Wolverine: Back in Japan

This doesn’t reach the ridiculous comic heights of “Goodbye, Chinatown,” but it’s still a fun capper to Jason Aaron’s run on “Wolverine” proper.  After all this is a story that starts off with the title character on a plane to Japan where the in-flight attendant passes out samurai swords to everyone else on the plane after he goes to use the bathroom.  Because they’re all ninjas, you see; and that most disposable of comic book villains figures prominently here as a war between the Hand and the Yakuza is brewing in the land of the rising sun.  That’s only part of the story here as Sabretooth and Mystique are lurking on the periphery, looking to profit from this in any way that they can.

Part of the reason this doesn’t measure up as Aaron’s best effort on the series is that the story itself is just too chaotic for its own good.  Granted, it allows for things like Wolverine fighting a jetpack-equipped Sabretooth, a wheelchair-bound Yukio slicing and dicing her assailants, and even a return trip to Hell for the Ol’ Canucklehead.  That said, the Yakuza/Hand War is underdeveloped, the new Silver Samurai comes off as more of a putz than anything else, and the narrative itself jumps around so much that you’d think Aaron had developed a case of literary ADD.  

This is underlined by the fact that the main four-issue story features the work of five different artists.  Though Adam Kubert, Ron Garney, Steven Sanders, Billy Tan and Paco Diaz are all talented in their own way, I can only wonder what kind of editorial disaster led to this kind of arrangement.  Now, I can just barely imagine this being intentional given the way the story is broken down into “chapters” but the execution on the page doesn’t really sell it.  That said, Tan comes off the best here as his style’s newfound grittiness is appropriate to the setting and the narrative.  Garney and Diaz’s contributions are brief, but welcome, though Kubert’s give the impression that he was very much pressed for time in fitting his pages in between “Avengers vs. X-Men.”  Sanders is the odd-man-out here as his clean style is generally very appealing, but it clashes with the other artists’.

The “jam session” style of this run actually feels more appropriate in the final issue where Aaron draws a line under his run and shuffles some elements of it over to “Wolverine and the X-Men.”  So he hasn’t stopped writing the character, though this represents the end of his tales of the mutant’s solo adventures.  Though it has been very much a piecemeal run, starting with an excellent one-off story and the “Messiah Complex” follow-up “Get Mystique” in the previous volume before it became “Dark Wolverine,” a “Manifest Destiny” miniseries, sixteen issues of “Wolverine:  Weapon X,” and then twenty-four issues of this latest “Wolverine” volume plus a renumbering.  All in all, Aaron’s work has been very entertaining and even his misses, such as “Tomorrow Dies Today,” have at least had something to recommend them.  So if you’re looking for a good story featuring the character, picking up any collection with the writer’s name on the cover will likely leave you entertained.  It’s certainly a better track record than most others who have extended tenures writing Wolverine’s solo adventures over the years can muster.