The other new title this week is Logan, a three-issue miniseries by Brian K Vaughan and Eduardo Risso.

This is not the first time Brian Vaughan has written Wolverine.  He's contributed two previous Wolverine stories, both of which he'd prefer you to forget.  X-Men 2 Movie Prequel: Wolverine was apparently heavily rewritten by the editor, and Vaughan has disowned it.  And his fill-in story from Wolverine #131 holds the remarkable distinction of being the only Marvel comic ever to be recalled from stores on the grounds of accidental anti-Semitism.  (At the time, Marvel claimed this was a typo, but Vaughan's website says that the letterer misread a handwritten note by the editor.)

Third time lucky, then?

Well, Logan is a perfectly competent little story.  It's not spectacular, but it's the sort of thing that Wolverine: Origins would be doing if it wasn't so inexplicably obsessed with conspiracies.  It's also the sort of story that Origins has more or less rendered impossible by subsuming everything into a conspiracy theory, which might explain why it's appearing under the shadowy margin-of-continuity Marvel Knights imprint.

It's World War II, and Logan is a prisoner of the Japanese.  He helps an understandably antsy prisoner of war to escape, and then (much to his companion's disgust) hooks up with a Japanese woman.  Around this, there's a framing sequence with Wolverine returning to Japan to deal with the fall-out of the story, which he now remembers thanks to House of M.  Basically, though, it's just a straight Wolverine story where he does heroic stuff and gets to play alpha male.

It's Wolverine done right, no more and no less.  Artist Eduardo Risso downplays the superhuman elements, makes good use of shadows, and brings out plenty of emotion in his characters.  Granted, it's Japan again, and Japan is heavily overdone with Wolverine.  But at least this is simply a story set in Japan, rather than the usual wibbling about honour and samurais.  It doesn't come across as an attempt to remake the Claremont/Miller miniseries, which most Japan stories do (even when Claremont's writing them).

There's a closing twist which is a bit heavy handed, and might be heading towards a very ill-advised retcon.  But I credit Vaughan with more sense than that.  That aside, it's a solid piece of storytelling, and a fine example of what they could do in a typical Wolverine story if they just told stories about the guy.

Rating: B+

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