Wolverine: Prodigal Son

Rating All Ages Genre manga Author Antony Johnston; Artist: Wilson Tortosa Publisher Del Rey External Links

So here we are with another reimagining of X-Men’s most beloved and overexposed character.  This time with a mixture of the manga-style.  And with the blockbuster movie on its way this summer, there isn’t a better time to release it.  But is it any good?  Will manga fans enjoy it?  Will hardcore Wolverine fans enjoy it?  And will the story break through to new readers?  Well, based on the first volume, I’d say that reaching a new audience would likely be its strongest point.

For the most part, Wolverine’s trademark attitude is there, along with his standard special abilities.  But throw everything you know out the window that you knew about his past, as the writers decided to take a more…Japanese route?  By Japanese, I mean the more traditional “I am an incredibly skilled fighter who has trained here all my life, but I have this mysterious and dark past that I know will come back for me some day” route (that’s essentially the summary of the volume, by the way).  It’s not necessarily Japanese, I know, but it’s an often-American stereotype of their ways.

And that is the main problem I had with the manga.  It feels like it’s a shallow interpretation of a Japanese subculture.  In many ways, it feels like the writer is just trying to hit certain story points that he believes the manga audience will love.  Even though we all know Wolverine and all of his awesomeness, he now has a generic manga character aspect to him that makes him feel too different, and too oversimplified.  It seems like it’s supposed to be cool, but in reality it feels a bit cheesy and contrived.  We’ve all seen variations of the plot many times before, so it’s nothing original or special.  Because of that I don’t think seasoned manga readers would turn to this series any time soon.  At least not based on this volume.

Then there are hardcore Wolverine fans.  Would they find anything particularly great or unique?  While it’s possible, I feel that the hardcore fans of Wolverine are at least twenty years of age.  That being the case, this story seems a bit juvenile for that age range.  So while they may be a fan of the story, the execution may be a bit sub-par for them.  But if the writers were aiming strictly at kids ten to thirteen, then they may be onto something.

Preteen to early teens would eat this stuff up.  It’s a very quick and easy to follow manga following a character who everyone thinks is cool (it doesn’t matter what age you are), and there are some good scenes of violence that any young boy would love.  And don’t get me wrong, even though I feel like the story is shallow, it has potential to go some interesting places as long as the writer is more willing to think outside established generic stereotypes.

But as the story is, I’m not really sure who the target audience is: manga fans, wolverine fans, or new young readers.  If it’s the first two, they need to rethink their strategy, but if they simply want to appeal to the young readers, they might be on the right track.  All the same, though, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at the character archetypes they are no doubt using and change them up a bit.