7.23.2016

Wolverine by Archie Goodwin and John Byrne

 

WOLVERINE
by ARCHIE GOODWIN, JOHN BYRNE 
and KLAUS JANSEN


Currently, I have thirteen posts in draft mode: three King's Highway posts, three From Novel to Film posts, a TV Tomb of Mystery post, plus some other odds and ends. I also need to get the next Fantastic Four in the 1960s post together. Sheesh.

It'll happen, don't get me wrong. Just not today. Let's have a look instead at the seven issues of Wolverine that comics legends Archie Goodwin and John Byrne (as inked by fellow comics legend Klaus Jansen for five of those seven) put out twenty-seven years ago.

I remember enjoying this at the time but outside of a brief glance when I did my other Wolverine post, I haven't looked at it since. Not the best thing any of the talent involved ever did, but it's a fun little story with lots of payoff and a pretty good example of how comics were being made in 1989.

The action movie trailer for it that I'd like to see would go something like:

WOLVERINE!

  

The world thinks the X-Men are dead* but Logan lives a happy life as "Patch" on the island of Madripoor, also known as Gomorrah on the Pacific Rim.

* This story takes places after Fall of the Mutants.

But his routine is shattered when he gets mixed up in international intrigue that will take him across the globe to Tierra Verde, to face down a dictator with a plan worthy of a Bond villain, bring a Nazi War Criminal advisor who wears an exoskeleton to justice, and to destroy the world's only supply of Insanity Cocaine that turns men into super-powered monsters. 


POLITICAL COMMENTARY!

 

THRILLING UNDERWATER INTRIGUE!


THRILLING UNDERWEAR INTRIGUE!


NAZI WITH A SHAVING FETISH 
MEETS MARVEL'S HAIRIEST HERO!


ALL THIS AND MORE!
(fast-cuts)

 
 

WOLVERINE...


...IN THEATERS SOON...

Something like that. Logan's not Marvel's hairiest hero - he's not even the hairiest X-man (or X-woman) - but okay, ad hyperbole. 

Let's break it down some.

Archie Goodwin was one of the industry's most-respected writers and editors. And for good reason. His stories were always a memorable mix of plot, characters, and dialogue. Here is no exception. Consider the main villain, Geist, the Nazi war criminal with an exoskeleton and shaving fetish.


Most folks would be happy enough with a Nazi War Criminal. The exoskeleton's a bonus, but this is a Marvel superhero comic so not really a remarkable innovation. Neither is giving the main baddie an odd fetish, for that matter, but it allows a writer of Archie Goodwin's experience some fun room to maneuver.

I've made that same point - as have many people, I'm sure - on Nazis and Hollywood.
Back to the shaving.
 

The secondary villain is equally above-and-beyond. President Caridad is the democratically-elected / CIA-supported leader of Tierra Verde. Much of his power comes from the trafficking of cocaine that turns the user into a disposable container of rage and invulnerability. This was the 80s, albeit the very end of them, and cocaine-and-banana-republics were very much en vogue in comics and elsewhere. So it'd have been enough to have this angle, but Archie Goodwin adds three things.

1) The Insanity Coke is actually a sentient being with ties back to the uber-races of Marvel's then-continuity. The short version is "Failed genetic experiment from Earth's past sleeps in Earth until coca cultivation awakens them." 

Here's the longer version for interested parties.

2) President Caridad is a client of the U.S., who provide him with one of Uncle Sam's special operatives, Nuke, to help silence his domestic enemies.

See Daredevil: Born Again for more. (And the Iran-Contra hearings.)

He is greatly impressed by Nuke and becomes obsessed with the idea of engineering Tierra Verde's very own super-soldier. Providence has provided the means to do so with the Psycho Cocaine, so abundant (and exclusive) to Tierra Verdean soil. Only problem: it burns the user out fatally after a short period of time.

If the cops don't get them first.

So, he has Geist kidnap Roughouse - one of Wolverine's mildly-super-tough sparring partners on Madripoor - or, rather, purchase him from Prince Baran. (Madripoor's a rough place.) Wolverine follows along and discovers that while Roughouse has survived longer than most, the Insanity Coke is still killing him. So:

3) The President turns to his estranged wife, Sister Salvation, a mutant with healing powers, to counteract the effects. To secure her cooperation, he lets her see their son, who has thrown in his lot with the regime. 


The young woman in the foreground of the above-left is La Bandera, a revolutionary whose mutant power is "to inspire." Archie Goodwin was way ahead of his time. She was apparently later killed, but that shouldn't stop anyone from making her the most popular heroine in grade number two in 2016.

Anyway, both the President and Spore agree Wolverine is a far more suitable subject for the Super Coke / Super Soldier hybrid and hi-jinks, as they often do, ensue. 

Tiger Shark makes an Acts-of-Vengeance-related appearance.

The art's pretty cool. I've read some criticism of the Jansen-inked issues about how Jansen's inks overpower Byrne's layouts. Any and all criticism of Klaus Jansen in whatever form it takes is silly, of course, but this is especially silly. Of course it looks more like Jansen than Byrne - he's finishing Byrne's layouts, not inking his pencils. 

Jansen above, Byrne-inking-from-his-own-layouts below.

It's certainly a fun little series, and all of the above things that Goodwin adds to things certainly demonstrate a tried-and-true (and solid) approach to storytelling. Everyone is clearly motivated and individuated through dialogue. Plenty of plot twists and drama. And the ending is great:

1) Tierra Verde is still too important to Uncle Sam to let Wolverine just topple the government and take out Geist, whom they've been protecting and using to spy on Caridad's regime. 


but

2) Uncle Sam is capable of a little bait-and-switch of its own, as Geist discovers once spirited to his new home in America.


Byrne's second period at Marvel (I always think of his post-90s work for the company as his third period, though technically I guess it's just an extension of his second. But bear with me) is pretty strong: She-Hulk, Namor, Avengers West Coast, that terrific "Armor Wars 2" storyline with JRJR for Iron Man, and other little surprises, like this. I think I still prefer his first period (the classic X-Mens, FF, etc.) more than any, but if you're ever looking for some solid Copper Age fun back when Marvel still had its active mk-1 continuity and you see Byrne (or Goodwin for that matter) in the credits, don't hesitate. 

~

7.20.2016

King's Highway pt. 5.5: Duma Key, Revisited

I finished my fourth reread of Duma Key in as many years last night. 

(2008)

It's the book I've nominated as King's best on at least two occasions (2012 and only a few weeks ago). I stand by that, as well as these remarks in my original review, but this time around some of the shortcuts in the last two or three hundred pages annoyed me more than on previous occasions. 

But who cares? It's not a perfect novel, but is it perfect enough? Absolutely. If it was the only thing he'd ever written, perhaps its excellence would stand out more clearly. As it is, it's like the hidden peak in the range on everyone's horizon, obscured by the ones easier to see from the ground, perhaps. Or perhaps it's just my personal favorite. Either/or makes no difference to me.

As it is not the only book King has written, though, it's instructive to consider what it has in common with its bibliographic brothers and sisters. I think if you have a fair idea of the ways King usually goes about his novel-writing business then it's easy to see the way he does so here is pretty tidy. He showed up with the toolbox he describes so well in On Writing and ready to build the reader a unique and multi-level summer home on the Florida coast. (Before, of course, invoking an ancient demon and then destroying the place with a hurricane. Caveat Emptor. Or perhaps - as scrawled on the remains of the gates to Heron's Roost, the first Eastland estate on Duma Key - it should be Abyssus Abyssum Invocat.)


I thought it might be fun to resurrect my King's Highway Bingo Scorecard to discuss some of these similarities with other King works. Maybe along the way I can explain - to myself as much as anyone else - why I feel all of these elements combine so pleasingly for me in Duma Key. As the Denver Post wrote in its review of the novel:

"The usual King devices are present: a penchant for dropping in pop-culture references to frame events; liberal applications of portent ('I wish with all my heart that I could have seen her better, because I never saw her again'); the convergence of multiple, seemingly unrelated stories like tributaries into a raging river; and a dreamlike climax in which characters transcend their abilities on their personal proving grounds.

But again, (it) works not in spite of these chestnuts but because of them. Somehow King can shuffle the same cards and consistently deal new storytelling hands. It is, in essence, his own supernatural accomplishment."

Hear, hear. And without further ado (insert sound fx of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" and car engine revving, tires squealing, then cut to fast-motion shots of the open road):


Is the protagonist from Maine? Minnesota. Duma is modeled on Casey Key, FL., and judging from how well King brings it to life here I hope he sets something else down there soon. Minnesota, too, for that matter, why not.

Does someone entertain thoughts of suicide? Yes. Suicide is not the dominant theme of the book, though; precisely the opposite.

Is there a psychic child? Yes, Libby, i.e. Elizabeth Eastlake as a youngster, though her psionic abilities are more like Edgar's. They're more perfect tuning forks for the supernatural Perse. 

Are plot events foreshadowed explicitly by a dead character/ dream character/ psychic? Yes.

Is there a big-ass storm at the end? Absolutely. King often uses storms as punctuation, as many writers do, or as found-structure. Here, the storm is the Götterdämmerung of the Edgar/Perse synthesis, which makes it the final, willful act of the healed (though not without considerable sacrifice) artist emerging from the underworld. Battered and weary - bereft of arm and more - but alive. 



Is there a racist / misogynist / falsely-religious antagonist? No.

Is there telepathy?
The only conventionally telepathic character here is Wireman, and only for half the book. King has sometimes used telepathy as a blunt instrument or as a way of getting his characters out of trouble. I do not doubt his sincere fascination with the subject, but it sometimes amazes me how omnipresent it is in his work. You'd figure if only for variety someone would say "Hey now... again with this?" 

But here, telepathy - like the storm or the psychic child - is just another tool in his toolkit, used precisely and with great skill, rather than anything deus-ex-machina-y. (Jack's sudden ventriloquism at Heron's Roost aside. And maybe that's just there to draw attention to how he usually employs such things.) Duma Key is a rare transit-of-Venus in King's catalog where all of these elements line up to reflect (and refract) the novel's deeper themes.
 
Is there a wisecracking sidekick with repetitive catchphrases? And here we have the best of all these points: Wireman. Not only is Wireman the best sidekick character in any King book - the perfect synthesis of Matt Burke, Glen Bateman, Richie Tozier, Eddie Dean, Tom McCourt, you name it - his repetitive-catchphrase-disorder actually makes sense: it's the result of having been shot in the head. Plus, his chemistry with Edgar is very agreeable. It's oversold in spots,
much the same way every character in the book makes a point to verbalize that Jack "is just terrific", but in a way, that's part of the fun. I get the impression King wasn't stacking the deck to get us to like them; he was just letting them speak freely amongst themselves. These are characters who think the world of one another.

Are there epistolary sections? Yes. I've mentioned elsewhere that these sections are never my favorite parts of King-books. Whomever the letter/journal writer, he or she always sounds the same from novel-to-novel, and it never reads authentically to me. Duma Key only has a few (emails from Pam, Edgar, Kamen, and Ilse, mainly), and they're not bad. The rare exception in this category.

Is info deliberately withheld between chapters/ sections to build page-turning suspense? Yes, and maybe a bit too much in the back pages. A little of that goes a long way.
I rolled my eyes at Jack's sudden ventriloquism as a way to give voice to Noreen from the first read on, but maybe all of Edgar's super-powered insight into Nan Melda's and Elizabeth's first go-round with Perse is a little info-dump-y. 

I quite like Wireman's bravado, though. This has nothing to do with info deliberately being withheld - neither does the last part of the above paragraph, for that matter. Consider these additional remarks as bonus features.


Does someone not give "shit one" or say "happy crappy?" I think there is one not-giving-of-shit-one. Most of this novel's refrains ("Houston, we are a go for such-and-such" or any of Wireman's wise sayings) work very well.

Does someone imitate or engage in "mammy" dialogue? Sort of, with Nan Melda/ Noreen. But only minimally, and you could certainly argue that it, too, is in service to theme and not just that Little Black Sambo Tourette's that occasionally (and unfortunately) possesses King. 

 
And perhaps the most important square: 


Is it a ridiculously enjoyable read? For me, this is as compulsively readable as any other book in the big man's catalog. It's epic and wonderful and moving and mystical and filled with insights both profound and unsettling. And just as a writerly construction, I admire the crap out of it.


~

I don't believe there are any plans to bring Duma Key to either the small or big screen. Which on one hand is too bad. I love the story, and I can easily see it as a movie or mini-series. It might be tricky to pull off all of Edgar's paintings, but it could be done, and done quite well.

On the other, I'm incredibly sick of disappointing King adaptations. No need to rush things. 

Nevertheless, I couldn't help picturing the whole thing as a miniseries as I read along. Previous casting suggestions in these pages (by Bryant Burnette) were Bryan Cranston as Edgar and Edward James Olmos as Wireman. That's about as perfectly-matched to the characters in the book as you can get, although Olmos' style might be too subdued for Wireman. He more than makes up for that in awesomeness, though.  

Something funny happened, though, the more I imagined this as a miniseries. It became in my imagination less and less about the book itself and more a Miami Vice-style adaptation. It started with picturing the theme music - which is completely inappropriate for the style and atmosphere of the book, of course - over some montage of Southwest Florida scenery and scenes from the book. The idea amused me enough where I eventually began imagining Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as Edgar and Wireman, and then eventually Crockett and Tubbs as Edgar and Wireman, and the whole story taking place in (and changing to fit) some kind of Miami Vice reunion movie, all leading up to the epic ending with Crockett and Tubbs a la Edgar and Wireman on Lake Phelan, returning bad-assedly to shore after drowning Perse to sleep, shot and scored in traditional style.

Man. Not for the last time - and for dubious reasons - my lack of both millions of dollars and studio connections pains me deeply. Not for my own sake but the world's.

These Miami Vice-isms aside, Duma Key remains the Dog Star Omnibus pick for Unsung Heavyweight Champ of the Kingverse.