Both have chosen to live outside of conventional society, relying on the regular world only as a place to gather resources and sexual partners. The similarities between Parker and Daken go further than the superficial, than the strong aptitude for crime possessed by both characters. His limitless ambition and ruthlessness in pursuit of his goals reminds me of characters like Judd Winick's Barry Ween, Boy Genius, and, dare I say it, critical darling Darwyn Cooke's depiction of Donald Westlake's Parker, in the books Parker: The Hunter and The Outfit. You could say that he's both the protagonist and the antagonist of his own book. He, unlike most heroes, is the primary actor in his own book, and other characters are forced to play off of him, making for some interesting scenes as we are privy to his plans coming together. Right off the bat, Daken's ambition to create a crime empire in his own image is a definite shift away from the normally reactive nature of most superhero stories, i.e., that a bad person has done something wrong and the hero needs to stop it. There are quite a few concepts at play in the book that make it stand out against the majority of Marvel's mainstream superhero titles. Slowly, month by month, I started to warm to Daken. Luckily, for much of the run, Daken was drawn by one of my favourite artists, Giuseppe Camuncoli, whose hard-edged style was an excellent choice for the character and made me care less about his looks. The costume he eventually gets designed for him is not much better, as he essentially just looks like a Hand ninja wearing a variant of Wolverine's mask. To me, the design of this character is steeped in the worst excesses of Marvel's mid-90s nadir: a mohawk that looked better when it was originally sported by Storm, a tribal tattoo of all things that takes up most of his left side, and bone claws. But that wasn't the only barrier to entry for me. So yeah, Daken's backstory is a little complicated, especially considering the character's publication history only began in 2007. By the end of Wolverine and Wolverine: Origins, he had taken it upon himself to grow a crime empire to rival that of Romulus, who was now presumed dead. In the fallout of the Secret Invasion event, Daken ended up posing as his father in Norman Osborn's mad "Dark Avengers" scheme. Upon coming of age, Daken swore revenge against his birth father for the death of his mother, and became the chief enforcer for Romulus' criminal empire. Through a series of events too circuitous and strange to really get into here, the boy ended up going through a similar training regimen undergone by his father, a process expedited by a shadowy mastermind known as Romulus. The child she bore that day was delivered to a foster family without Logan's knowledge, and was named "Akihiro," but the moniker "Daken" (Japanese for "mongrel") was soon applied to the half-Japanese boy. The Winter Soldier was in reality James "Bucky" Barnes, the former sidekick of Captain America who had at this point in his life been brainwashed into working for the U.S.S.R. Wolverine, had settled down with his Japanese bride, Itsu, and was in the process of trying to forget his past when she was brutally killed by a Soviet assassin known as the Winter Soldier. After the Second World War, Logan, a.k.a. I started Wolverine (vol.3) and Wolverine: Origins just as those two titles were winding down, and it was through these books (and Brian Michael Bendis' Dark Avengers) that I was introduced to Wolverine's ne'er do well son.įor the uninitiated, here's an abbreviated version of Daken's backstory. I started reading about Daken not too long after I started working at Warp One Comics and Games in Edmonton, Alberta and was thus able to read everything arriving each week. We didn't really start off on the right foot, I guess. But, all that being said, I will miss Daken, which I've been reading every month since its inception two years ago. Granted, Marvel's other strategy has been to publish more popular titles like Uncanny X-Men and Amazing Spider-Man twice a month (or more), so who knows. This culling of the Marvel line has been seen as a potential response to DC Comics' successful New 52 publishing strategy, and is one I personally agree with, as I feel both of the "Big Two" are publishing too many books. Marvel recently announced that, in addition to its sister series X-23 and some other titles, Daken: Dark Wolverine will be finishing its run in March. Matt Bowes describes how he was seduced into Dark Wolverine's world of murky morality and omnisexuality. L'enfant terrible, or Why I'll Miss Daken: Dark Wolverine Despite Myself Matt Bowes on Daken By Suzette Chan Sequential Tart: L'enfant terrible, or Why I'll Miss Daken: Dark Wolverine Despite Myself (Volume 15 Issue 2, February 2012)
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