Larry Hama Returns To Uneven Results In X-Men Legends #7

When two young mutants disappear, Wolverine and Jubilee set off for Japan to track them down. But Lady Deathstrike and the Hand have their own designs on the duo, and it’ll take no small measure of blood, sweat and adamantium to change their minds. Let’s snikt and bub our way through X-Men Legends #7, written by Lethal Larry Hama, drawn by Billy Tan, colored by Chris Sotomayor and lettered by Joe Caramagna.

Dan Grote: Hello and welcome to the ComicsXF Legends tour, where two of the site’s elder statesmen break down the nostalgia-trip comic X-Men Legends before being set out on an ice floe. Now, before we get into issue #7, Austin, do you mind if I derail us from jump to talk briefly about issue #6?

Austin Gorton: Unleash the dogs of war, Dan! 

Dan: Thanks. I covered the first part of two-time GLAAD Award winner Peter Allan David and Todd Nauck’s two-part X-Factor story but didn’t feel compelled to cover part 2. EXCEPT.

“Tribe.” David is saying the four villains of his story are from the same Romani tribe as Doctor Doom. David, who famously complained about Romani people during a convention panel, is using Romani terrorists as his villains, thereby thumbing his nose at legitimate criticism of his gross mischaracterization of an entire people. And Marvel let him do it.

Just. Fucking. Yikes. Sorry, Austin, I had to get that one on record.

Austin: Yikes indeed. Look, I get that Marvel is going to continue to give Peter David work. I may not like it, but I get it: He’s a “name” creator, he’s got a fanbase and he’s probably got one of those lucrative contracts like Chris Claremont where he gets paid to hang around and just chuck out a story every now and then. But that doesn’t mean they have to let him do this sort of thing in his stories. Where was the editor to step in and say, “Hey, Peter, maybe let’s cool it with the Romani terrorists for many important reasons.” 

Dan: As an editor in my dayjob, I’m usually the first to rush to their defense when people start in with “where was the editor when” xyz. They’re as human and fallible as the rest of us. But nah, this one shouldn’t have happened. Period.

Alright, let’s set that one aside and have some fun.

The Larry Hama of It All

Dan: Right off the bat, this is a very Larry Hama comic. Wolverine and Jubilee are in Japan, with Yukio, shaking down organized crime, and getting into fights with Lady Deathstrike and the Hand. It’s ’90s action at its finest, and I love that for us.

Austin: We are definitely in prime “Larry Hama’s Wolverine” territory, which is exactly the kind of thing an issue of a series like this should do: recreate what made the tales from these “legendary” creators distinct in the first place. In terms of plot and tone, this is pure Hama; the sequence where Wolverine busts a bunch of killer shark-filled aquariums in order to fight amidst a bunch of, you know, killer sharks is a great example of the kind of “machismo moment” Hama would pepper into his Wolverine stories.

Dan: Yeah baby yeah baby yeah baby, hook that ish to my veins. See also Jubilee firework-ing two dudes in the nuts.

Austin: Yes! That kind of Looney Tunes sensibility was also something of a hallmark of Hama’s run, especially toward the beginning (He is, after all, the creator of Elsie-Dee, the supersmart robot girl with a name for a pun and a bomb in her chest). Speaking of Jubilee’s fireworks, it’s greatly appreciated that Hama (and letterer Joe Caramagna) use “paf” to describe (and sound effect) Jubilee’s fireworks, something Hama did back in the day but wasn’t picked up on by many other writers. It’s one of those little things that makes this feel like a “lost” Hama issue. 

Dan: Exactly. There are some other little things that knock points off here and there, though not enough to detract from my enjoyment of the story as a whole. I always think it’s weird when people don’t know who Wolverine is, considering a) a running gag in X-Men is people saying they know Wolverine from some amorphous time back when, and b) another gag was Wolverine running around with an eyepatch and characters eventually telling him they knew it was him the whole time but they just decided to go along with it.

Austin: That whole Patch business early in his ongoing series was just bizarre. I know what Chris Claremont was going for and can appreciate his desire to keep Wolverine’s solo adventures separate from his X-Men adventures, but c’mon, Wolverine has one of the most distinctive hairstyles in comics! An eyepatch/darkened eyes aren’t going to fool anyone. It’d be like if both Superman and Clark Kent had an outrageous mohawk.

Dan: So Gladiator, basically. 

Austin: Basically. Another little incongruity that pulled me out of this story is Wolverine referring to Xavier’s school as “his little academy in Westchester,” which seems oddly dismissive and formal for someone who, you know, lives at that “little academy” and has for many, many years at this point. 

Dan: Remember that time Xavier tried to give Wolverine demerits? (Chuckles quietly to himself, thinks about the passage of time …)

Austin: Another knock on the issue is the high-level plot of the story, which involves Wolverine and friends rescuing a pair of young mutant girls who have been caught up in a Yakuza-run child slavery operation. It’s all presented as an objectively bad thing the heroes of the story are trying to stop, which is good, but I don’t love “young girls being trafficked” serving as the driving force of the action.  

Dan: Yeah, it’s probably not the BEST way for Logan to rescue another teen girl mutant. Everyone knows the best way to is follow the X-Men home from the mall through a portal and then hide out in the vents for a few days until you need to pull Logan down off an X-shaped crucifix while he’s hallucinating recent plot points.

Wait … that means Jubilee rescued Logan. AWWWW, like a rescue puppy! “I didn’t rescue her, she rescued me, bub.”

When Are We, Exactly?

Dan: Previous issues of Legends have told us whereabouts in time these new stories take place in continuity, but we didn’t get that here. Austin, I didn’t start reading Wolverine until he done got his skeleton tore out in #75; do you have any educated guesses as to which raindrops we’re dancing between?

Austin: This is tricky. Obviously, this takes place after that initial Hama story with Dai Kumo (which took place roughly around the time of “X-Tinction Agenda”). But Professor X was offworld hanging with the Shi’ar at that point; Wolverine references Xavier’s school here (with the implication being it’s a going concern and not a defunct entity), so this would have to be after he’s come home and re-established the school. That places this story at least sometime after the release of X-Men (vol. 2) #1, which takes place circa Wolverine #48. But what makes placing this especially difficult is that Jubilee clearly doesn’t know who Yukio is, which means it has to take place before Wolverine #55, when the characters meet for the first time. Except Hama explicitly has them meeting for the first time in that issue, a meeting which this issue now seems to contradict. 

Tl;dr: >shrug<

Dan: I feel like that makes placing this story just as “fun” as placing Wolverine stories between X-Men stories in the 1990s, so at least in that respect tradition is alive and well.

Now, again pleading ignorance, what can you tell me about Dai Kumo?

Austin: Dai Kumo was a Yakuza boss Wolverine battled in Wolverine #31-33, Hama’s first Wolverine story. He had an evil plot involving a drug made from Madripoorian spider monkey brain fluid. Wolverine killed him in that story, and his daughter later tried to get revenge on Wolverine post-”Onslaught.” As Wolverine villains go, it’s not the deepest cut, but it’s close. 

Dan: Stop. You had me at Madripoorian spider monkey brain fluid.

The Art of the Matter

Dan: So this has been a bugaboo of mine since this series began, but I wish Marvel made a more concerted effort to bring some of the classic artists back for these books in addition to the writers. It treats the art of the original comics as disposable, which in many cases it was not.

I’m willing to concede they have an excuse this time, as Hama’s preeminent art partner during his original Wolverine run, Adam Kubert, is drawing the current Wolverine book, and the other prominent artist of that era, Marc Silvestri, is busy running a whole-ass chunk of Image Comics.

Austin: How about Mark Texeira? Or even Leinil Francis Yu, who’s been working in the X-office but not on a regular book at the moment. 

Dan: Ooh, those are both good choices. I haven’t seen some good Texeira art in a dog’s age. And Yu drew a big chunk of later Hama into the Ellis and Claremont stuff.

Playing the cards we’re dealt though, Billy Tan’s art is fine, I just wish his faces were a little more expressive and his bodies less mannequin-like. He gives Jubilee and even the kidnapped Hino-Chan oddly long legs for children, not to mention the Sailor Moon outfits. 

I also don’t particularly care for the way he draws Logan’s mask. Too much facial buttress, not enough face, if that makes sense. The panel where he’s in costume in the back of a cab bothers me particularly, as it looks like he doesn’t have a nose hole. Let those nostrils breathe, Billy, this isn’t “Onslaught”!

Austin: There’s a panel with masked Wolverine that seemed like it was lifted from the “Wolverine’s mask is just two Batmans kissing!” meme, and it was … distracting, to say the least. I agree overall on Tan; his work is fine — in terms of storytelling, the action can be followed, etc. — but it is very stiff, which is a shame, because both Silvestri and Kubert had a fluidity and rougher edge to their work that lent itself well to Hama’s “dripping in machismo” stories. I can understand not being able to nab either artist for this series, but at the very least, getting someone whose style was more consistent with theirs in some way would have been a nice way to further underscore the “legends” of it all.

X-Traneous Thoughts

• “This joint is locked up tighter than a clam with lockjaw” is up there with Rogue’s “You look nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs” in the so-bad-it’s-still-bad-but-whatever-I-chuckled quote hall of fame.

• The whole “use exotic deadly fish for smuggling” seems like a nod to the James Bond novel Live and Let Die, in which the villainous Mr. Big smuggles rare gold coins in the sand of aquariums containing poisonous fish.

Austin Gorton

Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton

Dan Grote

Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.