Wolverine Origins: Dark Reign
By Munawar Mobin
DC comics has always been more of an obsession for me than Marvel ever was. The roots of it are in my childhood; ever since I was little I have been exposed to a wide range of DC comics. Lately, I have been reading Marvel and so far it's still not proved to be better. However, it's growing on me and it's safe to say that Wolverine Origins: Dark Reign has played a vital part.
The paperback gathers issues #31-36 from the Wolverine Origins series and comes from Daniel Way, Doug Braithwaite and Y. Paquette. The fact that it is a continuing story was a concern at first, seeing as the previous issues were new to me, but the first few pages account for whatever has happened in a simple and smooth manner and gets the reader up to speed quite fast.
The plot involves Logan and his son Daken, who has been fed lies about his father by Romulus. Daken had discovered in the previous issues that he was merely a pawn in Romulus's plans and thus sets aside his hatred for his father to team up him and take down his former boss.
It is difficult to talk about certain comics without giving away spoilers. What can be said about this novel is that it's heavy with Logan's sense of fatherhood and family issues. We learn a lot about Logan and so far, all we've known about him is that he's was born to be a ruthless killer with animalistic instincts and insane amounts of power. Wolverine Origins: Dark Reign pulls aside the curtain on Wolverine's character and reveals him to be more than just an animal with hatred that could fill 30 semi-trucks. All throughout the book, he seems to be thinking about his son and his safety, sacrificing everything in the way, doing everything possible to help Daken turn away from the path of violence his father chose.
The book is an amazing read with fantastic artwork and a few twists here and there. It ends on a page that seemed to come too soon and would leave the reader wanting to know more. If you're a fan of Wolverine, do get the book (available at Jamil's); and if you're starting to read Marvel, you should definitely get your hands on this one.
Not often beta writer entries are funny - this was. Without going too deep or philosophical, this entry with its simplicity stood out. We have 'The New Sheriff' as next week's topic. All submissions need to be sent in to ds.risingstars@gmail.com by Sunday noon. Word limit: 350-500 words. Good luck.
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Emergency Exit
By Shayanta Chowdhury
The boy looked at the green sign. It had “Exit” written on it in white, block letters and had a stick picture of a man and steps leading downwards. Emergency exits always lead down to the ground. The world thinks that the ground is the safest place there is. Why, I have no idea.
The boy was four floors above the ground. His job was to wipe the floors; quite literally, and not how it is used nowadays for people you don't like. So he wiped the floors with his trusty partner, the mop, which had a long white handle which the boy cleaned, everyday, with eagerness which challenged his apathetic floor-cleaning. And with the mop he cleaned all the floors and the stairs while talking to it in silence, replied by wet swishes and occasional splashes in the water bucket. And now, he was going to clean the emergency staircase leading to the world's safest place, the ground.
Dipping the mop in the half-filled (or half empty; or full-filled as a matter of fact, with water, dirt and air) bucket of water, he commenced wiping. Swiftly, and perhaps with less efficiency than expected, he kept working down the stairs, the emergency stairs, leading to safety.
Halfway down the first flight, the swishing sound of the mop and the otherwise silent environment was rudely interrupted by an alarm. It was the emergency siren, which blared to warn the people of danger, guiding them to safety with its harsh, yet useful voice. But the boy had never heard the alarm before, and so he was only irritated by its discord screaming.
Meanwhile, as all children of Earth are taught to do, the inhabitants started to rush for the emergency exits leading to the stairs which our hero was cleaning. Was it a fire, or just a false alarm, we shall never know, but it was effective nonetheless in bringing every man down to earth; literally again, of course.
The boy had completed cleaning half of the top-most flight of stairs when this alarm was raised. Now people were supposed to rush down them to safety. The first few sprinters had already entered through the door, while the mass of the rest were following. But something happened which stopped the mass. In short, the first two enthusiasts had slipped and fell down and down, and this stopped the others from following the unfortunate duo's footsteps (even though the duo had missed all the steps, flying and landing, one on his back, and the other on his head). The rest were careful to walk slowly down like civilised beings, while the boy stood watching with a questioning glance which received no answers. He was annoyed because he would have to clean half-a-flight again.
I think it would be safe to now say that the boy had forgotten to place the “Caution: Wet floor, Slippery” sign in front of the door which apparently lead to safety.
