Written by Jason Aaron
Illustrated by Adam KubertWOLVERINE IS THE NEW DARK PHOENIX! We’ll let that sink in… NOW RUN TO YOUR RETAILER AND MAKE THEM RESERVE YOU A COPY OF THIS COMIC!
Well, you heard the solicitation copy. Now that that’s sunk in, what have we learned from all this, and why am I using a word like “learned” in the context of Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine? After the jump, blah blah blah.
A comic book that spends its denouement denouncing its entire adventure as pointless is either superhumanly confident or outright contemptuous of its readers. Somehow, I don’t think the latter is the case with Jason Aaron. Still, the authorial intent here is actually interesting to ponder, considering the sharp turn that Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine takes here in its last issue. In a comic book full of bizarre twists, the most bizarre one yet is the shift from manic antics into meditative character-based musings, like a speed metal band suddenly playing Motown. An attempt to graft meaning onto adventures that Spider-Man himself admits were bafflingly random? Or just an attempt to work some kind of recognizable emotion, period, into the story?
Regardless of Jason Aaron’s reasons, what we have here is a strangely downbeat ending, especially considering how the cover shows Wolverine in full-on raging Phoenix mode. The lack of violence is conspicuous: we’ve spent five issues (and over a year) riding a roller coaster, and now we’re being asked to slow down and take in the scenery, as if that was what was important all along. Indeed, the bulk of the issue takes place not only in a setting where the plot of the series hasn’t resolved, but where the heroes have explicitly given up on resolving it. It’s a curiously abrupt halt to the momentum, and to my own surprise it just might be audacious enough to work.
That’s not to say that all of it works, because some of it certainly doesn’t. The resolution to the problem posed by the cover — what if Wolverine went all Phoenix on everyone’s asses, especially Spider-Man’s? — is barely touched upon, and given what I like to call the Secret Invasion treatment. This sort of sly avoidance of the issue wouldn’t be too egregious except for the entire rest of the series has defined itself pretty much on how much damage it can do to everything around it while on some cosmic PCP bender. Wolverphoenix is maybe the most gonzo idea in a series that’s full of them, so it just feels like the worst kind of bait and switch: a totally wasted opportunity.
It’s hard to feel too stung, though, when we’ve got Adam Kubert. For an issue that’s mostly just people sitting around talking, he still manages to find ways to not only keep it interesting, but also keep it off-kilter. I can’t be the only one who gets that sensation from Kubert, like the hallmark of classic Ditko: that sense that nothing in the world he draws is ever particularly at ease. Too zoomed-in, too zoomed-out, gridded in those tall, skinny panels he likes… While he really is one of the best action artists around, it’s issues like this one that highlight just how wonderfully weird he can be, and how lucky we are to have him. Who else would mark the passage of time in a page of Wolverine and Spider-Man staring awkwardly at each other by drawing the entire sweep of a little security camera in the background? Besides, I can’t think of any artist more perfect for the final fate of Mojo depicted here, which is maybe the most terrifying compliment I’ve ever issued.
The question I keep coming back to is what we’ve gained from all this, though. Mojo stories are notorious for never really meaning anything, even by the gossamer-thin standards of comic books; they’re mostly an excuse for writers (that is, Chris Claremont) to put their serious business tendencies on hold for a month or two and just completely dumb out. It’s clear from this ending, though, that this is more than silly TV hijinks. There might even be a case here for Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine as a poker-faced comment on tangled comic book continuity from the characters’ perspective, rather than the readers’. Nearly every comic ever takes great pains to explain to readers why it matters, as if desperate to convince itself, too (as most of them should be). By leaving the question open, it invites us to ponder why these lunatic stories do matter, and draw our own conclusions.
When Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine started over a year ago, there was absolutely no way I could have predicted that it would end up where it has. I expected six issues of increasingly apoplectic beat-’em-up, a crescendo of punches for no reason other than it could. Instead, Aaron and Kubert have delivered something altogether harder to put a bead on, which may be a totally pointless story (“But then, aren’t they all?”) but it at least takes the time to soberly ask as much of itself. For a mainstream superhero comic to bother with that kind of self-awareness without dipping into irony or schtick: well, as Spider-Man put it in the recap page, “Things got weird.”
Final Verdict: 8.0 / Buy the TPB or the HC or the whatever
