Deadly Troubadour

I took a little break from new comics since the summer. Some might guess that the ever changing characters roles and interminable status altering events took their toll on me. That guess would be correct. This is actually the first new comic I’ve read in some time. What can I say? I’ve long been a fan of X-23 and Laura taking over for Logan is an interesting premise to me.
All New Wolverine #01

Writer: Tom Taylor

Artsits: David Lopez, David Navarrot

Publisher: Marvel

Quick Review: An all-right first issue. An inoffensive amount of exposition that would likely get all new readers caught up. Some fun, quippy dialogue. A little bit of action. Very pretty artwork. Certainly engaging enough to go on the second issue even if the apparent plot hook doesn’t do much for me and seems like a rather obvious turn for the character. Also, there is a little bit of possible ickiness that I will go into below.

Spoilers Lurk Below

Analysis: First off, why am I excited by the cowl changing for Logan even though I am not particularly interested in the new Captain America or Thor. The reason is simple. Logan has been far over-used in a way that Steve and Thor have not been. Putting Logan everywhere and letting him be able to do anything slowly eroded what made the character special. Steve and Thor were essentially just benched. That combined with the potential new stories for Laura make this a pretty neat idea to me.

Which is why it is a little disappointing that the first story to use Laura as Wolverine is a clone story. Yes, Laura is a clone. That is a part of who she is. So, what is the point of this being her fist Wolverine story? This is a story that could have been told anytime. (Honestly, I can’t say for sure or not if there has been a clone story done in Laura’s past. My gut says this is such an obvious angle that her clone hood had to play a part in several stories already.) Why not do something where her identity of Wolverine is a factor?

That said, this is just a first issue and the clone aspect only happened at the tail end. A lot of assumptions are going into the previous paragraph. I should give the issue more credit due to the overall readability of the rest of the comic. As I said, it was cute and rather fun. The characters all came off as likable. I really should be less grumpy. So I will go for more issues. I just hope that flashback Logan isn’t a regular part of the book.

I should focus on the art. Really pretty. It falls very much in the sweet spot of cartoony yet realistic art for me. I’m very curious how the art duties were divided up. I thought there could be differences between the main story and the flashback, but they were still stylistically very similar.

Now about that ickiness. I’m was quite confused about which Angel this was. It was only in writing this that I realized I could track down the answer in the Marvel Wikia. After finding out this was the young Angel, then I think this is a strike against the art team as he certainly didn’t come across as a teenager. But then again, he also didn’t act like a teenager, which would be a strike against the writer. I’ll be honest that I spent most of the issue feeling creeped out by a possible relationship between a teenager and a thirty-year old. No matter how common that seems to be in media, it still gives me the ick.

Wrap Up: Fun and with nice characterization despite some missing clues about the identity of this Angel for new readers. Also, clones make me yawn as a story for a character who has had many stories about her and her history as a clone. The potential newness of a story about new clones doesn’t out-weight the overdone feeling of clone stories in general.