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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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So here I am, still in the midst of culling out trade paperbacks and stacks of comics to rid myself of the stuff I no longer wish to keep – and I’m looking at a stack of books that I’ve put up for sale in Amazon’s used book section. Most of these I can readily see selling (I know I have no intention of ever rereading Crisis on Infinite Earths again – landmark mini-series it may, but Christ is it tedious!), but, now that I look at ‘em, it strikes me that a few may’ve been dumped on the stack in a knee-jerk housecleaning frenzy that I may later regret. I take a closer look at the stack, and the first one to raise some question marks is the Marvel collection, Wolverine: Blood Hungry.
I’ve never been either a big X-Fan or a Wolverine booster, in particular. The former has never quite had the snap of Marvel’s other core series (think I was the wrong age when the series caught fire under the Giant-Sized X-Men re-launch), while the latter has always struck me as too much like the kind of pissed-off short kid that my bookworm self used to futilely attempt to avoid in high school. Yeah, I know: he’s a tough-guy with a heart of gold, but I never really believed that a real-life Fonz wouldn’t have beaten the crap out of Richie Cunningham either.
So why’d I buy this book in the first place? Don’t quite remember: perhaps I was attempting to catch up on the X-Men mythology in preparation for one of the Bryan Singer movies or perhaps, more simply, I was caught by the Bodé-esque mushrooms on the bottom of Kieth’s front cover. Kieth is one of those artists whose work is fun to eyeball even when it’s in the service of total crap, so that probably was a deciding factor. Besides, the price ($6.95) was almost reasonable for a 32-page trade comic.
The story, which first appeared as a serial in Marvel Comics Presents #85-92, opens on a boat headed for Madripoor, one of those typical banana republics that is later described by our hero as a “cesspool with style.” In the cabin, we see two figures playing cards, the clearly menacing one obscured in shadows. Is this unidentified figure Logan a.k.a. Wolverine? we wonder, but, no, instead it’s the story’s antagonist, a character I admittedly don’t know if I’m supposed to remember named Cyber. Cyber is clearly a short-tempered badass, since he quite effortlessly dispatches his poker playing chum just ‘cause the guy has an extra card up his sleeve.
In addition to communing with wild nature, Logan is also canoodling a shapely femme prone to vixenish poses (a Kieth specialty) and shady underworld dealings with the Blake-ian name of Tyger Tiger. (The way Kieth renders her, this dame definitely has some fearsome symmetry.) Scripter David doesn’t really give us a lot of background info about the shapely Miz T., but what more do you need other than the fact that she is obviously a criminal mistressmind and is built like a Frazetta babe lolling on the Dogpatch lawn (plus, she has the hots for Logan.) It’s Tyger who sends our hero out on a scouting mission into the well-guarded compound of a rival gangster known as General Coy.
There, the spiky haired one runs into Cyber, who we learn is in Madripoor to peddle a highly hallucinogenic drug. Cyber, whose skin is laced with the same element that braces Logan so effectively, has A History with Wolverine. So, of course, the instant the two sniff each other out, they engage in a quick and brutish scuffle. In the end, our hero limps off, his stomach ripped open, little knowing that he’s been dosed with the ultra-strong hallucinogen.
So far, so formula. But with Logan’s drugging, David & Keith suddenly toss formula aside. In a drugged-out semi-memory of his past with Cyber, Wolverine experiences a prolonged American Grafitti-styled hallucination, filled with short-skirted teengirls and a drag race ‘tween Logan and his nemesis (now seen as a high school coach) held in two souped-up versions of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. Rereading the book, I find myself wondering: why the heck didn’t I remember this sequence was in here? It’s the kind of left turn goofy plotting Steve Gerber used to pull off regularly back when he was doing The Defenders – and that David is also capable of negotiating when he’s on. The scene is so un-self-consciously crack-brained (love the way Kieth draws Logan’s eyes when he realizes that Cyber has his best girl in the passenger seat of a giant blood sausage on wheels) that you’ve just gotta love it. . .if only because it so effectively tweaks the character’s usual roustabout posturing.
For me, at least, it’s enough to elevate the rest of the inevitable Logan-demands-a-rematch-and-defeats-the baddie tale (though, a sequence featuring Tyger and General Coy negotiating while they hold each other at gunpoint, over tea and ping pong, is both comically caustic and well-visualized). It’s sufficient to convince me to pull the book off my stack of to-be-sold volumes and re-place it back on the shelves – which I do. With mainstream superhero books like this, you don’t always need a masterwork to inspire the love. Sometimes, all it takes is a dose of what-the-hell comic book silliness to spark my reader’s devotion. . .
-- Bill Sherman
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Wolverine: Blood Hungry by Peter David and Sam Kieth (Marvel)
As for our protagonist, we first come upon him in the forests of Madripoor, watching an elderly wolf that itself is stalking some prey. (This blurring between wolverines – ratty creatures that’re actually members of the weasel family – with wolves has long been one of the unintentional jokes behind the character.) How and why our hero is in this backwater is perhaps a mystery that’s answered in another story; me, I’m always amazed that a figure who’s an inextricable part of so many ongoing team adventures has the time to go gallivanting in the Third World solo, but for me it can take a half-day’s planning just to the movies, so what do I know?