Wolverine! Japan! Giant robots! World War II! Nick Fury! Ninja! David Lapham, David Aja and Elizabeth Breitweiser. It’s a comic book dream team making a pulpy adventure of a comic, what more could you want?
Read on below for a full spoiler free (even though it’s five years old, because I’m nice to you like that) review of “Wolverine: Debt Of Death” to find out why you should go dig up this overlooked gem of a comic.
Written by David Lapham
Illustrated by David Aja
WOLVERINE FIGHTS FLYING BATTLEROBO SUITS IN JAPAN!!!! By David Lapham (DEADPOOL MAX) and David Aja (SECRET AVENGERS)!
I first encountered David Lapham and David Aja, two of the most well-celebrated comics creators today, when I picked up a Wolverine comic on a whim. Maybe that’s what makes the proliferation of superhero comics from Marvel and DC worth it at times. Without “Wolverine: Debt Of Death”, a rather overlooked one-shot comic from 2011, I would never have been lead to works of Lapham and Aja like “Stray Bullets” or even “Hawkeye”, which I only checked out after seeing David Aja’s name on the cover. Plus, you have Elizabeth Breitweiser on colours making this an absolute comic dream team. Why, then, am I talking about this one-shot that largely no one remembers from five years ago? Well, precisely because some of the best living comic creators worked on a jaw-droppingly gorgeous Wolverine comic five years and no one remembers it. This is, after all, what these reviews exist to do. This is a look back at a comic that deserves a revisitation, even if no one but me remembers it ever happened.
“Debt Of Death” is a strange mix of genres all rolled into twenty-something pages. It’s equal parts pulp adventures from the 40s and espionage thriller from the 70s all rolled into a dark, neo-noir family drama. It’s a mix of burnt orange sunrises over Japanese airbases and the glow of neon through the rain-soaked streets of Osaka. It’s even got more than a little bit of Star Wars in there for good measure. While that may seem like it should add up to a mess, Lapham, Aja and Breitweiser do a fantastic job of keeping it surprisingly cohesive thank, in large part, to the narrative push of the mystery at the heart of the story. Despite the multiple layers of genre coating that seem to shift every other page, “Debt Of Death” is a murder mystery at it’s heart. It’s Columbo if Columbo had adamantium claws. And jumped out of helicarriers.
That genre-mixing makes “Debt Of Death” feel incredibly compressed as just a one-off story. There’s a lot of story covered in these twenty-odd pages, but the pacing never feels overly accelerated. I mean, sure, would I say this could have worked better as a longer form graphic novel? Of course, but that would almost feel indulgent when considering David Aja’s artwork. Aja is a master at injecting as much story into one page as possible. David Aja can do in one page what some artists might take half an issue to do and it’s never been clearer than here. This story could have easily been a three or four issue miniseries, but story is so crisp and clear and concise thanks to David Aja.
Aja’s artwork also perfectly captures the timeless feel of Lapham’s script, mixing the epic war films of the 40s with the espionage thrillers of the 70s and the rain-soaked neon of the 90s. This leaves the comic lost somewhere in time and it’s almost kind of perfect in a way. You have giant robots that clearly trace a design inspiration back to Superman And The Mechanical Monsters with modern-feeling SHIELD aircraft that’s explored in all its glory thanks to a diagrammatical cut-away panel when it’s first introduced mixed with tan suits and handlebar moustaches. It’s hard to get a reading when exactly the story takes place because you can see the comic wearing influences from all through the past six decades on every page. It’s, again, probably something that shouldn’t work on paper and yet the end result is a gorgeous read.
Continued belowThis is probably in large thanks to the colours from Elizabeth Breitweiser, who brings a very distinct palette to every scene to capture the different tones of each page. The pages range from bunrt oranges, salmon pinks and lavenders that contrast with gunmetal greys that are usually present in the same pages, giving a soft backdrop to the pages with the most destruction and giant robots. Then you have the scenes following Logan himself on his hunt through Japan, which largely employs browns and natural, rustic colours to mark the characters against the heavy shadows and the rain-soaked neon. Finally, you have the scenes with Nick Fury, which generally have a pretty washed out, cool palette with natural greens and browns with some stark white for good measure. It’s a masterpiece in colour art and brings David Aja’s already stunning artwork to entirely new heights.
Something that Breitweiser does that I haven’t seen many colourists do with David Aja’s linework is she renders shadows into the colours. Most of Aja’s artwork that I’ve seen coloured has been coloured flat, with the shadows of Aja’s heavy inks bringing most of the definition to the page. Instead, Breitweiser brings her own definition, particularly in shading skin in close ups. This brings a depth to Aja’s work that isn’t seen often and helps sell the noir feel to the work. It’s a subtle effect and one that you wouldn’t miss if you saw Aja’s work coloured by another, but it’s just one of the touches of brilliance Breitweiser brings to this comic.
“Wolverine: Debt Of Death” is a startlingly good comic. It’s the kind of comic that should just fade away into the background of Marvel’s back catalogue as but a blip in the radar of Wolverine’s continued popularity, but there’s more here than just a Wolverine comic. In fact, I would say this is a comic that takes a murder mystery and layers on inspiration for one of the widest variety of genres I’ve ever seen… and it just happens to be about Wolverine. Actually, to say it’s about Wolverine is a bit of an overstatement. Wolverine it something of an enigma, passing through the lives of these characters and helping how he can along the way. This is a fantastic comic that just sort of stumbled into my life and remains testament to how much you can do with relatively little space. Sometimes, you can make gold.
