Civil War: Wolverine
Civil War: Wolverine, by Mark Guggenheim & Humberto Ramos, Marvel
IT'S FUNNY what catches your eye, and why it does so. Take the front cover to this collection - it made me think someone had stepped on the bushy tail of Thomas O'Malley the Alley Cat (and animated star of Disney's The Aristocats) and made him rather angry.
My comparison no doubt upsets comics fans by the legion comparing their mainstream bad-boy to an old cartoon, but that's their loss. I like things for my own reasons, not others.
I have to say though, that leafing through the interior pages I thought I wasn't going to like it as it appeared to be running headlong into a hi-octane Image-manga visual cul de sac. Fortunately I did pick it up and mostly appreciated the abstractions in Mexican born artist Ramos' work and liked the fact that he did on-panel action scenes rather than all that modern superhero macho posing that's likely to get your head kicked in during a real fight.
TV writer Guggenheim (The Practice, CSI) starts slow and a tad predictably but then pulls the rug out from you as a reader with some nifty plot twists.
See Wolverine's chasing after Nitro, an old Captain Marvel villain (Captain Marvel as in the Kree warrior version, but possibly a latter variation for all I know) but members of The Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D; and the old Sub-Mariner himself are in the mix here too.
It's vicious, has some black comedy, pushes a few choice buttons on the political agenda front and turns out to be at once a handsomely written modern thriller but also for me evokes happy memories of a couple of ancient issues of Strange Tales where writer/artist Jim Steranko had Nicky Fury and Captain America battling the Yellow Claw (see something catches your eye, and your mind wanders).
If there's a fault it's one Marvel too often commit. They really give us no background and for the casual purchaser for whom the graphic novel/collection book store market should be aimed at it only causes confusion.
Like, why is it titled Civil War? Nothing to do with later movies, folks. It transpires that back in Marvel-land there was a cross-continuity series for their books that went with that heading (crossovers are both a chance to promote certain books and kill off a few low-sellers or naff sellers). And what was the Stamford Tragedy that is referred to ? Well, you kind of work out that Nitro had killed the townsfolk and while I'd guessed that it took half the book for it to be clarified. All they had to do was clarify these things on the inside front or back cover.
The book loses points for Marvel's lack of consideration with regards to packaging books - I don't care if it sold thousands of copies to committed fan boys it is still sloppy and could easily have been remedied.
Aside from that: cool Tomcat cover and a well crafted edgy modern comic book story!
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