All-New Wolverine/Carnage

All-New Wolverine

The Marvel 'All-New Everything' phase has brought us some interesting alternatives to our regular Marvel readings. One of those is All-New Wolverine. After Logan's demise (I said spoiler before that didn't I?) his clone, Weapon XXIII, has taken up his old mantle. 

As an aside, it's no secret that Marvel have pushed the more-females-in-comics agenda big time. They've pulled this off so well it's actually a little hard to believe it was so seamless! Of my favourite takes on this are Spider-Woman, Gwenpool (the Christmas Special is worth picking up as a good introduction, add Howard the Duck to your regular reading for more also) and now I'm happy to add Laura Kinney, the All-New Wolverine, to that list. Meanwhile DC have Batgirl...and not much else of note as regards female books. If Marvel can sell an anthropomorphic duck comic successfully you have to wonder why DC haven't changed tactic even a little bit. In saying that DC were ahead of the curve with Supergirl.

Onto the story. Weapon XXIII, also called Laura Kinney, was created as a killing machine, an assassin extraordinaire but she's stopped all that now to be one of the good guys. I also like the fact that the first syllable of each part of her name is close to Logan (La-Kin). Or I could just be missing Patch too much...

The first issue switches between dark and damp Paris where Wolverine is trying to prevent an assassination and flashback scenes in middle-American farmlands where Weapon XXIII is learning to cope with not being a savage killing machine with the help of mentor Logan. Back in Paris her assistant is another experienced X-Man, the Angel. There's a lot of good humour in this issue, and really well-delivered, I think a new subscription is on the cards. 

Carnage

I also picked up Carnage #1 and grabbed the Perkins #1 Variant while I was at it. It's not the greatest cover ever but I love it. Reminds me of the cover with Venom when I stayed in my cousins house as a kid which gave me nightmares due to being glow-in-the-dark.

Carnage #1 follows the rather insane Cletus Kasady. Gerry Conway doesn't even hold back on quite how insane Kasady is. The opening scene where he's just sitting eating his sandwich has you feeling sympathy for the poor waitress serving him surrounded by corpses.
The story revolves around the FBI trying to capture Kasady (already an awful idea...) with the help of using a woman as bait. The woman is the sole survivor of Kasady's first ever massacre (Yay! Childhood memories!).

I bought it mostly for nostalgic reasons so it's unlikely I keep buying it. When it comes to serious gruesome writing DC has me covered but I'll talk about those another time.