Beau Tidwell
Mar 30, 2008, 03:30 am
<a href="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/previews/marvel/0308/WOLV1CL001_col.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/previews/marvel/0308/WOLV1CL001_colt.jpg" alt="Wolverine: First Class #1" hspace=10 align=left></a> Reviewer: Beau Tidwell, comixfanbeau@gmail.com
Story Title: The Buddy System
“Y-yes... 'klutz' is the word... "
Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Andrea Di Vito
Colorist: Laura Villari
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Cover: Salva Espin & Brad Anderson
Production: Joe Sabino
Assistant Editor: Nathan Crosby
Editor: Mark Paniccia
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Published by: Marvel Comics (www.marvel.com)
“Y’know who doesn’t have enough exposure? Wolverine. He’s only got two monthly titles, at least that many mini-series at any given time, plus appearances as a team member in at least three ongoing books. Outside the mainstream Marvel U, he only pops up in Ultimate X-Men, occasionally in Ultimate Spider-Man, and didn’t they manage to jam him into Ultimates 3? Well, certainly the “all-ages” Marvel Adventures line doesn’t— oh, wait, he’s on the Avengers in that little universe too, isn’t he?
“Okay. Let’s find a pocket of a corner of an imprint that isn’t super-saturated with Wolverine-ness. How about Jeff Parker’s X-MEN: FIRST CLASS? No Wolverine there, all the stories are set years before he first appeared, much less met the team. We could jam him in there, or …. LAUNCH ANOTHER WOLVERINE BOOK!”
I don’t think a conversation like that actually took place. But after reading this issue, I dearly wish that it had.
WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS debuted this week, featuring Wolverine and Kitty Pryde as the headliners of a book nominally set* between the panels of the back-end of the legendary Claremont/Byrne run. The new series, based on its first issue at least, suffers badly in comparison.
Fred Van Lente, who has been doing excellent work lately on the Incredible Hercules book with Greg Pak and Koi Pham, turns in a disappointing debut performance. The problem is less with his writing per se than with the absolute glut of Wolverine material out there. There’s very little more to say, it seems, about the man formerly known as Logan, and as a result this book reads like just-another-Wolvie-story. He’s got the old school, slightly spastic Kitty Pryde along as his sidekick and foil, which is apparently meant to be the hook for the series. While Van Lente does an admirable job with Kitty’s dialogue and narration, the kind of chemistry these two characters have shown over the years under other writers never really shines through. The grizzled-veteran/spunky-rookie routine feels stale right out of the box, largely because we’ve seen it several times before, on a broader canvas to boot.
The larger problem, however, is that there really seems no reason for this book to exist beyond injecting Wolverine into the mildly-successful FIRST CLASS niche. Part of the appeal of Parker’s book is seeing the X-Men as excitable teenagers still learning to be superheroes. In this series, which is explicitly stated to begin just after “The Dark Phoenix Saga”, the X-Men are grown-ups. Sure, Kitty is available to fill the light-hearted student role, but it’s not her book. It’s Wolverine’s (hence the title), and even in this throwback era it’s been a looooong time since he was a student or a beginner-anything.
On the art side, Andrea Di Vito, does a nice job of matching the kind of clean, blocky style of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS and ably navigates the grey area both books seem to inhabit between the Marvel Adventures line and the 616 proper. Her work on Angel and Colossus in particular shows a lot of promise, though their panel time is restricted largely to the background. There is some attempt to suggest the classic Byrne/Austin look of the era this new series is meant to reflect, and the result is pretty successful. It took a while for Roger Cruz to sort out the proper voice and tone for the original FIRST CLASS, and I’ll be interested to see Di Vito do the same.
I’m hard-pressed to recommend this series to anyone but the most die-hard completists. I think Van Lente and Andrea Di Vito are both strong creators, but they’re saddled with a series premise that doesn’t really go anywhere new. In future issues, that may be up for grabs— but with it’s debut, WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS announces itself without much fanfare, and is all too easily drowned out by the eleven other books Logan turns up in this month alone.
OVERALL:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolnone.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolnone.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolnone.jpg
*Continuity Cop Says:
---- The first panel of narration tells us this story is set on August 20. Yet in Uncanny X-Men #171, we're told Phoenix died on September 1st, and this is meant to be set mere weeks after that. It's a minor point, but c'mon--- I found that with two minutes of internetin', and I'm not the one getting paid to keep track. (Or, to speak to the larger reason for this geeky aside, the one who explicitly said this series starts right after the final panel of X-MEN #138)
----- Xavier refers to "Magneto's Brotherhood" as being their rivals on the search for new mutants. At the time this series is set, that hadn't been the case for YEARS. If anything, Emma Frost's Massachusetts Academy would have been a more apt and timely rival to cite. Now, I LOVE the idea of X-Men books being about Xavier and his kids vs. Magneto and his Brotherhood in a secret war to recruit the next mutant. That was the premise Lee and Kirby set up in the earliest days, and it still works. But it didn't work like that at the time they've chosen to tell this story.
----- This is extremely minor: in the ad for issue #2, Sabretooth (oh yes, we're getting him involved) is depcited in his Jim Lee costume from the 90's. Shouldn't he be wearing the old Byrne number from his Iron Fist days? I know ... it just bugs me.
Story Title: The Buddy System
“Y-yes... 'klutz' is the word... "
Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Andrea Di Vito
Colorist: Laura Villari
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Cover: Salva Espin & Brad Anderson
Production: Joe Sabino
Assistant Editor: Nathan Crosby
Editor: Mark Paniccia
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Published by: Marvel Comics (www.marvel.com)
“Y’know who doesn’t have enough exposure? Wolverine. He’s only got two monthly titles, at least that many mini-series at any given time, plus appearances as a team member in at least three ongoing books. Outside the mainstream Marvel U, he only pops up in Ultimate X-Men, occasionally in Ultimate Spider-Man, and didn’t they manage to jam him into Ultimates 3? Well, certainly the “all-ages” Marvel Adventures line doesn’t— oh, wait, he’s on the Avengers in that little universe too, isn’t he?
“Okay. Let’s find a pocket of a corner of an imprint that isn’t super-saturated with Wolverine-ness. How about Jeff Parker’s X-MEN: FIRST CLASS? No Wolverine there, all the stories are set years before he first appeared, much less met the team. We could jam him in there, or …. LAUNCH ANOTHER WOLVERINE BOOK!”
I don’t think a conversation like that actually took place. But after reading this issue, I dearly wish that it had.
WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS debuted this week, featuring Wolverine and Kitty Pryde as the headliners of a book nominally set* between the panels of the back-end of the legendary Claremont/Byrne run. The new series, based on its first issue at least, suffers badly in comparison.
Fred Van Lente, who has been doing excellent work lately on the Incredible Hercules book with Greg Pak and Koi Pham, turns in a disappointing debut performance. The problem is less with his writing per se than with the absolute glut of Wolverine material out there. There’s very little more to say, it seems, about the man formerly known as Logan, and as a result this book reads like just-another-Wolvie-story. He’s got the old school, slightly spastic Kitty Pryde along as his sidekick and foil, which is apparently meant to be the hook for the series. While Van Lente does an admirable job with Kitty’s dialogue and narration, the kind of chemistry these two characters have shown over the years under other writers never really shines through. The grizzled-veteran/spunky-rookie routine feels stale right out of the box, largely because we’ve seen it several times before, on a broader canvas to boot.
The larger problem, however, is that there really seems no reason for this book to exist beyond injecting Wolverine into the mildly-successful FIRST CLASS niche. Part of the appeal of Parker’s book is seeing the X-Men as excitable teenagers still learning to be superheroes. In this series, which is explicitly stated to begin just after “The Dark Phoenix Saga”, the X-Men are grown-ups. Sure, Kitty is available to fill the light-hearted student role, but it’s not her book. It’s Wolverine’s (hence the title), and even in this throwback era it’s been a looooong time since he was a student or a beginner-anything.
On the art side, Andrea Di Vito, does a nice job of matching the kind of clean, blocky style of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS and ably navigates the grey area both books seem to inhabit between the Marvel Adventures line and the 616 proper. Her work on Angel and Colossus in particular shows a lot of promise, though their panel time is restricted largely to the background. There is some attempt to suggest the classic Byrne/Austin look of the era this new series is meant to reflect, and the result is pretty successful. It took a while for Roger Cruz to sort out the proper voice and tone for the original FIRST CLASS, and I’ll be interested to see Di Vito do the same.
I’m hard-pressed to recommend this series to anyone but the most die-hard completists. I think Van Lente and Andrea Di Vito are both strong creators, but they’re saddled with a series premise that doesn’t really go anywhere new. In future issues, that may be up for grabs— but with it’s debut, WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS announces itself without much fanfare, and is all too easily drowned out by the eleven other books Logan turns up in this month alone.
OVERALL:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolnone.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolnone.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/wolnone.jpg
*Continuity Cop Says:
---- The first panel of narration tells us this story is set on August 20. Yet in Uncanny X-Men #171, we're told Phoenix died on September 1st, and this is meant to be set mere weeks after that. It's a minor point, but c'mon--- I found that with two minutes of internetin', and I'm not the one getting paid to keep track. (Or, to speak to the larger reason for this geeky aside, the one who explicitly said this series starts right after the final panel of X-MEN #138)
----- Xavier refers to "Magneto's Brotherhood" as being their rivals on the search for new mutants. At the time this series is set, that hadn't been the case for YEARS. If anything, Emma Frost's Massachusetts Academy would have been a more apt and timely rival to cite. Now, I LOVE the idea of X-Men books being about Xavier and his kids vs. Magneto and his Brotherhood in a secret war to recruit the next mutant. That was the premise Lee and Kirby set up in the earliest days, and it still works. But it didn't work like that at the time they've chosen to tell this story.
----- This is extremely minor: in the ad for issue #2, Sabretooth (oh yes, we're getting him involved) is depcited in his Jim Lee costume from the 90's. Shouldn't he be wearing the old Byrne number from his Iron Fist days? I know ... it just bugs me.