Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine

I mentioned this in passing on Wednesday, and as you might’ve guessed, I REALLY liked it.  There have been dozens of Wolverine and Spider-Man team-up stories in the past and there will likely be hundreds more in the future, whatever shape the industry takes.  Will there be any as good as this one?  I doubt it.  (Also, between this, “Schism,” and “Wolverine vs. The X-Men,” it would appear that you really can’t have too many Jason Aaron-written Wolverine stories.)

This is a story that starts out just before the mass extinction of the Cretaceous Era, then jumps forward to the post-apocalypse, and even slots the two into pivotal times in each other’s lives.  Toss in a time-travelling gangsta, Mojo, Doom The Living Planet, a gun that shoots the Phoenix force, the Cosmic Cube, the Time Variance Authority… well, you should get the idea at this point.  Though the framework of this story may be of the most familiar and unimaginative variety, it starts off with Spider-Man and Wolverine showing up at the same time to foil a bank robbery, Aaron uses it as a license to come up with some of the most ridiculous and over-the-top concepts imaginable, all in the name of generating pure excitement or making the audience laugh.  Which I did multiple times while reading this collection.

Of course, when you’re dealing with such epic ideas and spectacular action, it helps to have along an artist who can do these things justice.  Adam Kubert is such an artist.  While he and his brother Andy are some of the best superhero artists in the business, I’ve always preferred his slightly more cartoonish style ever since he was drawing “Wolverine” back in the 90’s.  While the scale of the action in each issue is usually the realm of Bryan Hitch, his style usually gives things a more dramatic bent while Kubert has a light enough touch that a bank heist by the Orb comes off as exciting as the advent of Doom The Living Planet.  Well, maybe not quite, but there’s a great consistency to his style, and he pulls off the quiet, dialogue driven moments (particularly those in the last issue) with remarkable skill as well.

The expressiveness of Kubert’s style also helps sell the emotional core of this series.  Yes, the majority of it does come off like a giant sugar rush, but then Aaron pulls off a calculated anti-climax at the beginning of the final issue that casts things in a different light.  The final issue stands in stark contrast to the previous five, but doesn’t disregard or neglect what has come before.  It feels strange saying that such a deliberately insane series actually has some depth to it, but there’s a beautiful mix of subtlety and dramatic irony in Spider-Man’s monologue over the last few pages that really makes you feel that the two characters have “shared a moment” here.

If nothing else, this is also the rare Marvel comic that can be enjoyed by pretty much anyone with a familiarity with the characters.  Yes, that’s right.  ANYONE.  Granted, people who aren’t aware that Peter and Mary Jane are no longer married or dating will be thrown for a loop here, but this is a very continuity-light series that I’d recommend to anyone looking for a good story with these two characters.  Take note people, it’s not often that I talk about a Marvel comic that I can recommend to the general public, and if I wind up doing so again before the end of the year… no one will be more surprised than me.