Marvel Comics Presents Wolverine 5
Fernanda Rabbe
Review/plot:
Every once in a while, i think to myself, "Marvel has so many great characters that they never use. Why don't they just put out a book called 'Marvel Universe' and have a rotating cast? They could have different writers and artists doing different stories so lateness would never be a problem, and they could always have a popular character in the book so that it would sell decently." Then i remember: oh yeah! They did that. And i hated it.
Now, the reason i hated this book has more to do with format than anything. And the fact is, when i think about the realities of publishing, this format is exactly what it had to be. As much as i personally loved the short-lived Marvel Universe book by Roger Stern, for example, it's completely understandable that no one is going to read three issues about the Monster Hunters. But if you can get some people that will buy anything that Roger Stern writes for Marvel (hi!) combine them with fans of, say, Steve Gerber's Man-Thing, throw in some Doug Moench reviving Master of Kung Fu, and (let's face it) have a lead story about Wolverine so we can plaster his name in big letters on the cover, you've got something relatively viable that still provides a showcase for various characters and creators. And that's exactly what this series is (except it's an Al Milgrom feature, not Roger Stern, in the back). And it really was originally going to be called Marvel Universe, which shows you that they were thinking exactly along these lines of featuring all of Marvel's characters.
Actually if they had stuck with the name Marvel Universe i probably would have been inclined to stick with the book in realtime. Marvel Comics Presents recalls the Marvel Spotlights and Marvel Premieres that tended to be a random hodge-podge of lost souls and try-outs, and we can throw Marvel Fanfare in there too, the book of inventory stories on glossy paper. "Marvel Universe" even now captures my attention in a way that those titles don't, because it tells me it's about the characters, the awesome shared universe that is what i love best about Marvel. And to be fair, despite the more mundane Marvel Comics Presents title, that really is exactly what this book is, especially at first. This isn't a collection of junk that Marvel patched together. It's all new material, and (again, especially at first) creators working on their pet characters, like the aforementioned Moench and Gerber, and soon Don McGregor on Black Panther. And that's a good thing because that's exactly what we want: creators giving attention to the characters that they love. Unfortunately as i scroll down the list of credits and characters at the UHBMCC, as we get further on i start seeing the likes of Howard Mackie, Scott Lobdell (actually he debuts here), Fabian Nicieza, and the like, writers you may or may not like (i mostly don't although Nicieza can be good) but it's not like we won't get enough of them on the main books. I'd like to have seen this book continue as a "creator's character corner", so to speak.
But even if the book managed to fully be that throughout its run, i'd still have problems with it, in part due to my peculiar filing method for my comics, and in part because of some general problems with anthology titles. Again, i understand why it had to be this way. There are not enough people that want to read Steve Gerber's Man-Thing to sustain a book, and not enough to sustain Doug Moech's Kung Fu (ok, i bet there's actually a lot of overlap between those two, but you get the idea). But join forces, and we can keep the book going. And we all want to read a Chris Claremont/John Buscema/Klaus Janson Wolverine book (don't lie to me and pretend you're too cool for a Wolverine story by these creators).
But for my purposes, the different stories about different characters present continuity problems that cause me to have to split the stories up, especially since the runs all go for different lengths so that the Man-Thing story runs 12 issues but MOKF runs for 8. Those characters may not be a problem, but eventually you're going to have an interaction that screws things up, and then you've got the Al Milgrom story that uses more mainstream characters. That's my personal bugaboo.
One of the more general problems is that at any given time you're likely to wind up with an issue that has characters or creators that you're not very interested in, and that becomes especially true in later issues when the likes of Howard Mackie are writing a bigger proportion of the stories. Which basically means you've paid for a 32 page comic and gotten 8 pages that you're interested in. Add to that the fact that the lead story is almost always a Wolverine story. The original idea was to have a rotating list of popular X-characters in the lead, and you see that happening at first, but Marvel eventually realizes that Wolverine has much more selling power than Colossus, Cyclops, and Havok and so they revert to pretty much always leading with Wolverine (it does break down towards the end when the popularity of Ghost Rider makes it possible for him and later Vengeance to become the headliners). So if you don't unconditionally love Wolverine regardless of the creative team, or if you've had enough Wolverine once he really starts getting over-exposed in the 90s, you're that much more likely to be out of luck.
The other general problem is that with four stories per issue, you have the problem that i have with split books, where they are coming to a dramatic conclusion and then an opening splash and then a recap of the previous issue every eight damn pages. And that's enough to even drive anyone crazy; it's just bad pacing. Some creative team can handle that better than others, but we'll look at how it's a problem even here for Chris Claremont and team, and even with him structuring this story in the most formulaic way possible, as you can tell by reading the chapter titles.
This book came out bi-weekly (for the most part they didn't even put dates on the covers)(i should also note that at one point the working title of this book was Marvel Weekly and it was going to come out weekly), and that was an additional problem for me to keep up with the series in realtime. So i had a lot of scattered issues of this series and added more at random later when filling out "10 for $1" deals in the bargain bins, and that's added to my feeling that this was a really haphazard series (and at the same time, it's exactly why every story in every issue had to be able to recap the previous issue's events). Some of the more "important" stuff from this series i was able to get in trades (you'll notice that both this first Wolverine story and my Weapon X entry are reviewed from trades), and i've only recently filled in the missing issues for completion's sake for this project. So i'll now be reading a lot of these stories in full for the first time. And i'm hoping that this will allow me to appreciate them more, and being reminded that this series was originally going to be called "Marvel Universe" has made me want to approach these with a more open mind. So let the lengthy ramble above serve as my longstanding impressions of the series, and we'll see how they hold up as i go through this stuff in more detail.
As for this story, it's actually a pretty important one for Wolverine. It introduces Madripoor as an environment for Wolverine's solo adventures (the city was first seen in New Mutants #32-34 but we haven't seen it since), and with that it gives him a cast and a new identity. The elements introduced here will continue to be used when the ongoing Wolverine's solo series begins; that book actually begins publication while this series was being published.
I'm not the biggest fan of Wolverine having a solo book, especially while he's an active member of the X-Men and especially when they are supposed to be hiding and dead to the world in Australia, but i'm equally not a fan of, say, Spider-Man having three books; it's just what happens when a character becomes mega-popular.
Earlier Wolverine solo adventures - his original mini-series and the Kitty Pryde book - were carefully coordinated so that we could see exactly when he left and came back from the X-Men book. Since Chris Claremont was writing both, that made a lot of sense. But with this and his solo series, it's not as tightly coordinated. Which is fine; the solo appearances of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and others more often than not aren't directly fitted into their team appearances, either. It's just a little more notable when the writer is the same, and you'd think just for promo purposes there'd be some footnotes.
We begin already in Madripoor, with Wolverine declaring it "my kind'a town". It's also said that Wolverine has been here before, in the days "before Logan became Wolverine". Madripoor is an island principality south of Singapore with a sharp divide between the very rich and the very poor, and "no rules".
He helps fight off the goons (without claws) and is introduced to the bar owner, a guy named O'Donnell, and a woman named Sapphire that repeatedly propositions him. The problem is when he says that he was sent by a guy named "Dave Chapel" to "find the tiger".
That causes everyone in the bar to point a gun at Wolvie, since Chapel is known to be dead. Wolverine explains that he found Chapel "in the desert" and was given a pendent showing Chapel and the woman for whom the Princess Bar was named. Chapel died from torture wounds soon after asking Wolverine to find the tiger.
Interesting to see Razorfist here at the same time Doug Moench is reviving Master of Kung Fu. We've also seen the character relatively recently in West Coast Avengers as part of a failed attempt to tie in with the Nick Fury vs. SHIELD miniseries. I guess when that dried up he went back to solo work. One thing John Buscema might have considered was giving Razorfist some pants. I can't speak for 1975, when the first Razorfist was introduced, but i was there for 1989 and i know that we wore pants.