Writers: Various / Pencillers: Various / Collects: Wolverine: Black, White & Blood #1 - #4 Marvel Comics
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2nd January 2022 (Released 4th August 2021)
The Pitch: The best there is by the best there are! Legendary creators, modern superstars, rising talents and fresh voices unite to tell savage tales of your favourite X-Man - in brutal black and white, with a liberal splash of blood-red! Logan. Weapon X. Patch. Wolverine. He's gone by many names and lived many different lives. Now, this exploration of his storied history takes you from Japan to Madripoor to the Savage Land - from a revelatory return to the Weapon X Program to a high-stakes mission with X-Force! Logan is joined by old allies like Kate Pryde and Nick Fury and heads into bloody battle against foes familiar and surprising - including Arcade, the Reavers, Cosmic Ghost Rider and, the deadliest of all, Sabretooth! It's black, white and blood all over - on the larger-than-life pages of a Treasury Edition!
There's a pleasing fashion of late to take long-standing popular characters and craft stripped-palette anthology titles around them. In the last year, we've had the return of Batman: Black & White, the launch of Superman: Red & Blue and Wonder Woman: Black & Gold. Marvel has also jumped on the bus with this series, Black, White and Blood, using their most violent and morally compromised characters. We'll see the debut issue of Elektra: Black White & Blood, joining the Deadpool and Carnage series already available. But Marvel's first foray into the stripped-palette arena was with Logan, The Wolverine. Those of you who missed it in single issues may be wondering 'how was it?' Well, I'm here to tell you... It was fricken wild!
THESE TALES LEAN TOWARD LOGAN AT HIS MOST DESPERATE AS WELL AS HIS MOST COMPASSIONATE
Choosing to concentrate on the moments and adventures in-between the more well-known episodes in Logan's life as well as 'anytime' stories, these short and deadly tales lean towards showing Logan at his most dangerous, but also at his most compassionate. One of the early tales have him rescuing a baby. Later, he learns that he must try to become a father, even if that means dealing with his adopted daughter's rage. A rage that echoes his own. Even though this is an anthology book, the fact that it's centred on one character gives you a kind of narrative through-line. If you're anything like me, you'll be plugging these stories in to fill gaps in your next big Wolverine re-read.
THE TREASURY SIZE REALLY HELPS SELL THIS - IT’S IMAX FOR COMICS
Even in a book chock-full of great talents, there are stand-outs. Gerry Duggan's and Andy Kubert's 'The Beast In Them' (which opens the book) takes us back to Barry Windsor Smith's 'Weapon X' and makes beautiful use of the panel grid and double-page spreads. 'Seeing Red' by Saladin Ahmed and Kev Walker is the most fun, featuring Arcade as the villain. '32 Warriors and a Broken Heart' by John Ridley and Jorge Fornes is full of the contained menace and bushido spirit of Wolverine's Japan years. But no creative team comes off badly in this. They bring their A-game to every story. What really helps sell this collection is the size: the treasury format blows everything up. You're looking at skyscrapers in comparison to regular comics' single-storey houses. It's Imax for comics. The scope of it belies the intimacy of the violence Wolverine both endures and dishes out. We can only hope that all major anthology books will be done this way.
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