Marvel Comics, under its new Marvel NOW! brand, released Savage Wolverine #1 Wednesday, Frank Cho’s new writer/artist project. And it’s everything you want it to be. Better yet, it might as well be titled Shanna and Wolverine.
My wager is that, if there were enough artists that drew Shanna like Cho, you could have as many Shanna titles at Marvel as DC Comics has Batman titles. Savage Wolverine definitely is a Wolverine book, but it wouldn’t be a Frank Cho series without one or more beautiful, spirited women, and of course, dinosaurs. And it has all that. So even though it isn’t the long-overdue, eagerly-awaited Guns & Dinos, it might as well be, sans guns and armored tanks.
As for the Wolverine angle, because issue #1 was also written by Cho, we get to see some of Cho’s humor come through in Logan/Wolverine’s dialogue, humor we haven’t been able to see in a Cho series in a while. And this humor includes an appearance, albeit short-lived, by none other than Cho’s old pal Mike McSwiggin, well-known to avid Frank Cho fans, this time as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. What I would do to be mentioned in a Frank Cho book…
So good writing, classic Cho art… and add one more title to the pull list.
But if that weren’t enough, this week Image Comics released the hardcover coffee table book Frank Cho: Women, Selected Drawings & Illustrations Book Two
Chock full of Frank Cho original pencil sketches, preliminary drawings, inked and colored works as well as brilliant poster prints, Frank Cho: Women, Selected Drawings & Illustrations Book Two will not disappoint. There is plenty of Cho’s sci-fi work, dinosaur work, jungle images (including some Guns & Dinos), and lots and lots of great images of Brandy in various Liberty Meadows-inspired pin-ups. You’ll have to get the book to see the new, interstellar “Brandy as Red Shirt” Star Trek pin-up for yourself. Many of these images have shown up in one form or the other on Frank Cho’s frequently updated Apes and Babes website, but the selections combined reflect a great body of recent work, available now for the first time in one volume.
Get Savage Wolverine #1 at your local comic book shop before it sells out, and order Frank Cho: Women, Selected Drawings & Illustrations Book Two now from Amazon.com.
C.J. Bunce
Editor
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