When I first saw Wolverine: Snikt! I thought I was simply reading the next installment from Viz Media of Marvel characters that were being given their own manga book. I was both right and wrong; this book is a Wolverine story told in magna formatting, but it isn’t new.
Wolverine: Snikt! was originally published by Marvel Comics as a five-issue series way back in 2003. It was part of a Marvel short lived “Tsunami” line of comics that were “manga-style” so they could try and jump on the growing demand for manga in United States. This edition is being formatted by Viz as a traditional manga and it is being labeled a deluxe edition with an introduction from Nick Dragotta (East of West, Fantastic Four) and an art gallery at the end.
On the third page of this book, and with no dialog to tell us why, Logan is pulled into another time by a young mutant girl. She loses track of him in the transfer and he finds himself alone in a dystopian future where a weird biomechanical monster starts to fight him immediately. It has the ability to self-repair and Logan would be lost if not for The Colonel, a man-shaped machine with the only weapon capable of taking down a Mandate. They are running out of ammunition for the gun and they are running out of warriors. Fusa, the girl who brought him here, explains that 11 years ago in 2047 the Mandate attacked and wiped nearly everyone out. It turns out the Mandate itself is a mutant, sort of. It’s a mutant disease that started out as a lab experiment where they hoped to turn a bacteria into a microorganism that would decompose the toxic materials poisoning the Earth. However, once it was outside of the lab environment it couldn’t be contained and it gained sentience. Now, they have to destroy the original Mandate, called Primogenitor, otherwise it will never stop producing more Mandates. You have to destroy a Mandates orb-core to kill it, otherwise it will keep knitting itself back together. By now, you can guess what element will destroy an orb-core and what The Colonel is made out of, Adamantium, making Logan their only hope.
This story is going to be a tough sell to an audience older than tweens and teens. Viz rates this Teen+ for older teens, but I think Teen is fine rating for this. It’s violent, but they are fighting robotic monsters and it is only 136 pages with credits. The story itself is tissue-paper thin and there are no surprises anywhere along the way. A teen reader might give this a pass and enjoy the action, but I found myself mostly disappointed. I appreciate that Tsutomu Nihei had the unenviable task of trying to get the entirety of a story into five issues, but I’ve seen other creators do more with that same task.
The art from Nihei is a lot murkier than his later, much lauded work Knights of Sidonia. That is to say, this art feels like it’s from 2003 and the artist is still evolving. His later work is a lot cleaner, here faces are tough to tell apart and are very sparse on details. Some of the larger vistas that he illustrates show the range of his talent, but Logan hardly looks like the character most comic fans know. Marvel made the choice to have this colored, which probably hinders the work more than it helps. I don’t know that this book is going to make a convert of anyone, but it is hard to deny Wolverine’s appeal and ability to sell books. I think there is certainly an audience out there for this story and there are plenty of teen readers who will enjoy both the manga aesthetic and “otherworld” approach to the storytelling.
Wolverine: Snikt!
By Tsutomu Nihei
VIZ, 2023
ISBN: 9781974738533
Publisher Age Rating: Teen+(older teen)
NFNT Age Recommendation: Older Teen (16-18), Teen (13-16)
Creator Representation: Japanese,
