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!
