Reprints Kitty Pryde & Wolverine #1-6
Written by Chris Claremont.
Penciled & inked by Al Milgrom.
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| Variant cover. |
Kitty Pryde has gone home to visit her father Carmen in Deerfield, IL. She stops by his bank to visit and observes him being slapped and threatened by a group of businessmen. Carmen tells Kitty that these men work for a Japanese businessman named Shigematsu who has purchased the bank. One of the men threatening her father is named Ogun and he creeps out Kitty more than the rest. Kitty quickly realizes that these men have ties to the Yakuza.
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| Kitty enjoys a day of ice skating in her hometown of Deerfield, Illinois. |
Kitty is angered by this, believing Carmen has been forced to sell under duress. Her father says he must leave for Japan to meet Shigematsu. Kitty wants to accompany him to Japan, but Carmen orders her to fly back to the X-Mansion.
She realizes she's in over her head. Kitty is far from home and has no money. She phases into an ATM and steals some money. The local police are notified immediately and Kitty becomes a fugitive. She calls the X-Men, but hangs up when Wolverine answers. Logan knows Kitty must be in trouble and heads to Tokyo to find her.
Kitty locates the offices of Shigematsu's company. She overhears her father agreeing to use his bank to launder illegal funds. This devastates Kitty, as she hears this and believes Carmen is "a crook". Shigematsu orders his sumo bodyguard Shumai to attack Kitty, but she throws a chair at them and escapes.
Ogun reappears at this point and asks Shigematsu to allow him to take control of Kitty. When Carmen protests, Ogun tells him his daughter is "as one dead". He captures Kitty, mentally possesses her, trains her to be a ninja and brainwashes her to be his assassin. Ogun directs Kitty to kill Wolverine, and she says her teammate is "as good as dead."
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| Ogun ritualistically humiliates Kitty. |
Wolverine arrives in Tokyo and searches for Kitty. He runs into his old friend Yukio, who agrees to help locate Kitty.
Shortly thereafter, Logan is attacked by a ninja in a red mask. Wolverine fights back and they battle all over the city. Their duel takes them to a railyard, and the mask falls off the ninja. Wolverine is shocked to see that it was Kitty all along. Kitty runs him through with her sword!
Yukio knocks out Kitty and Wolverine is saved. When Kitty wakes up, her and Logan talk about what happened and what Ogun did to her. Wolverine tells her that Ogun was his martial arts teacher. Ogun is rumored to be thousands of years old and perhaps a demon.
Kitty is convinced that the only way to purge Ogun from her mind & body is to get Professor X to perform a mind-wipe. Wolverine says that won't work and says that only mental and physical strength can help her defeat Ogun. He puts Kitty through her own personal boot camp. Wolverine gives her a sword and tells her she must hold the sword up as long as she can. Kitty's training goes on for several days and she feels stronger all the time. Finally, she stays up all night holding the sword and feels she is now strong enough to face Ogun. Kitty sneaks out alone and goes back to Tokyo to face Ogun one on one.
At the same time, Ogun is also heading to Tokyo where he plans to kill Mariko Yashida, the love of Wolverine's life. Will Kitty stop this from happening? Can Kitty and Wolverine defeat Ogun?
Review:
I'll just cut to the chase and say that I found this miniseries disappointing back in 1984 and it hasn't gotten much better with age. Kitty and Wolverine were two of my favorite characters when I was growing up and they deserve better than this. But it doesn't completely suck, either.
Story:
The first half of this story is okay. I sympathized with Kitty. First, she learns her father is not the man she thought he was. Then she winds up a wanted criminal in Tokyo, corrupted by Ogun. It's nice to see her overcome her victimization and take on Ogun by herself. Kitty's transformation into "Shadowcat" is believable.
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| Yukio helps Carmen escape the clutches of Shumai. |
And I'll give Chris Claremont credit for tying this story into other events that were happening in the Marvel Universe. The readers deserved to see Wolverine's reaction to the death of his good friend and mentor, Guardian. It was also a nice touch to include the freak snow storm that was happening in Thor at this time.
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| Wolverine is crushed when Prof. X tells him that Guardian has been killed. |
But it sort of drags on about 40 pages longer than it should. Claremont's Wolverine miniseries told its story in 4 issues, which should have been enough time to tell this tale. I felt like there was too much exposition going on here (overcrowding panels with word balloons). Claremont decides to "tell" rather than "show", which is a cardinal sin in a visual medium.
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| Ogun trains Kitty to be his assassin. |
I don't really like Wolverine in this story. He knows Yukio loves him, but he loves Mariko. But it's strongly implied here that he sleeping with Yukio anyways. He's sort of a jerk to both Yukio and Mariko in this scenario.
Carmen Pryde's "criminal" turn also feels a bit contrived. He agrees to launder Yakuza money because he's scared of Shigematsu and Ogun. I'm guessing most of us could be compelled to cut a few corners if ninjas, gangsters and sumo wrestlers were threatening us to do so.
This story led to major, lasting changes in Kitty Pryde that still reverberate today, which makes it an "important" story. Kitty is more interesting after this. That's the main reason I can think of to read Kitty Pryde & Wolverine.
Art:
Not very good. I was a big fan of Al Milgrom's work in the 70s & 80s. I liked his cartoonish, humorous "Editor-Al" strips in Marvel Fanfare, and his more "normal" pencils in comics like Spectacular Spider-Man, but this is not one of Milgrom's better penciling jobs. In an introduction, Milgrom says he "chose to experiment with a bolder, more graphic style". I wish he hadn't. Without knowing any backstory, it looks like Milgrom was brought in at the last minute and performed a rush job.
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| Kitty phases out of Shigematsu's desk, frightening the dickens out of him! |
Perhaps the worst part of Kitty Pryde & Wolverine is Kitty's attempt to "pass for Japanese". At least that seems to be what's going on in this page:
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| Kitty tries to look like "just another local teenager". |
How Does It Look?:
It looks fine, as you can tell by the page below and all other scanned pages shown in this review.
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| Wolverine tangles with Ogun, while Yukio tells Mariko what's going on. |
We get a new "Editori-Al" comic strip written and drawn by Milgrom. It's a nice throwback to the series of strips he drew in Marvel Fanfare, and his art in the strip is actually better than his art in the story. There's also one page showing the cover in progress for issue #6, plus a 1984 cover from Marvel Age Magazine promoting the miniseries.
Kitty Pryde & Wolverine features a story that starts out good but ultimately disappoints and has art that just isn't anything to write home about. The first couple chapters and the fact that Kitty is never the same after this tale make it good enough to read once, but there are plenty of other Bronze Age reprint books that are better than this one.
My rating:
2 Sals.
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