Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week – beginning with twoAward postings, followed closely by the past week’s Best.

For a long time, Wolverine’s origin was a great mystery, and that was one of the selling points of him as a character: a grizzled loner with a past so mysterious that even he didn’t know it. Then, the original Origin miniseries gave Logan an established origin, and the character (as well as his audience) were forced to evolve. However, between Origin and the quasi-follow-up Wolverine: Origins series, many readers felt that Wolverine’s beginnings had in fact been over-explained, which made Marvel’s announcement of Origin II an interesting gamble. A sequel that nobody asked for? That can be a hard sell, and even harder for a creative team to pull off. But oh hey, what’s that? Kieron Gillen and Adam Kubert are on the job?

“A sequel nobody asked for” is absolutely too harsh a phrase, but that’s the kind of knee-jerk vitriol Gillen, Kubert and Frank Martin had to overcome with Origin II #1. The challenge was to take habit or curiosity and turn it into excitement, and it turns out “Wolverine fights a bear” is a pretty inherently exciting prospect. Kubert and Martin do great visual choreography on the book, giving the fights a necessary brutality and establishing the environment as something imposing and unfeeling that dominates the life of the Wolfish Man and his pack.

Gillen‘s script works beautifully in partnership with the art; wisely choosing to leave the issue (totally?) dialogue-less, the effect is to heighten the loss of a young James Howlett’s humanity, instead focusing on his reliance on - and loving embrace of - his animalistic side. The narration syncs with the stark images of the art, lending this story an operatic feel. It’s important because it is confident, because it believes in the story is telling and because it establishes such brutal, easy-to-understand stakes. Survival and family. And for the record, that line about winter dyeing the spring white is unshakably brilliant.

I went into Origin II #1 not really knowing what to expect, and perhaps even less excited about it than I usually am with a Kieron Gillen comic. It turns out, I had no reason to worry or doubt. I feel silly for not having faith in the power of pictures and words to get me caught up in the chase. It deserves this week’s Eat My Hat Award.