The idea behind Wolverine and the X-Men was always a tough sell. Logan, the world’s greatest purveyor of violence, running a school? It just didn’t seem like a strong idea. To try and make it work, Marvel saddled writer Jason Aaron with the job. His slant was to make the series overly comical, but it didn’t work. Month in and month out, Wolverine and the X-Men came across like a bad sitcom.
When Marvel announced writer Jason Latour would be taking over, I was eager to see if he would repair the damage. Sadly, he has not. Latour has pretty much taken up right where Aaron left off, and the results are a choppy, convoluted first issue. Latour doesn’t ease into this run; instead he throws as much at the reader as possible. Quentin Quire, the boy who will posses the Phoenix Force one day, is a substitute teacher. Why? Well, for some reason Wolverine, the dean of the Xavier School, has allowed all the adult teachers to go off on missions.
The only person left to deal with the student body is Storm, who continues to toss out one-liners in a way that goes against her character in every other book. Meanwhile, the dean, Mr. Logan, Wolverine himself, is busy fighting a slew of trained killers in a battle pit in order to try and get Fantomex to come back with him as teacher. Not an easy conversation as the last time the two teamed up, Fantomex killed a child. Think that’s weird? Try Evan, Fantomex’s clone of the dead child, going to Wolverine’s school.
All of this is the Achilles’ heel to Latour’s first issue. Way too much is happening, which might work out if you’ve followed the series, but any reader tuning in for the first time (this is an issue #1) is screwed. Outside of the clutter, there’s the continuously gleaming error that Wolverine does not work as a dean, headmaster or teacher. He leaves the school to go fight in a death pit when he knows he no longer has his healing ability. Seriously? How would any of the X-Men allow this to continue? Latour inherited that problem, but he exacerbates it by continuing along the nudge-nudge, wink-wink, I’m-so-clever writing style as Jason Aaron.
Mahmud Asrar’s art is just as uneven as Latour’s story. Some of the panels look great. The work within the school is crisp, clean and slick. The lines are solid, the inks heavy, and it’s good smash mouth comic art. Then, when Wolverine steps into the picture, everything changes. Wolverine looks awful, as though he’s been flattened or he’s the bastard son of Hammerhead. Nothing works in that entire section. Asrar’s work here is not terrible, just lacking in consistency.
(2.5 Story, 2.5 Art)
