I (heart) Marvel: My Mutant Heart #1

Writer: Daniel Way, Peter Milligan, Tim Fish
Art: Ken Knudtsen, Marcos Martin, Tim Fish
Colors: Jose Villarrubia, Will Quintana
Letters: Dave Lanphear


Part of the I (heart) Marvel event, the My Mutant Heart one-shot features Wolverine, Doop and Cannonball in three separate tales of romance, revenge, lust, betrayal and… intergalactic groupies?

Much like the recent Marvel Monsters event revisited the once popular genre of monster comics, the I (heart) Marvel one-shots revisit, what else, romance comics. I’m not really one for these one-shot events. While there are bound to be one or two gems to come out of these types of stunts, by and large they’re a waste of time and are quickly forgotten. So it was with some reluctance that I cracked open the pages of My Mutant Heart.

The first story stars everyone’s favorite overexposed mutant, Wolverine, in a quick little ditty written by Wolverine: Origins scribe Daniel Way. It’d take something pretty special to make me care what happens in a Wolverine story these days, especially an eight-pager like this. But no, he’s betrayed and vows revenge against his betrayers, pretty standard stuff. The art does nothing to help the story. In fact it’s so boring and sloppy-looking that it makes the story seem even less interesting.

Ah, here’s the gem, starring one of my favorite mutants, the loveable green blob named Doop. Peter Milligan (Human Target, X-Statix, X-Men) and artist Marcos Martin (Breach, Batgirl: Year One) present a quirky love story involving a private eye named Chandler who is hired to tail a beautiful socialite whose husband suspects her of having an affair. But when Chandler discovers who the other man is things take a very strange twist indeed. And that ending… I defy you not to at least chuckle at the absurdity.

The third and final tale features Sam Guthrie, a.k.a. Cannonball, and his girlfriend, intergalactic pop star, Lila Cheney. Sam begins to suspect that Lila may have returned to her former ways as a thief, but when he’s caught in the act searching for evidence of her wrongdoings he ends up putting the relationship in jeopardy. This story, by writer/artist Tim Fish, falls somewhere in the middle. Better than the first story, not as good as the second. It’s probably the most straight forward romance story of the bunch, barring of course the alien groupie that shows up to wreak havoc.

All in all My Mutant Heart wasn’t the disaster I was expecting. Heck, I actually enjoyed most of it. If nothing else I’ll probably flip through the rest of the I (heart) Marvel one-shots to see whether or not they’re worth picking up. Judging by the covers though these books seem like they’re aimed more towards the female readership than anything. Silly Marvel, girls don’t read comics… do they?

Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance preview books for review purposes.

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