If done properly it’s the ultimate visual medium. Even silent films had sound effects and hurdy-gurdy music played live on location. With a graphic novel every detail of the story, including the characters present, the plot developments, the mood of the moment, all of them have to be recognisably drawn into the panel or written into the dialogue. At least 60% of the story is told by the artwork.
So seeing as I have a small amount of money injected into my account every fortnight and the freedom with which to set my own reading agenda instead of having Woolf inflicted upon me I am reigniting my passion for graphic novels. I will be reviewing one a week, with the reviews being posted every Wednesday to try to give the blog a more permanent structure. I hope that for the people reading this measly drop in the ocean of personal blogs on the planet Internet it is interesting and perhaps a little enlightening, and maybe convinces you to have a go at broadening your own reading outside of the medium of purely written storytelling and into something a little more diverse.
Now, I don’t have anywhere near enough money to get as many graphic novels as I’d like or even enough to accurately represent even a tenth of the entire genre, so I’ll be buying things according to my taste rather than trying to cover the “greats”. Sometimes the two will inevitably overlap, but this feature will be more or less a rogues’ gallery of things I thought worth a pop.
And so we begin with Wolverine: Origin, written by Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada and Paul Jenkins, and pencilled by Andy Kubert and coloured by Richard Isanove.
Storyline-
Jemas, Quesada and Jenkins take us all the way back to the beginning here, as the title would suggest, with the childhood and teenage years of one James Howlett, a boy whose sickly episodes necessitate the presence of a governess, a girl called Rose. James' parents have already lost one son, and his father, master of quite an estate, is thought of as soft and unable to run the household by the fierce grandfather. There is also a suspiciously familiar-looking groundskeeper called Thomas Logan, who sports gruff mannerisms and black mutton chops to die for.
So far, so 18th Century Canadian manor.
It gets interesting, humanly gripping when Thomas Logan's son, who he refers to as Dog, joins the young governess and the drippish heir to the estate as unlikely sort-of friends. There is always a seperation, as each day ends with Dog returning to his abusive, alcoholic father in a hut and his companions head up to the big house. The human development of the three children, what they grow up into and how that plays out is the core of Origin- make no mistake, Wolverine as an X-Man, part of Weapon-X or remotely referenced against the Marvel Universe this ain't. Because he heals so well, Wolverine lives a long, long time, as any casual geek knows, so there really wouldn't be that much to reference to anyway should he come across other mutants or superbeings.
Tensions run high between the groundskeeper and the master of the house, pitting the boys' fathers against each other until finally Thomas Logan is removed from service and the grounds. He breaks back in, an altercation occurs in which James' unnatural-ness peeks through and the claws make an appearance, with terrible consequences. At this point, Rose (who is starting to echo Jean Grey more and more in appearance as she matures, intentionally according to the writers) takes him away and they set up life on a Canadian mining facility with other rag-tags. To give any more away would be unfair- it's an interesting, rollicking story, with a young James Howlett taking on a new name and maturing into a lean, muscly and angry, mixed up young man.
Art-
Pencilled by Kubert the panels are clear, deliberate and grittily, edgily sketched, with the cartoon element of some artists' work removed. The panorama scenes are well composed and incredibly detailed landscapes, not just concentrated on the focus point of that panel but fully fleshed out to the border, and the character detail, particularly facially, is subtle and refined. It does what good graphic novel art should, adding to and complimenting what is typed into those little blank bubbles.
The colours chosen by Isanove perfectly accompany such artistic style, with muted and realistic tones used in favour of gaudy or cartoonish, bright panels. The grey-based tones of the panel above fit us perfectly in a night time setting, but also keep the focus on the touches of colour, drawing the eye from bottom-left to top-right across the most important figure in that shot. Meanwhile, even the brighter panels such as Dog talking to the Howlett grandfather below or the children watching a sunset on the farm are given a muted and gritty treatment by Isanove, with what could be a bright and clashing scene still based in grey variations of the colours- the orange of the firelight, for example, or later the lush green of the Canadian forests, are still daubed with darker and less intense colours.
Overall, setting up Wolverine was going to take quite a bit of doing. As with so many graphic novels I must admit I felt a little disappointed at the length and thought the open ending, which was inevitable, could have been followed with a few more encounters before finishing the story. That said, hints and origins of all sorts of aspects of Logan's character are placed throughout, from the names he takes on to the mannerisms he adopts and even a first time he encounters someone saying "Bub", all while weaving a decent story that feels appropriately cruel for the birth of Marvel's most messed up hero.
If you're sole exposure to Wolverine has been the films, or you've ever wanted to know what makes him so mean and gritty, I'd definitely give it a read.
Next week- bookending Logan’s life at the other end with Wolverine: Old Man Logan
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