Wolverine: Origins remains a baffling comic.  Despite having gone to the trouble of introducing Wolverine's long-lost son Daken, people still seem to be politely ignoring it for the most part.  Those who do read it generally don't seem to be hugely impressed - aside from Marvel editors, who invariably proclaim it a work of genius.  Yet it sells very respectably.  So somebody outside Marvel's offices must like it.

This is the penultimate chapter of "Swift and Terrible", in which Wolverine hunts down Daken and confronts him, only to be interrupted by the unexpected return of his old villain Cyber.  Cyber was killed off a good few years back, when he was eaten alive by insects, but the idea is that he's possessed a new body.  Quite why that new body still has the adamantium plating of the old one is a mystery, and I'm not altogether convinced it's an intentional mystery.

Daken comes across as a terribly contrived attempt to create a cool villain.  There's a glimmer of interest in the idea that Daken defines himself in opposition to his father, and so takes tremendous pride in having the self-control that (in his view) Wolverine lacks.  But basically, he's a Kid Wolverine with a silly hairstyle and tattoos, and modified claws that don't make a tremendous amount of sense.  If two claws bend one way and the third bends the other, how does he cut anything?  Steve Dillon at least has the sense only to use the appropriate claw in each panel, but it seems terribly cumbersome, and cover artists have consistently been going with all three at once.

We don't need a Wolverine Jr - we've already got X-23 in that role.  If you're going to introduce a character like Daken then you've got to make a compelling case for why we need him.  Craig Kyle and Chris Yost achieved that with X-23 by making her a character in her own right first, and a Wolverine knock-off second.  Daniel Way hasn't done it with Daken, who seems like nothing more than a character designed to generate plots in a book about Wolverine's hidden past.

On the other hand, Way does make some moderately interesting use of Cyber.  Naturally, like everyone who passes through this book, he has to be written in to the huge conspiracy that we're all supposed to care about. But Way uses him in a way that increases the scope of that conspiracy and presents Cyber as a genuinely dangerous maniac.  It's not especially original, but it's effectively done.

Steve Dillon still seems bizarrely miscast as the artist on this book.  His greatest strength is acting - small moments of facial expression and body language.  He doesn't do wild, crazy or over the top.  And yet here, he's asked to draw Daken and Cyber.  Daken is a self-consciously "cool" design that doesn't feel at home on Dillon's page.  Cyber, worse yet, was always a bland design that relied on the exaggerated style of his creator, Sam Kieth, to make him interesting.  When Adam Kubert had to draw him, he could follow in the same spirit.  Dillon can't do that - even to attempt it would be totally at odds with his style.  His Cyber is a man in a boring costume.

This book has shaken off some of its worst tendencies, since at least there's a discernible plot and some sense of movement.  But it still isn't working, or anything close to it.

Rating: C+

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