The Long Night Part 3
Matt Meyer
Recap
There's a killer loose in the tiny town of Burns, Alaska. Maybe it's a bear. Maybe it's the son of the richest man in town. Maybe it's narcoterrorists. Or maybe it's the mysterious stranger named Logan, who seems to keep showing up in the middle of every upturned situation...
FBI agents Pierce and Marshall are on the case, but in a town with too many secrets and too many suspects... things are never what they seem. The only man who seems to know the score is Logan, but he's too busy getting into bar fights, getting arrested, and getting released under shady circumstances to be of much help.
Local not-so-secretly-controlling-the-town rich family the Langrocks have paid to have Logan sprung from jail. The family's alpha-male son Brent tries to make Logan an offer he can't refuse by hiring him to work as "security" for the family, but Logan has a rather forceful response:
Wolverine disappears into the woods. The next day, Agents Pierce and Marshall stumble upon Brent making a show out of capturing and killing a bear, going very, very dangerously far out of his way to make concrete in the townspeoples' minds that the rash of killings were, in fact, the work of a giant grizzly.
But no sooner does Brent put the bear down, when the agents get word of a new victim...
Review
Wolverine: The Long Night, adapted from the podcast of the same name, is in a lot of ways a somewhat conventional whodunnit. There’s a mysterious stranger, a town full of secrets, everyone’s a suspect, a rich local who pulls the whole town’s strings… you get the idea. But it’s not the degree of originality that makes this story work. Nope.
It’s what happens when you drop Wolverine into the mix.
And it’s not just that Wolverine is played as a wild card in the scenario, either. Writer Ben Percy is pulling from the Greg Rucka playbook and using supporting players in Logan’s orbit to examine the larger impact he has on his environment. This isn’t a story about character development; it’s a mystery to be unraveled, told from the perspective of the people living it. Agents Pierce and Marshall serve as our POV characters and do a fine job of it – but ultimately, they serve the story, not the other way around. There are some nice little details that give them life, such as the bit with Agent Marshall ironing his underwear:
Details like this serve to flesh out the players so that readers can empathize with them even though we’re only seeing a snapshot of their lives. They have no real internal lives in a story like this – no one really does – so small, superficial details like the above must suffice in order to give the reader some reason to care about them. Otherwise, the story would fall flat.
Unshackling Logan from the X-Men was a wise decision on the part of Percy, because it frees him up of any binding continuity or extraneous details. We’re getting Wolverine in his rawest form, a force of nature, stoic and deadly and mysterious all rolled into one. The art team serves this story well, leaning into grittier details as necessary but contrasting them amidst great shots of beauty to create a great visual dichotomy:
And although I can probably guess who the killer is by this point – Percy may have played his hand a little too obviously in one scene – it’s still a fun ride seeing how it all comes together.
Final Thoughts
Wolverine: The Long Night continues to prove to be not only a great adaptation, but also a stellar comic in its own right. If you want something a little more grounded than typical superhero fare, look no further!
Wolverine: The Long Night #3 (of 5): Maybe It’s a Bear
- Writing - 8/108/10
- Storyline - 7.5/107.5/10
- Art - 8/108/10
- Color - 8.5/108.5/10
- Cover Art - 9/109/10
