Review: Wolverine: Logan

Wolverine: Logan (which was apparently supposed to have a long “O” but I can’t suss out how to do it and neither could the publisher’s art department, apparently) is one of those curious “$20 for this? Really, Marvel?” hardcovers that the company occasionally throws onto the market. It’s three issues of Wolverine in World War II Japan, done by overhyped (if frequently quite good) writer Brian K Vaughan and artist Eduardo Risso, whom I could possibly write odes for, maybe even sonnets. As expected, it’s visually stunning, with watercolors by Dean White complementing Risso’s work perfectly, but the script is threadbare and hackneyed taking 60 pages to do what Claremont and Byrne (or Smith, or Lee, or Romita) would manage in 20.

In the (copious, to pad out the page count) bonus material, Vaughan’s original proposal states that he wants to tell an “evergreen” story with the character, but what the audience ends up with is a pile of clichés with only a single twist moving it away from a million other comics with the character. If you’ve never read a Wolverine story, you’re likely going to enjoy it just fine, but it’s asking a bit much of the usual audience to read another story of Wolverine, in Japan, falling in love, before some bad things happen, and I can’t see anyone who’s not already familiar with the character shelling out the cover price just for some quite-nice artwork. You’d be better off spending the same money on a hardcover featuring a meaty story with the character that holds up nicely over 20 years later.