Wolverine

Credits: Ben Percy writes; Federico Vicentini draws; Frank D’Armata colors; Cory Petit letters; issue #25 backup story art by Greg Land, Juan Ferreyra and others; covers by Adam Kubert and Frank Martin Jr.

As ever, this little Ben Percy Wolverine arc shows us Logan’s continuing obsession with suffering. Not pain, as he would have us believe—because that, like pleasure and the sensation of hot and cold and so on, is transitory. And sure, that’s an easy thing to say when you don’t deal with it chronically, but we all know that is not and never has been the case with Wolverine*. The acute pains of violence fade very quickly for him. It’s the fixation on the wound, the role of the aggrieved sufferer, for which Logan has a passion that is literally undying.

(*The rare exceptions are very hard to recall out of his many thousands of tales in circulation.)

[Read more…] about Wolverine #24-25 in Review—Enemy of Himself!

Credits: Ben Percy writes; Adam Kuberts draws covers & interiors; Frank Martin colors; Cory Petit letters

How Many Ways Can Percy Play the Faux Grimdark?

So, what did Wolvie get up to after, um, saving the time-stream or whatever in X Lives and X Deaths of Wolverine (Jan-Mar 2022)? His busy scribe Ben Percy took a backseat and called old Wade Wilson to phone in the lines for several issues. But in fact the notorious Merc with the Mouth mouthed nothing but pure Percy-isms throughout this four-month arc, never quite sounding like his mordantly buoyant self, cratered and a-boil as it is with those unsightly, indefatigable cankers. It’s Percy’s characteristic mordancy that wins through, the deep bass gravel having long since popped and shredded any sense of buoyancy; however cartoonishly irritating or genuinely leavening the generic loaf of two-dimensional slapstick violence, Deadpool’s trademark levity is inevitably missing from his run-on patter here.

[Read more…] about Wolverine #20-23 in Review—Danger! Deadpool! Danger! Maverick! Danger!