Wolverine #20 – Review

by Jason Aaron (writing), Renato Guedes (pencils), Jose Wilson Magalhaes (inks), Matthew Wilson (colors), and Cory Petit (letters)

The Story: Someone’s trying to start a war between the Hand and the Yakuza and naturally, Wolverine and Melita find themselves caught in the middle.

The Review:  This issue serves as a nice little cross-section of several of the things that have worked well in Jason Aaron’s tenure on Wolverine.  You’ve got balls to the wall action, Logan’s unique way of fumbling through a romantic relationship, and Aaron’s twisted brand of humour.  While the result doesn’t re-invent the wheel, it does lead to a really fun time that would have you thoroughly entertained for the entirety of its 22 pages and will give you a laugh on several occasions.

Personally, I really appreciated the mish-mash of genres present here, which in itself is another hallmark of Aaron’s run, which has seen him tell a wide variety of Wolverine-related stories.  You’ve got comedy, action, horror characters, crime drama, and ninjas all mixed up together into a potent and quick combination that feels like what a Wolverine comic should be.

Key to this mixture was Aaron’s bringing back a couple of his best Wolverine-related creations: the Buzzard Brothers.  I’d forgotten how absolutely hilarious these guys are.  It’s the twisted sort of stuff that could only come from the Jason Aaron who brought us Ghost Rider.  They’re caricatures straight out of Deliverance and the Hills Have Eyes and while horrific, are also great for a laugh.  They get several great lines and now, having gotten a power upgrade that seems to have made them nearly unkillable, they’re more over-the-top and slapstick than ever.  Seeing these guys show up in the middle of a Kingpin/Yakuza crime drama is mind-bending good fun and while you’d think it’d be jarring, I found myself just sitting back and enjoying the insanity.

And really, the action scenes in this month are just as nutty and over-the-top as the Buzzard Brothers themselves.  We get ninjas, asteroid busting sniper rounds (seriously), and Wolverine doing all manner of bad things to the unkillable Buzzards.  It leads a comic that moves at an incredibly brisk pace that never leaves the reader bored or adrift.

Red Robin #23 – Review

By: Fabian Nicieza (writer), Marcus To (penciller), Ray McCarthy (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Seriously, Tim—what is up with all these women who want you dead?

The Review: The detective aspect in a lot of comics has faded in recent years, having become much harder to write on a lot of levels.  One: science and technology have advanced to the point where you need to put in some serious research to put out a credible mystery.  Two: a true-blooded mystery requires a fairly intense commitment to thoughtful and farsighted plotting.  Three: it’s just plain difficult creating suspense out of detective work in a comic.

In Detective Comics, Scott Snyder generates that suspense by instilling a sense of horror to Dick Grayson’s CSI-type work.  Here in Red Robin, Nicieza goes for a more action-thriller feel, building up the layers of Tim’s more FBI-like operations until they reach Mission Impossible proportions.  Tim’s a one-man unit out to take down whole networks of crime—that’s about as impossible as it gets.

Red Robin’s preference for going it alone really allows us to enjoy how meticulously he plans out everything.  With Batman, you take it for granted that a lot of prep-time is involved, but you actually get to see Tim’s thought processes, a fun mix of gumshoe narration and his own dry sense of humor (“So when I hit the apartment of Jimmy Li…the leader of the Golden Dragons took exception.  And then she took me out the window.”).  He lacks the physicality of the other Bat-guys (as he himself notes looking at Dick’s aerial acrobatics), but his clipping brainwork brings its own kind of excitement.

Tim does tend to handle his dirty work solo most of the time, but that doesn’t prevent Nicieza from using recurring characters as a revolving supporting cast.  As great as it is to see Bruce and Dick following Tim’s lead, even despite their doubts over his questionable decisions, it’s Lynx and her inscrutable loyalties that really spices up Tim’s life: tackling him out a multi-story window and then making out during the free-fall—talk about having it all.

The strength of Red Robin comes mostly from Nicieza’s crafty plotting.  He has a great handle on technology, or at least he makes it seem so to someone as technologically ignorant as me, and can use it to create and develop leads and clues for his story: the issue starts with a website giving backdoor access for kill orders; it ends with the revival of the Assassins Tournament, a kind of hit man’s Iron Chef with international CEOs being the theme ingredient of choice.