Written by Daniel Way & Marjorie Liu
Illustrated by Giuseppe CamuncoliAN ALL-NEW STORYLINE STARTS HERE! Daken is going to prove to the world he’s the best there is at what he does, one country at a time…and he’s starting with MADRIPOOR!
This week saw a few turning points take place for Wolverine’s morally ambiguous son. Not only the start of a new storyline in this very issue, but the announcement that BOTH series writers would be leaving the book following Issue 8. While the future of the book is, as yet, unknown to fans, the present is just as dangerous and riveting as it has been since the start. Click below to see how this chapter plays out!
Despite being inextricably linked, the creative team on this book has made a very conscious effort to not only give this book its own identity separate from Jason Aaron’s Wolverine title, but to give Daken his own identity and motives separate from his father’s. Yes, Daken is Wolverine’s son, and some of his methods are undoubtedly cut from the cloth. However, Daken is a far more subversive character than Logan. While he is not opposed to using his claws to get the job done, he is just as adept at using misdirection, sexual mystique and psychological attacks to accomplish his goals…and this issue is full of them. At the end of last issue, we learn that Daken intends to create a beachhead for his empire in the Marvel Universe’s own wretched hive of scum and villainy, Madripoor. However, to do that, he needs to get past Tyger Tyger, the country’s current boss vigilante, attempting to clean up the country in tandem with it’s police force. In usual Daken fashion, he does this through misdirection and in one scene that I was SURE would end with sex, manages to get deeply inside Tyger’s head in ways that we, as the reader, understand but she very much does not. It’s also interesting to see Daken fail with one of his sexually motivated invasive tactics, creating a rare chink in his armor. Tyger is not one of usual marks, and their future interplay should be very interesting.
The rest of the issue shows the seed Daken plants in Tyger’s mind begin to bloom as his plan becomes more clear (again, to the reader, not the other characters.) It seems as if there is one particular ledger that will given Daken leverage over Madripoor’s entire unsavory underworld…and if my ability to predict future occurrences within comics, it’s looking like he is pretty close to having Tyger and the Madripoor police get this VERY well guarded ledger for him. Pretty sneaky, bro…pretty sneaky.
That said, I think one of the major negatives I can see with the story is the inclusion of Daken’s new Reed Richards-pioneered power glove. While yes, I understand the need to give the character a unique power-set over his father and “sister”, I’m not sure a stun glove was really the scratch that particular itch needed. I guess I might just need to see it action a little more, but I don’t inherently think there was anything wrong with his claws being his primary weapon…I guess I’ll just have to see.
On the art end, Camuncoli remains consistent with his style, except now I’m just starting to like it a little more. He manages to skirt the line between scratchy and clean in a way that causes a lot of artists to falter, and creates a relatively unique and consistent style. While there is still plenty of definition and evolution for him to employ, I would not be surprised if we start seeing him pop up more and more in the coming years, in a lot of ways like Stefano Caselli did following his stint on Avengers: The Initiative.
Overall, this book has a certain charm to it that can’t be denied. Is it the perfect, end all and be all of comics? Certainly not. But its a fun book telling fun stories with a still relatively unpredictable character in the prime of his career. Despite his origins, Way and crew have made it really hard to pigeon-hole Daken as just another character with claws, which in and of itself adds to the intrigue and makes me want to stick around to see just what kind of character Daken ends up becoming.
Final Verdict: 9.1 – Buy
