About a Wolverine and a Spider-Man
“Wolverine and the X-Men: Alpha & Omega” is essentially a single plot point stretched out into a five-issue miniseries. Even though Quentin “Kid Omega” Quire psychically intervened with Krakoa and saved the Jean Grey School from being destroyed, he still has it in for its headmaster Wolverine. So Quire uses his Omega-level psychic talents to fashion a virtual world that he traps not only his nemesis’ mind in, but that of Hisako “Armor” Ichiki as well. While they’re running around in a simulacrum of a lawless post-apocalyptic cityscape, its mastermind is running around trying to hide their bodies and make sure that he remains in control of this world. Not only does that require him to constantly stay awake, but with his normal personality a prisoner, Wolverine’s berserker instincts take over and start looking for payback.
The story comes to us courtesy of Brian Wood, with Roland Boschi doing some surprisingly effective work in the real world and Mark Brooks having fun with the derivative nature of the Construct scenes. Wood has a great handle on Quire’s sense of rebellion and entitlement, but also understands that while the character is certainly rebellious he’s not outright evil. This allows him to give the telepath an arc where he realizes that he is clearly out of his depth and has to become “better than himself” in order to fix it. The catch? This isn’t really a scenario that warrants five issues — it could’ve been whittled down to two or three — and the story feels very drawn out at that length. I found it for 50% off at WonderCon yesterday and though that mitigates some of my disappointment, this is still something that I can only recommend to dedicated fans of Wood or the characters involved.
As for the other hardcover I found in the half-off bins yesterday,“Avenging Spider-Man vol. 1: My Friends Can Beat Up Your Friends” turned out to be a much better deal. Essentially just the latest incarnation of “Spider-Man Team-Up,” only he’s just teaming up with his buddies on The Avengers, it’s a fun superhero collection of the issues written by Zeb Wells and illustrated by some of Marvel’s most high-profile artists. The biggest draw here are the three issues illustrated by Joe Madureira that involve Spidey and Red Hulk taking on an invasion of the mole men who have kidnapped J. Jonah Jameson in order to save their kingdom from an even bigger subterranean menace. Madureira’s art is a lot sketchier than I remember and it has lost some of its overt manga stylings, but it’s still very dynamic which gives us some great action scenes and delivers the humor in Wells’ script quite effectively.
Even though the other two stories are illustrated by Greg Land and Lenil Yu, Wells is really the star of this volume as his writing is quite witty — witness the “Not It” bit when The Avengers have to decide who gets to bring Spidey back to the city after a battle — and a lot of fun to read even when the stories themselves are a bit ordinary. That’s not true in the opening arc, the two other issues collected here are fairly pedestrian affairs which are enlivened by the art and the details Wells adds. Greg Land has one of his better days showing us less overt photo-referencing and more fluid action as Spider-Man and Hawkeye team up to stop a robbery planned by the Serpent Society. Incidentally, Spider-Man is the ideal kind of character for Land to draw due to his facemask which covers any “wild grins” that Hawkeye displays a lot of here.
Yu draws the final issue, which is decidedly more character-driven after the title character finds out that Captain America used to have an interest in art after he finds an old and awful comic he did before taking the Super-Soldier serum. This leads Spidey to realize that Cap’s a nerd just like him and many awkward attempts at bonding ensue. Everything turns out predictably well in the end though Yu is the kind of artist who can make his talking heads scenes just as interesting as his action ones. If you’re a fan of his art, or that of Madureira or Land, then this is a collection you’ll want in your library. As for everyone else, this is a very fun collection but not really an essential read beyond that.