Wolverine: Origins #31-32

"Family Business"
Writer: Daniel Way
Penciller: Yanick Paquette
Inkers: Serge LaPointe and Michel Lacombe
Colourist: Nathan Fairbairn
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: John Barber

After its crossover with X-Men: Legacy, Wolverine: Origins finally seemed to be heading somewhere. Daken had been redeemed to the point of being a passably interesting character; he and Wolverine were heading off to hunt down Romulus.

And then we get... this. A two-parter where Daken turns on Wolverine already. Uh... what? I never thought I'd say this about Wolverine: Origins, but this feels terribly rushed. For this to work, they needed to stick together long enough for it to be a surprise. We need to care about them as a duo before it becomes worth breaking them up.

In fact, Daken turns on Wolverine at the end of part one - so their pairing lasted one whole issue. Yes, alright, there's a double-swerve - Wolverine thinks it's all part of a plan to trick the bad guys, but it turns out that it isn't, and he's just been screwed. That's actually quite neat - but it's also six months early. Or, if you prefer, they should have got the pairing started long ago.

It's very uncharacteristic for this book to race through anything. If anything, it normally stretches everything to breaking point and beyond. I have a sneaking suspicion that Way has found himself caught in a scheduling trap: the crossover with X-Men: Legacy couldn't be brought forward, but Daken needs to turn on Wolverine so that he can appear in Dark Avengers. And so a whole chunk of storyline gets compressed into a ridiculously short space.

Well, it's a theory, anyway. Whatever the reason, anyhow, this story comes at the wrong time for the series.