately end up. In a perverse sense, his absence is all the more pronounced because the cast aren’t that interested in talking about him.

So it’s a mixed affair, and with a central plot that doesn’t altogether make sense.  But for all that, it’s a reasonably diverting romp whose eccentricities, if sometimes frustrating, at least give it more personality than you might expect.