I was delighted to read an interview with Daniel Way the other day in which he announced that Wolverine: Origins is a finite series, scheduled to end around issue #60 or so.  Thank god for that.  There's light at the end of the tunnel.  Admittedly, the end of the tunnel is in 2010, but it's something to live for.

I hate Wolverine: Origins.  Not in the "How dare you do this to the history of my favourite character" sense, mind you.  More in the "Oh god, do I have to read another one of these tedious bloody things?" sense.  Judging from the direct market sales, I'm not alone.  It's still shedding readers at around 5% a month, and it's down 44% on a year ago.  Granted, a year ago it was being boosted by variant covers, but that drop is still really bad.  In a year where Marvel is generally knocking it out of the park when it comes to audience reaction, this book is a glaring exception.

Daniel Way has at least picked up the pace from the early issues, in the sense that there's a bit more running around each month.  But progress with the overall story remains glacial.  This week, we have Wolverine: Origins Annual #1, which fits the format to a tee.  There's a lot of fairly unimportant running around, which serves mainly to illustrate the same conspiracy that Way's told us about many times before.  And then, at the end, there's A Clue.

The main story involves Wolverine's relationship with Seraph, a throwaway character from a largely forgotten Chris Claremont story.  Way's big idea for this series is that Wolverine was a pawn of unspecified villainous forces even before he got near Weapon X.  This is frankly very silly, because it requires you to accept (and Way to write) that almost every supporting character Wolverine's ever crossed paths with in a flashback was actually a dastardly villain in disguise.  Nobody involved with the book seems to have spotted quite how ludicrously contrived it all is.

Throughout his life, we're told, said conspiracy has manipulated him, mainly by the strategic killing of his love interests.  (Considering some of the trivia that they've picked up on lately, it's surprising that the Women In Refrigerators lobby haven't fixed on this book.  Perhaps, like most other sane people, they got bored and stopped reading long before they figured out the plot.)

Seraph's role in this story is to be a woman who wants to help Wolverine be more of a man and less of an animal, even though she knows it's going to get her killed.  This rather begs the question of how she ended up working for the conspiracy in the first place, but we're apparently meant to take it that she just is.  If you're prepared to accept the total lack of explanation for why Seraph accepted this role at all - which kind of goes to the core of her motivation, if you ask me - then it's not such a bad story. 

At least the format of an Annual forces to Way to make his point and get out of there, instead of stretching everything out to trade paperback length.  And while the monthly title is drawn by the horrifically miscast Steve Dillon - one of its greatest crimes is depriving the world of five years of Steve Dillon comics that might actually have been worth reading - this issue is drawn by Kaare Andrews.  Andrews could illustrate the telephone directory and make it memorable, and that's pretty much what he does here.  Flashback pages are presented on damaged-looking paper, and his figures are so strong and distinctive that it almost makes you overlook the one-dimensional writing.  He breathes life into ciphers.

Those are the good points.  On the other hand, it's only the first two thirds of a good story.  It seems to be completely missing a final act, in favour of a vague allusion to an old flashback, and another revelation about the oh-god-who-cares conspiracy.

And what is that revelation?  Why, the big villain behind this whole series is Romulus.

Romulus.

No?  Not ringing any bells?

Romulus is the big villain from Jeph Loeb's current arc on Wolverine, which has precisely nothing to recommend it other than the art.  So this issue creates an unholy matrimony between two of the worst Wolverine storylines ever. 

The remarkable thing is that between Wolverine: Origins, its prequel arc in Wolverine and the current Jeph Loeb storyline, we have now read something like two and a half years worth of Romulus stories.  And nothing, not one single solitary thing, about those stories makes me think that I ever want to read about him again.  I certainly don't want him to be the centrepiece of an arc that won't end until 2010.

If there is anything worthwhile about this character at all, Loeb and Way have spectacularly failed to communicate to me.  If there is even a concept to the character beyond "He's terribly mysterious and evil", they have singularly failed to communicate it to me.  It's enough to make you yearn for the glory days of Mr Sinister, who also spent about his first seven years as a total cipher, but at least had the decency to appear in reasonably entertaining stories during that time.

As an individual issue, this isn't too bad.  Artistically, it's great.  But in terms of the direction of the series, it's a miserably depressing prospect.

Rating: C-

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