THE CREATORS: Daniel Way and Steve Dillon

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2006: Excruciatingly little.

The world really doesn't need a second monthly Wolverine title, but that's not going to stop Marvel.  So here we have Wolverine: Origins, an entire ongoing series devoted to a single Daniel Way storyline about Wolverine's back story.

There are two obvious flaws with this plan.  First, Wolverine's history hasn't been much of a mystery in years.  It's already been filled out with vast tracts of flashback, not to mention the Origin miniseries itself.  Wolverine's "man of mystery" aura was lost a good ten to fifteen years ago; this series is devoted to answering a question that nobody is asking any more.

Second, what do you do when Way's storyline ends?  Ah, but wait - that won't be a concern, because at the pace this book moves at, Way's storyline will never end.  The tiresome reality is that Wolverine: Origins consists of glacially slow stories in which we're drip-fed flashback information about trivial details that nobody really cares about.  Wolverine's past history with Nuke, for heaven's sake?  Every so often there's the glimmer of an interesting idea - principally the notion that before he was messed about with by the Weapon X guys, Wolverine was really no better than they are.  But there's no momentum to this story.  It's like wading through treacle.

The first arc in this title was one of the dullest things I've ever read - not outrageously or entertainingly bad, just boring.  The current arc, with Omega Red, is rather better paced, but it still boils down to a lengthy exercise in killing time while Wolverine hunts for a macguffin and no especially interesting story is told.  This might work if the book had a slam-bang action artist who could liven it up with spectacular visuals, but instead it's got Steve Dillon, an artist who thrives on character and emotion, and has nothing to work with here.

Asked recently on Newsarama whether he was happy with this book in light of its general bad reviews and muted fan reaction, Joe Quesada pointed out that it does sell awfully well.  He's right, it does, but they shifted over 180,000 copies of issue #1, and it's already down to 90,000.  That's not desperately good.

Origins is clearly a pet project for Marvel editorial, so it'll continue to meander along its way whatever happens.  But it's a terribly flabby book that really needs work.

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