Ever since Milligan introduced the idea that Doop and Wolverine were buddies in the pages of X-Force, it's been pretty much inevitable that we would see them team up again. However, it was not a certainty that Marvel would temporarily suspend X-Statix and publish a two-part Wolverine/Doop mini-series with art by Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone. Still, the flavor of this crossover is pretty much what you'd expect if you've read X-Statix, which is to say that on the surface it looks like a cliched type of story but if you read a little deeper, you can see that it's actually a pretty sly parody. To be honest, the whole gag of X-Statix doesn't resonate as strongly with me as it used to, but it's still a lot of fun, and I'm always up for some more Cooke artwork.
Milligan and Allred have done some downright weird things with the mutant gene in X-Statix, including the misshapen and alien Doop, the post-mortem mutant Dead Girl and the man who can control his own body fat. However, I think that Milligan may have topped himself with the creation of a mutant pink mink stole, which is at the center of this Maltese Falcon-ish mystery. As the book develops, it turns out that it wasn't made from a mutant mink (which would have entertained me to no end) but is instead a manifestation of a sexy and somewhat insubstantial femme fatale with the power to cloud mens' minds. It's a good plot device for what is essentially a mystery/buddy formula.
This story hinges on Milligan's ability to write Wolverine as a believable tough-guy while winking at the camera at the cliche of tough guys and to build a believable buddy chemistry between Wolverine and the (effectively mute) Doop. In the former, he definitely succeeds, because Wolverine comes off looking like a dangerous and smart guy here, but at the same time, it's not hard to see that his characterization is pretty dated and mired in stereotypes. The latter is a tougher trick, and doesn't quite work for me, partly because I've never found Doop as entertaining as the creators and editors of X-Statix seem to. The dialogue between Wolverine and Doop is mostly of the Chewbacca-Han Solo variety, where the buddy is the only guy who understands his friend and thus has to repeat whatever he said so that the reader can get it, and it gets a bit old.
However, I'm actually pretty impressed at how much characterization the shapeless blob of Doop is given, and a lot of credit there goes to Darwyn Cooke. who makes the character look wary, friendly, surprised, lustful and a lot of other emotions you wouldn't think the character design would support easily. Just like Mike Allred, Cooke marries an off-beat animated style with flawless storytelling, and he's up to the task of making both the violence, the sensuality and the humor of the story come through on the page. J. Bone, another of the "animated" artists, delivers solid inks to back up Cooke's pencils, and the result is a visually strong story.
Just as X-Statix is a sort of post-modern take on the 90s super-hero, Wolverine/Doop is a post-modern take on the noir mystery. It doesn't resonate for me as well as X-Statix, partly because I miss all the character interaction and in-fighting that defines the tone of X-Statix but also because I'm just not the Doop fan that many people are. Nonetheless, Wolverine/Doop is an entertaining read, and well worth a look from X-Statix fans.
