First unveiled during the 2007 New York Anime Festival, Wolverine: Prodigal Son, Del Rey’s manga-style recreation of Marvel’s popular X-Man character, goes on sale this month. Written by English comics writer Antony Johnston, illustrated by the Phillipines-based artist Wilson Tortosa and edited by Del Rey Manga associate publisher Dallas Middaugh, Prodigal Son re-imagines the title character—one of the most beloved of all X-Men characters—as an edgy teenager. In Johnston and Tortosa’s hands, Wolverine is a jaded, combative, albeit naive, student at a remote boarding school, who thinks of the world as a large arena and its inhabitants his opponents.
“We’ve created material that Marvel fans will enjoy,” Middaugh says. “But you don’t have to know the Marvel versi on to enjoy this content.” Marvel approached Del Rey to produce the project, inviting the manga publisher to license their choice of Marvel characters and create new manga versions of them. Looking to produce both a manga storyline for girls and one for their male audience, Del Rey chose the X-Men for their shojo manga (girls comics) and Wolverine character for their shonen manga (boys comics).
Marvel has had their characters depicted in the manga style before. In 2000, the publisher launched Marvel Mangaverse, an experiment that gave such Marvel characters as Spider-Man, the manga treatment. (In the Spider-Man manga, the character was rewritten as a young ninja-in-training.) In 2003 the publisher launched the Tsunami line in an effort to publish new, manga-inspired stories that would appeal to the average manga reader. Marvel has also had artists in Japan represent their characters. In Marvel Legends: Wolverine: Snikt!, Tsutomu Nihei, creator of the manga series BLAME! and Noise, transports Wolverine to a desolate, cyberpunk future world.
But for these new manga treatments, Marvel had something different in mind. “What they found in their (prior) manga program is that they had excellent stories, but ones that were rooted in Marvel continuity,” explains Middaugh. Marvel came to Del Rey, he said, because they “wanted someone who wouldn’t take that approach.”
Middaugh assembled a creative team of Johnston, a writer he had met at conventions in the past, and Tortosa, who had been slated to work on another Del Rey project that didn’t pan out. Given free reign by Marvel, the team had the opportunity to create a whole new storyline—provided that it maintained Wolverine’s characteristic adamantine claws (which create the Snikt! sound affect when they flash open) and regenerative powers.
Instead of continuity, Middaugh had Johnston strip Wolverine down to his adamantium skeleton and start with the bare minimum before putting the meat back on the character. Johnston, whose resume includes volume 3 of Queen and Country: Declassified and Wasteland, both from Oni Press, said, “We ended up taking the essence of the Logan [Wolverine] character and putting him into a shonen story. We’re not trying to find the shonen story in Wolverine.”
Prior to this project, Johnston’s introduction to the character was through the X-men movies. “I don’t know the character all that well,” Johnston says, emphasizing that he sees his unfamiliarity with Wolverine as an advantage. “I’m not weighed down by him or second guessing myself about him.” In fact, while writing the script Johnston says that he distanced himself from the Marvel material in order to concentrate on his own version of the character. “When you’re doing a revamp you can’t hang on the coattails of what’s come before,” he says.
Tortosa’s experience was different. “I’ve always wanted to do two things,” he said during a phone interview from his home in the Phillipines. “Draw manga and draw Wolverine. You can imagine how happy I am to be doing both.” But the job didn’t come without its share of challenges. While Wolverine/Logan’s moodiness lends itself to an adolescent version, his physical attributes were tougher to come up with. In re-imagining the character, Tortosa kept only two of Wolverine’s trademark physical characteristics: his hair, and his metallic claws. Tortosa’s babyfaced Logan has the lanky build of a 16 year old and an insecurity that emerges during his more vulnerable moments.
Johnston and Tortosa are currently at work on volume two of Wolverine: Prodigal Son, the series wrap up. And Middaugh is both proud of his creative team and excited about their ability to create a fresh, accessible Wolverine that everyone can read. “I’m really proud of the work that Antony and Wilson have done,” Middaugh says. “You can read this book if you’ve been reading comics all your life or if your sole exposure is watching the trailer of the Wolverine movie that’s coming out. We’ve developed a new version of this character.”
