By Ben Acker, Ben Blacker, Salva Espin & Cam Smith, with Jason Aaron, Ramón Pérez, Laura Martin & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-6672-6
Much as I’d love to believe otherwise, I know that the Cold War, transistor radio and pre-cellphone masterpieces of my youth are often impenetrable to younger fans – even when drawn by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Bill Everett or Don Heck.
Perpetual and overarching revision – or at least the appearance of such – is the irresistible force driving modern comics. There must be a constant changing of the guard, a shifting of scene and milieu and, in latter times, a regular diet of death, resurrection and rebirth – all grounded in relatively contemporary terms and situations.
Even for relatively minor or secondary stars the process is inescapable, with increasing supra-comicbook media adjuncts (film, TV, games, etc.) dictating that subjects be perpetually updated because the goldfish-minded readers of today apparently can’t understand or remember anything that’s more than a week old.
Alternatively, one could argue that for popular characters or concepts with a fifty-year + pedigree, all that history can be a readership-daunting deterrence, so radical reboots are a painful but vital periodic necessity…
Publishing ain’t no democracy, however, so it’s comforting to realise that many of these retrofits are thankfully exceptionally good comics tales in their own right and anyway, the editors can call always claim that it was an “alternate Earth†story the next time the debut saga is modernised…
Released in 2013, Wolverine: Season One is an all-new distilation of the Feral Fury’s debut appearances in the Marvel Universe, delivered in a hardback graphic novel with hidden extras.
It was a late entry into a series designed to renovate, modify and update classic origin epics (following Fantastic Four, X-Men, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Avengers) which, despite clearly being intended as story-bibles for newer, movie-oriented fans and readers, mostly managed to add a little something to the immortal but hopelessly time-locked tales.
Scripted by Ben Acker and Ben Blacker, illustrated by Salva Espin & Cam Smith with colours from Jim Charalampidis, the saga opens in the forested wilds of Canada where our unmistakable savage star is engaged in a ferocious struggle for survival against the mystical man-eating monster known as the Wendigo.
The horrific death-duel is witnessed by backpackers Heather and James Macdonald Hudson whose first assumptions – that the man is as bestial as the monster – are shaken when the clearly overmatched underdog intervenes after Wendigo turn his hungry attention to them…
Battle rejoined, the big beast slaughters the little man and shambles off, leaving the stunned couple to realise that – somehow, impossibly – their saviour is not dead…
Taking him back to their cabin, they nurse the incredibly fast-healing stranger to a semblance of health but although his body mends quickly his mind seems shattered. Moreover, they can see metal inside the clearly superhuman survivor…
Heather and James are not ordinary citizens either. They are employed by Canada’s security services where he is prominent in the clandestine Department H, building a suit of high-tech battle armour.
Idle chatter with the older scientists there leads James to rumours of a project called “Weapon X†wherein a man had indestructible Adamantium grafted to his bones before going crazy and slaughtering everybody…
The potentially homicidal maniac and certified amnesiac meanwhile has been patiently tended by Heather who has achieved a cognitive breakthrough. Reaching the man submerged by the animal, she has restored his power to speak but not to remember his past.
She was only slightly daunted by the razor sharp, nine-inch claws that tended to spring out of his arms whenever he became frustrated or upset…
James meanwhile has discussed Weapon X with his boss Dr. Myra Haddock and been told a pack of face-saving placatory lies about the whole shameful affair. She is however, extremely keen to bring the feral enigma into Department H, whose mandate is creating a super-soldier for Canada…
Soon the wild man is being groomed for the role of a special agent – a role he seems remarkably familiar with – but James is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Heather’s new role as his “keeper†and the subject’s growing infatuation with his wife…
Throughout the training period the clawed conundrum has been subject to traumatic nightmares (buried memories of the tortures he endured as the involuntary test subject of the Weapon X program) and after a particularly arduous session in the laboratory he snaps, attacking Heather in berserk fury.
During the PTSD driven assault he shouted a name… “Loganâ€â€¦
The net result is a huge fight as James dons the Exo-Suit he’d been building and goes after the mystery man. Total destruction of the base is only averted by scheming Dr. Haddock’s intervention; dragging them back to Heather’s bedside so she can shout at them both…
Chastened and frightened, the agent now known as Logan wants to quit, but Haddock has other plans. The monolithic man-monster known as the Hulk has wandered over the border into Canada and she wants her Weapon X to tackle the emerald invader. Not to kill him, necessarily: if Logan can get back with a gamma-irradiated blood sample that will be success enough. With such a transformative DNA to add to the Department’s discoveries, a Canadian super-soldier serum is an eventual certainty.
There’s only one little problem: the Jade Goliath is in the same region as the Wendigo and Logan still has a psychological handicap regarding the cannibal beast which all but killed him…
Outfitted in a tailored combat outfit and codenamed “Wolverine†the feisty scrapper is dropped into the middle of a brutal blockbusting battle between the behemoths – and is nearly pounded to jelly. Only last minute intervention by James saves the mighty mite, but he does come back with the Green Goliath’s blood all over him…
Haddock, however, has had enough of her subordinates’ seeming lack of guts and hires a freelance operative named Victor Creed who has similar abilities to Logan but none of his squeamishness about killing or following orders.
The big brute also claims to have shared history with Logan. The little amnesiac certainly has plenty of bad dreams and flashbacks after meeting the cruelly taunting new guy…
With Codename Wolverine benched due to his growing insubordination and repugnance at the Department’s methods, Creed – now using the combat appellative “Sabretooth†– is dispatched to bring in the Wendigo for Haddock’s vivisection labs whilst Logan is placed in lockdown and sedated.
He’s sprung by Heather who gives him a new costume to go after Sabretooth and her blinkered, out-of-his-depth husband. James might have a suit like Iron Man‘s but he’s no superhero, and accompanying Creed on this mission is likely to get him killed…
Thanks to Logan’s mutant super senses he locates the cannibal beast first and, due to his new rational state, manages to befriend the monster. Unfortunately when James – still writhing in unfounded jealousy of Logan – and Creed arrive, Sabretooth’s bloodlust soon provokes a terrifying four-way war…
Only when Heather becomes involved and endangered does James come to his senses and suddenly all bets are off…
The cataclysmic combat seems to shake a few hidden memories loose, however, and in the aftermath Wolverine wants out of Department H. James too has had enough of Haddock and goes to her superiors with a new idea: rather than super-soldiers, perhaps what Canada needs is a team of superheroes.
He even knows a consultant the government can hire: a metahuman specialist named Professor Charles Xavier. Once Logan and the American savant meet history is made…
The Beginning…
As an additional fillip the reimagined origin is supplemented with ‘Survival 101’ by Jason Aaron, Ramón Pérez and Laura Martin (from Wolverine and the X-Men #25, April 2013) wherein the tough-love terror, in his capacity as headmaster of the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning, drags a pack of his most troublesome and recalcitrant charges on an educational away-day to the dinosaur-infested Savage Land for a little team-building and bonding.
Of course if he’d realised his murderous big brother Dog had returned from the dead to hunt him, Professor Logan might just have opted for detentions and pop quizzes instead…
Fair Warning: this tale is funny, scary and extremely addictive but does not conclude here…
Also included are seven pages of design sketches, cover examples and variants by Espin, Julian Totino Tedesco, Pérez & Martin making this an enticing and entertaining package for both newcomers and dedicated aficionados alike.
© 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.