WOLVERINE #177
"The Shadow Pulpit, Part 1 of 2"
Not Recommended (1/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Matt Nixon
Pencils: Dan Fraga
Inks: Lary Stucker
Colors: Avalon Studios
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Mike Marts
Price: $2.25 US/$3.75 CAN |
I haven't been terribly enamored of Frank Tieri's run on this title as of late, so this fill-in story seemed to offer an opportunity for a better kind of story. (Flip, flip, flip. Read, read read.) Oh well, so much for that possibility.
Matt Nixon does the same thing that Tieri has done: he plays to the audience that's into Wolverine's "Kewl" factor. Clarity, plausiblity and characterization are secondary concerns here, if they're addressed at all. Younger readers might get a kick out of this story, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Wolverine continues to stand out as a title that's all style no substance... and to be honest, I'm not even that impressed with the style part of the equation.
Logan hooks up with his monster-slaying priest friend, Father Braun, who warns the feral mutant that there's a conspiracy within the Catholic Church led by Cardinal Panzer, whom some refer to as the Shadow Pope. It seems Panzer has found a way to convert people to Catholicism against their will, and he has metahuman agents such as the blade-wielding Dogma to help him in his nefarious mission.
Fraga certainly has developed his style since the days when he was little more than a Rob Liefeld imitator. Mind you, it's still the flaws, not the strengths, in his work that catch my eye. There's no consistency in the portrayal of the characters, and anatomy gets slightly distorted. The Dogma design is visually uninteresting as well.
A mind-control plot with the church, you say? Evil cardinals? Metahuman emissaries? You know, the Catholic Church has been in the news a lot lately, and this clumsy, oversimplified and even silly plot pales in comparison to the real-life crimes that have gone on behind closed doors. This dark cloud has loomed over the Catholic Church for years, and in light of that reality, of that context, Nixon's decision to transform a cardinal into a one-dimensional super-villain seems ill-advised.
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