Wolverine: Goodbye Chinatown
This came out a little while ago, but I still feel like it’s worth mentioning for a couple reasons. First and foremost is that the main story here is as entertaining as it is ridiculous. How ridiculous? Well it starts off in the middle of a secret gang war in San Francisco’s Chinatown district where a reporter is questioning the detective on the scene about the fact that kung-fu related deaths are now up over 200% in the past year. This is at the same time a street urchin identifies the murder weapon as a dragon’s tooth — a fact that is immediately picked up on by the trenchcoated gorilla in the crowd. So yeah, this is crazy even by writer Jason Aaron’s usual Marvel standards.
What does this have to do with Wolverine? Way back in the “Manifest Destiny” mini-series, Logan took care of some decades-old business and wound up as the Black Dragon of the district’s triad gangs. However, as the character is currently multitasking with four other groups some of his responsibilities were bound to fall between the cracks and that’s the case here. Though he’s keen to discharge his leadership here, he has to take care of the usurper in his territory who has also taken the stash of cash he needs to open the Jean Grey school.
From there we get to see our hero teaming up with Gorilla Man of the Agents of Atlas and Fat Cobra of the Immortal Weapons against well-armed minions, vengeful mystic martial artists, and a whole lot of dragons. Aaron takes this all as seriously as it deserves to be with his quip-filled dialogue, but the story is straightforward enough that all the style just makes it that much more entertaining. Ron Garney returns to provide the art not only is it up to his usual standards, but it’s clear that he’s having fun drawing all of the martial arts madness on the page.
The other reason I thought that this volume was worth mentioning was because even though this main story is only three issues long, but it feels suitably dense in terms of content. This trend is continued in the final issue collected here, a prelude to Aaron’s final arc on the title, which has Wolverine and his current girlfriend Melita winding up in the middle of an attempt to start a war between the Wilson Fisk-led Hand and the Yakuza by way of the cannibalistic Buzzard Brothers. Fortunately, several of his ex-girlfriends have teamed up in order to make sure that war doesn’t happen. As is the case with “Wolverine and the X-Men,” if Marvel is determined to keep giving us these skimpy four-issue trade paperbacks, they’re going to need to be of this level of quality to keep me happy.
There is one large extra in the form of the entirety of Garney’s pencils from the first issue being reprinted at the end, but they’re not that interesting by themselves. Even so, this is still one of the better volumes of Aaron’s run on the title and worth picking up for those of you who have been following it so far. It’s not quite as good as “Wolverine and the X-Men,” but between the two it shows that the writer is making his best effort to get what you pay for with his Marvel work.