From one offbeat Wolverine project to another.  Wolverine: Snikt! is one of Marvel's attempts to cross over into the manga audience.  Conventional wisdom has it that the manga audience is an untapped goldmine.  At least, it's untapped if you happen to be Marvel or DC, as opposed to, say, Viz or Tokyopop.

One approach Marvel have tried in order to break into that audience is bringing in authentic manga creators to work on their existing library of characters.  Hence Snikt!, a miniseries which exists simply so that writer/artist Tsutomu Nihei can take a crack at the character.

To say that this issue was light on plot would be putting it mildly.  Wolverine is teleported away to an alternate reality to help the goodies, but the teleport goes wrong and he's left on his own.  The baddies show up.  Big fight.  Part of the difficulty Marvel have here is that this really is how many Japanese stories are paced.  The page count of stories is much longer over there.  If you want to really do manga, as opposed to lift some of the trappings of the character designs, then you can't do it in a 22-page format because there just isn't enough space for the plot to spread out.

Of course, this story will undoubtedly turn up in trade paperback form in the end, and Nihei may well be pacing it on that basis.  Nonetheless, by any standards it makes for a slow paced start.

That said, this series is in large part intended as an art showcase, and by taking this langorous approach to plotting, Nihei does get to show some fabulous artwork.  There's a great sense of scale to his alien landscapes, and while the alien villains look like they've come out of a sketchbook for a Linkin Park video, they're still striking designs.  Nihei's version of Wolverine himself seems more influenced by the movie than by other comics; he's a tall, wiry figure looking more like a punk Hugh Jackman.

A curious colouring job by Guru eFX adds to the oddity of the book.  There are some very unusual choices here, with largely monochrome characters in vibrantly coloured landscapes.  Presumably this very strange approach was something Nihei asked for, and it certain gives the title a memorable look.  To be honest, it'll probably look even better in the trade paperback, when the single-colour pages aren't disrupted by adverts.

Despite the elementary nature of the plot, as a predominantly art-driven book this does have a surprising level of appeal.  Odd, but unexpectedly likeable.

Rating: B+

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