Marvel is now publishing three ongoing Wolverine series.  And I know what you're thinking - that's just not enough!  And apparently, Marvel agree, because Wolverine: Dangerous Games is the second Wolverine one-shot in four weeks.

But let's not hold that against the book.  After all, there's so much else to hold against it.

This is a story about foxhunting.  Foxhunting was banned in the UK in 2004.  In fact, up here in Scotland, it was banned in 2002.  So we're really on the cutting edge of topicality here.  Perhaps for an encore Si  Spurrier could write a story making fun of The Weakest Link.

For my part, I have no strong views on foxhunting.  And there's a reason for that.  The arguments are not clear-cut.  Broadly speaking, hunt supporters would tell you that foxhunting is a traditional community pasttime of rural life; that the foxes would have to be killed somehow or other for pest control reasons; and that hunting is no worse than any other way of doing it.  The anti-hunt lobby would broadly accept the first two points but argue that there are other, more humane ways of achieving the pest control outcome.  Much of the evidence is inconclusive, and depends on how willing you are to anthropomorphise animals, and impute human emotional states to them. 

Plausible arguments can be made in either direction.  If I cared about the topic sufficiently to read up on it, I might choose a concluded view.  But I don't care, because frankly, the whole subject comes some way down my list of priorities.  What is apparent, however, is that the debate is attended with such a degree of bitterness and distrust that it barely qualifies as a debate at all.

What Si Spurrier gives us here is a story about a bunch of British aristocrats who have implausibly decamped to Louisiana to avoid the ban.  Now, anyone who knows the slightest thing about foxhunting knows that participation spread rather wider than the tiny elite of "aristocrats", a class who were virtually wiped out by high taxation in the seventies anyway.  But Spurrier gives us a bunch of caricatures who say things like "Jolly good show" and "old bean." 

You can just about get away with this sort of thing if you're doing very, very broad comedy, but this seems to fancy itself as some sort of actual satirical attack on foxhunting.  And that's just depressing.  On the strength of this, you have to wonder, not just whether Spurrier has ever actually laid eyes on a fox hunt, but whether he has ever left a city.  It's got nothing to do with the actual arguments against fox hunting; it's just a dreary, mean-spirited ad hominem attack which bears no resemblence to planet earth.

Notionally, the story does deal with Wolverine's own response to fox hunting.  After all, as it acknowledges, he can hardly be opposed to hunting per se.  The problem is, it sweeps the subject aside by having Wolverine give a little speech about how hunting is wrong when it serves no purpose.  Except fox hunting does serve a purpose: pest control.  It might not be the best way of achieving that goal, and it might not even a morally acceptable way - but to suggest that it has no purpose other than as an end in itself is disingenuous.

If you really want to see a decent story about Wolverine dealing with dimwit hunters, there's a rather good Classic X-Men back-up strip that deals with essentially similar themes in half the space and with three times the intelligence.  Go and read that instead.

This is a smug, arrogant, self-righteous piece of sneering, and on top of that, it's half a decade out of date.  Spurrier might well be on the right side of the argument, but he doesn't have to be such a total prick about it.

And now the plus points.  The story is drawn by Ben Oliver, who does a lovely Wolverine, and makes the best of the horse chase sequences.  It looks great.  He's wasted on the material.

There's also a ten-page back-up strip by Rick Remender and Jerome Opena, in which Wolverine tries to take the moral high ground when fighting bad guys in Thailand, but ultimately decides not to bother.  It's a rather odd piece, in that it goes back to the old theme of Wolverine fighting with his bestial nature, it has the bestial side win, and it presents that as a broadly good thing.  This is Wolverine indulging his impulses, getting away with it, and being satisfied by the rest.  I'm a little uncomfortable with the moral stance here, although a case can be made that it works in the context of what we know about the character more broadly. 

But regardless, it's miles better than the lead story, and it does take a slightly unusual angle on a core theme of the character.  That, and the art on the lead strip, are enough to raise this book out of the D-range - but only by the skin of its teeth.

Rating: C-

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