Review: Wolverine - The Death of Wolverine TPB

Wolverine: The Death of Wolverine TPB
Written by David Aaron and Marc Guggenheim
Art by Howard Chaykin
Published by Marvel Comics. $14.99 USD

A little observation before the review: I've got this and Batman: Jekyll & Hyde stacked together, and while both comprise six issues of comics, the Wolverine volume is about 50% thicker! So way to go on the heavier paper, Marvel.

Let's face it--superhero comics are really a crapshoot these days. I don't follow much of anything, but will pick and choose trade paperbacks based largely on the creators involved. In this case it's Chaykin, an artist I've always liked and who did a pretty good Wolverine graphic novel many years ago. Chaykin's style has changed some; the faces are rounder (offputtingly fat at times), and as with many artists he lets the colorist help define features and contours rather than using as much ink. But it's still Chaykin, and while I had some concerns he was just picking up a paycheck, he seems to really get into the work here. It may be something of a new chapter for him, as the last time he came back to comics he spent years mainly writing for others, and here he's not involved in the story at all.

This volume includes the five-part title story, but first starts off with a standalone by Aaron called "The Man in the Pit," a tidy little psychological thriller where Wolverine has been captured and every day a guard shoots him to within an inch of his life. Wolverine's best hope to get out is to taunt his tormentor, break him down to the hurt, confused boy he's always been, until his shame is too much to bear and he lets Wolverine out, hoping for death for the pain he's inflicted. It's a grim one, and I might add that it's not exactly standalone, as the end clearly sets up a future storyline for who is behind this experiment, which I would suspect will be written by Aaron.

But then we get into the main reason for the book, Guggenheim's story, which is about as fast-paced and surprising as Mark Millar's run at first, including Wolverine with a new Atlantean girlfriend, flashbacks to WWI, cameos by Doctor Strange and Iron Man, and then it gets into mystical areas. See, Wolverine is killed when he swallows a bomb, and his body heals, but his soul hasn't come back. He has to fight the angel of death for it and...well, it sounds silly, and maybe it is, but it's also a lot of fun, and Guggenheim writes a solid Wolverine. And for longtime fans, there are bonuses such as the return of an enemy most people truly wouldn't expect, and we get to see Chaykin draw just about every incarnation of Logan/Wolverine ever, including his debut costume. And as I said before, Chaykin seems to have a good time, even adapting his style a little in places to recall Bill Sienkiewicz and Frank Miller (there's a clue there). He's not without his flaws--he has such a narrow range of male faces that Strange and Stark are virtually indistinguishable except for the parts in their hair--but he's still plenty good.