Issue(s): Wolverine: Killing
Cover Date: Sep 93
Title: "Killing"
Credits:
John Ney Rieber - Writer
Kent Williams - Art
Suzanne Gaffney - Editor

Review/plot:
I had hopes for this since it is written by John Ney Rieber, who would soon begin a Books of Magic run that i quite enjoy. This story is unfortunately complete gibberish. That may be in part due to the fact that it's still early for Rieber - this seems to be the first thing he's done professionally after finishing a graphic novel called Tell Me, Dark (he scripted the story after the original writer passed away). But the real reason this story is impenetrable is the art. It's by Kent Williams, who was also the artist on Tell Me, Dark and who has appeared in my project before on Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown and an issue of X-Men. In Meltdown, Williams shared artistic duties with another artist in an innovative way. The art was very abstract but it was a prestige format book for Epic and it kind of made sense for what it was. This issue is pure Williams, and despite being a thick $5.95 one shot, it's got standard comic book paper and Williams' weird style looks less like artist expression and more like someone who just doesn't want to draw a Wolverine comic book.

Thinking about this, and Meltdown, and Inner Fury, it seems like there was an interesting phenomenon going on where Marvel put out Wolverine stories knowing he was popular, but instead of using artists that would illustrate him as the action oriented violent super hero that he was popular for being, they chose artists that might be more comfortable doing Vertigo books. It's like Marvel was saying, Look, we want to do innovative stuff, but we also have to sell comics! So how about we do Vertigo stories with Wolverine? Of course DC managed to put out actual Vertigo books, so it's not like it what Marvel was doing was the only way to do things. And it's a bad fit. This would be disappointing (or unreadable, really) to any Wolverine fan, and it's not coming close to satisfying the expectations i had for a John Ney Rieber book.

The story is about a secluded population of weirdos who decide that they want Wolverine's healing factor introduced into their bloodline. So one woman decides that Wolverine should be lured there to sleep with her daughter. This is over the objections of another guy who i guess likes the daughter, although i'm not convinced that he's not a zombie.

The zombie guy somehow causes Wolverine to have bad dreams that lead him to the city, which is in Tibet. On the way there he fights some Chinese soldiers...

...and then meets an old guy who tells him not to pull branches off the trees, or they'll cry.

There's more such surreal craziness before we get back to the story.

After that, Wolverine again heads to the city. On the way there, he finds the daughter, who had run away and passed out in the snow. He brings her back, unaware of why she was fleeing. But he befriends her after she wakes up.

He's then attacked by the jealous zombie guy, who i guess has some kind of powered exoskeleton.

After a fight that goes on for way too long...

...Wolverine wins and he leaves the city. The daughter finds a note from Wolvie inviting her to come visit him some time.

Kent Williams clearly should not be required to draw fight sequences, for our sake and his. Even in the non-action portions, John Ney Rieber is required to dump tons of narration on us to compensation for the lack of clarity in the art. Rieber's also got a whole thing with the surreal part of Wolverine's journey about about how he shouldn't automatically resort to violence and stuff like that, but it's ground that's been covered for a decade at this point. That's one of the problems with these one shots. They're not grounded in anything that's going on in continuity, so we get these stories where Wolverine is used in a very generic way, like from a template that was frozen circa 1983, and of course they never have any impact on his character going forward. And even so, he's a poor fit for these kinds of stories. I can see Rieber telling a story about a hidden Tibetan city and the conflict that would arise between staying true to themselves and wanting to experience the outside world, but it's not a story that Wolverine naturally fits into, and the truth is that there isn't really even any space to explore those themes when you're busy having Wolverine engaged in a poorly drawn fight with a guy in a power suit for ten pages.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This is one of several Wolverine stories that needs to fit in before he loses his adamantium in Fatal Attractions. Jubilee just happens to be at the X-Mansion when Wolverine is leaving after his dreams.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A