"Wolverine: Madripoor Nights" by Chris Claremont & Peter David

 

            The following is a review of the “Wolverine: Madripoor Nights” graphic novel by Chris Claremont & Peter David.

            Madripoor: a small island principality south of Singapore. Not a nice place. Full of pirates, smugglers, and all kinds of other unsavory people. Crime central. Anything goes. Madripoor consists of two main areas. Hightown, full of the rich and powerful; Lowtown, the slums, a place you really don’t want to be. Ruled by a man known simply as “the Prince.”

            The X-Men: A team of mutant superpowers, born with a quirk of genetics giving them powers beyond those of regular humans. Mutants are hated and feared for their differences. The X-Men wish for mutants and humans to co-exist in peace and harmony. They battle against evil mutants who wish for mutant superiority, as well as other super villains, and humans who wish to end mutantkind. Or at least they did; until the X-Men all died… or did they?

            Logan: Also called Wolverine. The best there is at what he does, but what he does isn’t very nice. A mutant. Born with a healing factor allowing him to heal from almost any wound. His skeleton was bonded with the unbreakable metal adamantium, and he has claws that extend from his knuckles. Or at least he did; until he died… or did he?

            The mysterious Patch arrives in Madripoor, where he finds an old also dead ally of the X-Men, Jessan Hoan struggling to survive as a target of the crime lord Roche. The two team up against Roche and Jessan takes the name of Tyger Tiger and takes control of the Lowtown crime ring. General Nguyen Ngoc Coy, uncle of former New Mutant Karma, is the Kingpin of Hightown. His enforcers are Roughouse and Bloodsport, evil mutants both. Tyger is not happy with Coy’ rule and the two clash, with Patch caught in the middle. But Patch isn’t alone in Madripoor. He forges an alliance with private investigators Lindsay McCabe and Jessica Drew (the former super hero Spider-Woman), who have taken up residence in Madripoor. Patch battles the Silver Samurai, teams up with Mister Fixit (formerly the super hero Robert Bruce Banner/Hulk), and reminisces of his rivalry with evil mutant Sabretooth. He returns to San Francisco to try to stop the descendent of the ancient demon Ba’al from completing the Gehenna Stone, which will release Ba’al from his prison.

When I picked the book up, I expected the Madripoor story to be only one part of the book, with the title “Madripoor Nights” to be a tack-on that was catchy (prior readers of my other reviews of Marvel Epic Collections would know that this is often the case). But in this case, I was wrong. The entirety of the book took place in Madripoor. Spider-Woman is actually a favorite character of mine, so learning she was in this book got me excited. However, in this book, Jessica Drew never wore her costume and rarely used any of her powers except for the occasional wall-crawling, so this disappointed me. I especially enjoyed the “24 Hours” issue describing Logan’s history with Victor Creed/Sabretooth, also a favorite evil mutant of mine and the primary reason I picked out this book, and in this case, I was not disappointed. The concept of Logan believed to be dead and people not knowing that “Patch” was Wolverine seemed preposterous, however. He did try to avoid popping the claws as much as possible, but let’s face it: an eyepatch is a rather weak disguise. And even though the Hulk was in his Mister Fixit phase, Wolverine and Hulk have a lot of history (the first issue Wolverine appeared in was an issue of “The Incredible Hulk”). The artwork was not to my liking. The issues in this book were originally published in 1988-1989, but that’s not a bad thing. Longtime comic book readers such as myself know how artwork has changed over time and there are very recognizable traits of comic book art periods. Back in 1988-1989, the artwork was still hand-drawn at the time. John Buscema, one of the book’s primary artists in this book drew facial shapes which to me, just didn’t look realistic, and on top of that, the colors were a bit darker than other comics I’ve read. I typically like comics with brighter colors. That’s also not to say that I find that today’s art is better. Far from it. But with graphic novels, the story and the art are both equally important, that’s why it’s a GRAPHIC! NOVEL! The story itself actually did interest me. I found it to be high-quality. Now, I’m just going to go on the record of saying that all of this is just MY personal opinion. You might read this and have a totally opposite opinion of how I felt, that’s the beauty of entertainment. So I won’t say that this had a good story, because you might not agree with me. I leave this all up to you. Going past the not recognizing Patch as Wolverine thing and the Jessica Drew not being Spider-Woman thing, I enjoyed the story. I’m usually a fan of the works of both Chris Claremont and Peter David, so the prospect of both being the writers was totally appealing, and I was mostly not disappointed by their work, and the fact that they were the ONLY TWO writers of the book was appealing to me as having too many writers can totally make a story very different, and sometimes make contradictions. I particularly enjoyed “The Gehenna Stone Affair” storyline, which I found to be exciting, and I loved the climax.

I would recommend this book. If you are a Wolvie fan and want to read classic Wolverine stories, this book may be appealing to you. This applies to any kind of reader. If you have been a reader of Wolverine comics and have never read his comics going back to the late 80s, like myself, I recommend this book to you. If you only know Wolverine from the cartoons or movies and are looking for a good starting point, I think this book may be a good jump-on point because I felt like this story is nicely self-contained. If you’ve never even heard of Wolverine and are looking for just any good comic book, background knowledge didn’t seem to be a prerequisite, so I feel this could be a good read for you. Again, this is all MY opinion, so if you read this book and are disappointed by it, you have my apologies, but if you read this book and like it, you’re welcome!

Now, for the most important point of any of my reviews: the numeric score. I’m pretty hard to please, as prior readers will know, so if I give a high score, it probably is a good book. I score on a scale of one-to-ten. One means this was trash, ten means every page in this book deserves to be framed. Okay, well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, so let’s just say one is the worst, ten is the best. Taking everything to account here, the story I like, the contents that disappointed me, and the artwork that didn’t appeal to me, I score this book as a six. Now, don’t go with me about the artwork, there is appeal to many readers, just not to me personally. Comic book art from the late 1980s was unique, so if you grew up with comic books about that time (I didn’t start to collect comics regularly until 2001, and I was born in 1988), the visuals may appeal to you, as they are indicative of comic book art at the time, but if you’re only reading this book because of my recommendation and have never touched a comic book before, this might be a deterrent. I recommend looking at the covers before committing to this book as they are a good indication of the art inside. Like I said, though, the score takes everything into account, the art, my personal misgivings, and the story itself, so you could find your opinion to be the polar opposite of mine, but that’s the beauty of being a human being. So if you do or don’t want to read this based just on my words, it’s all up to you.

So that’s all I have to say about “Wolverine: Madripoor Nights.” Before I sign off, first I will say I have literally written dozens of book reviews, dominantly Marvel graphic novels and prose novels, and that’s all I’ve really been doing lately (due to the fact I am drafting a prose young adult novel myself), but I’ve written essays, editorials, articles, short stories, and poetry in the past and will do again soon, and I post very regularly, so you can keep looking out for more work from me (expect two more reviews next week), and I thank you for reading this entire article, you are THE BEST, and until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!