CREDIT: Marvel
Rating: 4/5 – X-23 Takes Over the Mantle of Wolverine, Action Ensues.
by ComicSpectrum EiC Bob Bretall.
I don’t normally get Marvel’s X-books, but picked this up based on the preview pages in the “All-New All-Different Marvel November Previews” (wow, what a mouthful) given out free at local shops and also included in my last DCBS shipment. This issue had 2-3 page samples of 19 series; All-New Avengers, Thor, Vision, Ultimates, Illuminati, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Moon Girl, Hercules, Black Knight, Pasty Walker aka Hellcat, Howard the Duck, Drax, Carnage, Venom, Silk, Web Warriors, Wolverine, and All-New X-Men. I appreciate Marvel doing this. I was already getting several of these (in bold above), but of the ones I had not already ordered, the previews mostly confirmed that they really didn’t look like something that was interesting to me. Except for Wolverine. The 2 pages grabbed me and my answer to the question “Do you want to see more?” was “Yes!” so it off to my local comic shop to grab a copy.
All-New Wolverine #1 did not disappoint. What I got was a fun action story featuring X-23 donning a variation of the yellow-and-blue Wolverine suit filling in for her mentor/man she was cloned from while he is temporarily dead (c’mon, you all know he’s not going to stay dead, it’s the Marvel Universe…) The one part I could have done without was the romance between Laura and Angel (who seems to have gotten energy wings somewhere along the line) which seemed borderline creepy because she was introduced as a teenager a few years back, and Warren Worthington is much older, but it wasn’t a show-stopper for me. (EDIT: I’m informed that the Warren in this book is the teen-age original X-Men Warren that was brought forward in time several years ago in Bendis’ All-New X-Men. I’m not sure having a time displaced Warren from what I can only assume is an alternate timeline is much better, but at least there is not the creepy age thing… This is the kind of convoluted X-Men continuity stuff that makes my head hurt…) That said, A nice reveal at the end will get me to come back for more, which is really the goal of any #1 issue.
Writer Tom Taylor (writer of the wonderful Injustice: Gods Among Us stuff over at DC) does a great job weaving action and dialogue together, I never felt the “walked into the middle of a movie” syndrome that I frequently feel when picking up an X-book. This was a first issue that read like a first issue, everything I needed to enjoy the story was in the story. I have just a bit of basic extra knowledge about who these characters are and I’m sure people really steeped in X-Lore may have picked up on stuff that I totally missed, but I was happy with what I got. As long as this doesn’t get wrapped into any involved crossovers that will require me to pick up a bunch of other X-books to understand, Marvel has a new reader.
Reviewed by: Bob Bretall
(bob@comicspectrum.com)
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FYI: The Warren in this book is a teenaged Warren that was brought forward in time by Beast — along with the rest of the Original Five X-Men — in Volume 1 of All-New X-Men. It’s NOT the adult Warren.
Fixed this in the review. Removes the creepy age thing and replaces it with an equally disturbing bit of overly-convoluted X-continuity….
It doesn’t help that Bendis doesn’t care about continuity in the first place. The fact Laura and Adult Warren served together in X-Force (where she neither liked NOR trusted him; she considered Archangel a dangerous and unpredictable wildcard) is never once mentioned. Anyway, it IS supposed to be the same Warren, as during the Battle of the Atom event Teen!Cyclops was briefly killed and it caused Adult!Cyke to briefly fade out of existence Back to the Future-style.
I have to say that Taylor does a good job making me actually ENJOY a relationship that Bendis pulled out of his ass (Laura and Warren had maybe ONE panel of dialogue between each other in ANXM prior to Bendis deciding Warren was into her and hamfisting it together). The patting-the-head scene was really kind of adorable.