"All-New Wolverine: The Four Sisters"

 

                The following is a review of the graphic novel “All-New Wolverine: The Four Sisters” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

X-23 was created to be a weapon. For a time, that’s all she was. But Laura Kinney escaped that life with the help of the man she was cloned from, the man who became her mentor: The Wolverine. Tragically, the original Wolverine has fallen, and the mantle has been left empty. Laura will live as Logan’s legacy, and she will fight for her brighter future. She will leave behind her old life, and make a new one. She is the all-new Wolverine.

Wolverine and her boyfriend Warren Worthington III/Angel went on a mission to stop a terrorist attack in Paris, France being led by a clone of Laura. The attack was thwarted, but the clone did not survive the encounter. Alchemax Genetics arranged a meeting with Laura two days later where Director Robert Chandler told her that four clones of Laura had escaped from and destroyed an Alchemax Genetics laboratory two weeks prior. These clones had not developed Laura’s healing factor or claws or conscience, could not feel pain, and wanted to kill everyone connected to Alchemax. Laura affirmed to stop her clones. Captain Mooney told his security agents to follow Laura. Laura ungently informed those agents she doesn’t like being followed. Laura returned to her apartment in the Bronx to find her clone Gabby waiting for her. Gabby asked for Laura’s help, but their conversation was interrupted and Gabby fled. Laura followed Gabby to her “sisters” Bellona and Zelda to talk, but Bellona shot Laura unconscious and tied Laura up. Upon waking up, the sisters tried to talk to Laura, but Captain Mooney and his forces showed up. Laura and the sisters incapacitated the soldiers, but the mercenary Taskmaster arrived and shot the sisters. Laura took down Taskmaster, and the sisters had been wearing body armor and survived the gunshots. Laura and the sisters drove off, but were followed by Mooney and his forces, who had placed a tracker on Laura when she went to the Alchemax laboratory. Laura stopped them and informed Mooney the sisters were under her protection. Laura planted the tracker on a squirrel, then followed the sisters, who told her they made their escape from Alchemax because they learned they were dying, but that they did not blow up the facility, and that there were originally ten clones of Laura. Zelda became very weak, so Laura brought the sisters to Doctor Strange, who helped them learn there was nanite technology in the sisters’ brains and that Zelda had days, if not hours, left to live and that the nanites were far too small and too numerous for Doctor Strange to operate on. Laura decided the only way to save Zelda was to steal an Ant-Man suit so she could shrink, enter Zelda’s body, and fight the nanites herself. Doctor Strange teleported Laura and the sisters to Pym Laboratories, but they were caught by Janet Van Dyne/Wasp, the owner of Pym Laboratories. Wasp agreed to help Laura fight the nanites in Zelda’s brain. While Laura and Wasp were in Zelda’s brain, Mooney found the sisters and shot Zelda. Laura and Wasp got out of Zelda’s body, but Zelda did not survive. Mooney returned to the Alchemax Genetics bunker, and Laura and the surviving sisters followed. Laura and the sisters fought Alchemax for the sisters’ lives and freedom and to expose Alchemax Genetics for their plans for the sisters. Bellona fled, and Gabby left with Laura.

Doreen Green/Squirrel Girl arrived at Laura’s apartment with a wolverine named Jonathan which Gabby decided to keep as a pet. Squirrel Girl had come to Laura for her help. The squirrel that Laura had placed the tracker on had been chased by Mooney’s forces and this squirrel was a father and his family had lost their home and was missing him. Laura and Squirrel Girl teamed up to search for the squirrel, which had been caught by a boy and kept in a box. Laura and Squirrel Girl rescued the squirrel, and Squirrel Girl gave Laura a speech which convinced Laura to let Gabby stay with Laura.

Laura and Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman of Earth-65 had their consciousnesses swapped across dimensions. Reed Richards of Gwen’s reality arrived at Gwen’s house to tell Laura and Gwen’s father George Stacy that if this swap wasn’t reversed, both Laura and Gwen would be left mindless. Reed helped Laura teleport back to her dimension and teamed up with Gwen to learn who had swapped them, restore their minds, and return both women to their proper homes.

S.H.I.E.L.D. raided a boat off the coast of New Jersey to prevent the sale of a mysterious box, but the boat, the buyers, the sellers, and the agents went missing. S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill contacted Laura and brought her aboard the Helicarrier, where Hill informed Laura that James Howlett/Logan/Wolverine from an alternate future had been investigating and went missing as well and asked for Laura’s aid in the investigation. S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives opened the box to find it contained a liquid that attracted the dragon Fin Fang Foom. Fin Fang Foom attacked the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Laura went inside Fin Fang Foom to rescue Logan. Tony Stark/Iron Man and Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel teamed up to save the Helicarrier. Gabby asked for Iron Man and Captain Marvel’s help to rescue Laura and Logan, then Laura had to figure out a way to save S.H.I.E.L.D. and New York City from Fin Fang Foom. While Laura was fighting Fin Fang Foom, Gabby brought Logan to their home.

A young new Inhuman named Ulysses with the ability to predict the future foresaw Logan killing a lot of people, including Gabby. Burglars broke into Laura’s apartment, but she, Gabby and Logan stopped them easily. Steve Rogers/Captain America led a S.H.I.E.L.D. squadron to apprehend Logan and Hill contacted Laura to inform her of their presence. Logan ran off with Gabby, and when the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents caught up with Logan and Gabby, they shot Logan with tranquilizers, sending Logan to a feral state leading him to stab Gabby. Laura went after Logan and was about to end him, until Gabby revealed she also had Laura’s healing factor and claws. Laura and Gabby parted ways with Logan on hostile terms, and Laura informed Captain America she would be leaving with Gabby to a place where S.H.I.E.L.D. would be unable to find them.

Laura received a package containing the trigger scent that would send her into a feral rage. Laura moved up her moving plans and hit the road with Gabby and Jonathan. They traveled to Daylesville, California to a cabin just outside the town that Logan had used as a hideout. The power went out, and Laura left the cabin to investigate. She found out the power was out in the whole town. Suddenly, water bombers flew over the town and released trigger scent. When the effect wore off, the entire town was dead. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents arrived, and Laura allowed them to apprehend her. Nick Fury had two S.H.I.E.L.D. fighters follow the water bombers to a carrier, but they were shot down after learning that the bombers had come from Madripoor, a sovereign nation S.H.I.E.L.D. could not follow them to. Laura escaped from S.H.I.E.L.D. custody and returned to Gabby outside Daylesville. Laura and Gabby went to the cargo/pirate ship SS Yost helmed by Captain Ash for passage to Madripoor. Outside Madripoor, the ship stopped, and Ash revealed Ash had sold Laura out. Laura discovered the cargo Ash was carrying was children and was apprehended by Roughhouse and Bellona and brought to Laura’s former handler Kimura, while the SS Yost turned back to California. Kimura tried to reprogram Laura back into a weapon, revealing she knew where Laura’s remaining family was being hidden. Kimura sent Laura after Tyger Tiger, ruler of Madripoor. Gabby contacted the X-Men and managed to get to Madripoor and subdue Laura with the help of Remy LeBeau/Gambit. Laura was brought to Tyger Tiger’s private safe house, where she worked with Jean Grey/Marvel Girl to deprogram what Kimura had implanted into Laura, including the effect of trigger scent. Tyger betrayed Laura’s location to S.H.I.E.L.D. In transit to their location, Nick Fury along with Tyger Tiger, were shot down by Kimura’s agents. Kimura came to Madripoor with Bellona to face off with Laura and Tyger Tiger to trigger Laura into granting Kimura rulership of Madripoor, and Laura had to face her former handler for her humanity and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s judgement.

Okay, we’ve just had a very lengthy plot synopsis, let’s move on to my input in this review. We’ll start, as always, with my personal opinions of this graphic novel. I will say that I found this book to be extremely enjoyable. I’ve always enjoyed the character of Laura Kinney. I remember back when I was in high school and they introduced her in the “X-Men: Evolution” animated series and thought she was such a great character and was thrilled when they brought her into the comics. I also remember back when this story was first created when Marvel decided to kill off Wolverine, a decision I was very unhappy with. I actually didn’t read this series at the time, but I did read “The Death of Wolverine” right before my local comic book store closed. That said, I thought the stories in this book were fantastic. I liked The Four Sisters story arc. The story of the clones was highly interesting, and there were plenty of twists and turns, and I liked the guest cameos from Doctor Strange and Wasp. I liked the Father Lost story, I thought Jonathan was great, and I loved Squirrel Girl’s speech at the end that convinced her to let Gabby stay with her. I loved the Spider-Gwen issue, this one has come up on this blog before (see “Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider: Weapon of Choice”), but I still found it enjoyable to read again with a new perspective. I enjoyed The Box storyline, especially Laura’s solution to save New York from Fin Fang Foom, which I will leave for you to read yourself if you want to find out. I really liked the Destiny storyline, and the schism between Laura and Gabby and Logan at the end was extremely intense, yet satisfying at the same time, Laura deciding who she wanted to be outside of Logan. I thought the Enemy of the State II story arc was excellent, I enjoyed the guest starring roles from Gambit, Marvel Girl, Angel, and Nick Fury, and I found the ending to be extremely surprising. I found Gabby to be an appealing character, and I enjoyed watching her relationship with Laura develop throughout the book. As far as the art goes, I thought it was exceptional throughout the entire book. I really enjoyed the artistic stylings, and I thought they worked really well. This book had a bunch of artists, which is usually very likely to displease me because there’s a chance that one or more of the artists don’t appeal to me, but surprisingly enough, all the artists produced work that I found palatable. As far as the title goes, which is something that I find very important to a graphic novel, there were pretty much four obvious choices (“The Four Sisters,” “The Box,” “Destiny,” or “Enemy of the State”), or they could have just made up a title, and I feel like three of them could have worked, and while I feel “Enemy of the State” could have been a good title, “The Four Sisters” was a good choice as well. And I feel like the editors made a perfect choice for the cover, Laura’s snarling face with her claws extended with two of them crossed in front of her. I feel like it captures the book perfectly. All-in-all, I thought this book was exemplary work and I was extremely pleased by it.

Our next topic in this review is going to be accessibility. I know I’ve been over my meaning of the usage of this word in my reviews over six dozen times at this point, but once again, I must do it because I’m sure that some of the people reading this review have never been to this blog before and don’t know what the heck I’m talking about when I throw out the word “accessibility” like this, so if you’ve been to this blog before, I kindly ask you to bear with me as I once again explain it for the newbs. Accessibility on this blog means can a person who has never had any experience with Marvel before at all find this book at their favorite book store, or at a local comic book shop, or on their preferred online retailer, or their local library if they’re lucky, or on a friend or family member’s book shelf, then decide “hey, this looks/sounds interesting, I want to read it” then obtain this book, read it, and understand everything they’ve just read with absolutely no background knowledge. I will say the basics of the main stories are accessible, but the cameos and guest appearances hinder it slightly, and there is the tie-in storyline to Civil War II that has no given explanation to the event which also makes accessibility a little wonkier, but it isn’t completely inaccessible. This whole book is all one series, but it has an event tie-in without any blurb describing the story of the event, so the whole point of Civil War II is really left out of this book, despite the back of the book even referencing that this book has this storyline in it in the description, so the whole event really feels like it’s missed. However, I don’t feel like knowing Civil War II is completely essential to reading this book, just Ulysses and his visions will seem odd to readers who know nothing about the event. I don’t feel like this is the perfect first book for readers who know nothing about Marvel comics, but at the same time, it’s not the worst book you can start your Marvel collection with either.

Next up on the docket is one of the most crucial topics in this review: my numeric score. I know there are some readers who come to this blog mainly to know exactly how good I think this graphic novel is before they put their mitts on it. I also know I have my readers who come for my description of the story to know what it’s about, I know I have at least one reader (if you’re reading this, you know who you are) who comes to this blog because they want to hear the story and then not have to read this book, which is why I’ve been cutting back on spoilers if possible so that there’s actually a reason to need to read this book to find out all the details, but the numeric score is a very key component to my reviews. My scoring system is very simplistic. I score on a scale of exact integers ranging from one through ten. If I give a book a score of a one, that is the worst score I can give, which means this book is completely unreadable, and if you want to move to extremes, every copy not purchased should be rounded up and burned out of existence and the prints should be wiped so it can never be reproduced. On the other hand, if I score a book at a ten, that is obviously then the highest score I can give, meaning that this book is sheer perfection and one of the best things I have ever read in my entire life, and if you want to go to extremes, I have no idea how it cannot possibly be a bestseller. I’m not in the business of just handing out tens to every book I read, it has to be the whole package to get a ten. The story has to be flawless, the art has to be consistently stunning throughout the entire book, the title and the cover have to perfectly represent the book. Now, while this book was exceptional, I cannot say the story was flawless. While I did enjoy this book, I do not feel it qualifies to be called “perfect.” That said, I’m still giving this book a great score. So, if we put all the ingredients in the blender, a great story, appealing art, a nice title, and a cover that encapsulates the essence of the book, mix it all together thoroughly, the score we’re pouring out is going to be… a nine! I feel like this book was a phenomenal production, but it wasn’t enough to be considered sheer perfection, but for what it was, it was still exemplary.

Next up on the agenda here is recommendation. In this segment, I will answer two questions. The first question is: do I, Tim Cubbin, personally recommend this book to you, my readers, or to anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in a conversation with me about this graphic novel? Question number two is: regardless of if I would recommend this book or not, who do I think would truly appreciate this kind of graphic novel, moving outside the obvious realm of fans of Marvel, Wolverine, X-23, superheroes, the writers or the artists? It’s pretty obvious what the answer to the first question is going to be, but I am compelled to answer it anyway with a confirmation. Yes, I would personally recommend this book to anyone who reads this review or listens to me talk about this book and has even the slightest interest in reading this book based solely on the words I used to describe this book. To answer the second question, I feel that a good audience for this graphic novel would be the following: fans of stories about family, whether it’s the one you’re born with, or the one you found; fans of stories about living up to a legacy, about a person being an ideal while still being their own person; fans of stories with strong female leads, who show that women can do anything a man can do in the same situations; fans of characters trying to be who they truly are and not what the world, society, or other people want them to be; fans of a character trying to break free from their programming and not be a weapon; and fans of stories about a person trying to figure out exactly who they are in life when a big change comes their way. As for Marvel fandom, if you’re a fan of X-23, whether from “X-Men: Evolution” or “Logan” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” or any other Marvel media outside of comics, this book is a good read, and if you’re a fan on X-23 from any experience reading Marvel comic books, then this book is a must read for you.

Okay, we’re at that point where I’m getting ready to wrap everything up after hours of typing and move on with my life and let you do whatever you want to do. Feel free to continue checking out timcubbin.blogspot.com for plenty more of my work. I’ve been working on this blog for five years now. I’ve posted over 170 times. I’ve written short stories, poetry, essays, articles, and editorials, as well as over six dozen other reviews of Marvel Epic Collections. Currently, the main focus of this blog is to review Marvel Modern Era Epic Collections and Ultimate Epic Collections. I purchase every one as soon as I can after its release date, then post a review if possible, as early as I can after finishing reading it. There are only four Modern Era Epic Collections I haven’t reviewed due to not having had a laptop to review on at the point of reading the Modern Era Epic Collection and not having had a reason to reread these Collections, but I have reviewed all the Ultimate Epic Collections to date. As you can guess, since I collect all these, I post quite often, and I usually post at least once a month. My next review is going to be “The Amazing Spider-Man: The Life and Death of Spiders” you can expect to see that review coming up within the next two months from the time of the posting of this review, so keep checking back for that. I’ve also written reviews of prose novels and manga, so you can check those out too, if you are so inclined. If these reviews seem relatively professional, it’s because I have a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in journalism, and my dream job would be blogging for Marvel, but due to life circumstances, I work in a grocery store and just post these reviews on my days off as a hobby while receiving no monetary gains for all my hard work, but I honestly don’t mind doing this work, it’s cathartic to me, so not getting paid really doesn’t matter all that much. I’m going to keep doing this blog for as long as I can, which will be until my eyes or hands are unable to function or I am dead, and I don’t see that happening for a long time, so expect From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin to keep running for quite a while. I’m going to part ways with you for now, but I’ll be back in less than two months with another post, which I hope you’ll be back for, too. Feel free to leave a comment (only one person has ever done that to date), or like, share, retweet, do whatever you can to spread the good word about me to others so I can expand my readership, and I’ll continue to reward you with more posts. All I can say now at this point is until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!