Daken Akihiro...

[fajrdrako]

Battling, and failing to resist, my new pash. In my recent comic book reading, I've become increasingly fascinated by Daken, son of Wolverine from his first marriage to the Japanese Itsu.

I can just imagine Daken's smirk.

Daken (whose name means 'mongrel') had mostly been featured as a villain in Wolverine: Origins - or so I believe, since I'

Comments

[dewline]

That talent is one too damned easy to abuse, though.

[fajrdrako]

That talent is one too damned easy to abuse, though.

Which is the whole point. Corruption - actual or potential - at its worst.

[crabby_lioness]

A point is what Daken lacks. "Evil Wolverine" got old and he doesn't have anything else to do. This is where he differs from Magneto. When Magneto feels directionless he always finds something else to do, even if its "flirt with Rogue" or "pester his offspring".

[fajrdrako]

Those are good reasons for loving Magneto - and I do. I seem to be enjoying Daken even without a purpose; though I see hints he may be getting one. Just not sure yet what it is.

I note that he has always (at least in the stories I've read) had a lot of misdirection going on - you never know what he's really thinking because just about everything he says is untrue, or partially untrue, intended to manipulate someone.

No, I can't justify my enjoyment of Daken - and luckily, don't have to.

[not_hathor]

Wolverine has a son? Not by Mariko-chan?

See, this is why I pretty much abandoned the Big Two of comicdom back in the late '90's -- they systematically and with malice aforethought destroyed the hero mythos I'd fallen in love with by re-writing key bits of the past continuity. It started when Marvel decided that Jean Grey not only wasn't dead, she also hadn't been Phoenix/Dark Phoenix -- so there went that bit of history.... then Gwen Stacy came back from the dead... and it went downhill from there. It took DC longer to lose me, because I really only followed "Legion of Super Heroes" and the various re-boots were my 'train wreck' addiction, but that got tiresome after a while, too....

[fajrdrako]

Oh, yes, history gets jettisoned with abandon in the Marvel universe. Not that they did anything to change Wolverine's relationship with Mariko, as far as I know - she's a much more recent lover/wife than Itsu, who died around the time of World War II, I think. Or earlier.

Did Gwen Stacey come back from the dead? There was that terrible clone... I'd rather not remember.

I was a huge, huge fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes when I was a kid and they were in Adventure Comics, and then again in the 1990s when they were done by the Bierbaum/Giffen/Gordon team. Since then? I try them from time to time, but the Legion has had an ongoing series of some of my least-favourite writers at DC. So mostly I avoid it. I got the first two issues of the latest reboot, but haven't felt brave enough, or motivated enough, to read them yet.

I'll always love Brainiac 5, though.

[crabby_lioness]

I left over similar issues, but as of 2004 Marvel started trying to get some of its act together. At least among the team titles. Characters in solo books still have it pretty bad.

[fajrdrako]

Characters come and go, characters change, some for the better, some for the worse. I love what they've done with some of the characters - Scott, Emma, Magneto - not so much Gambit or Jubilee.

Generally speaking, I'm enjoying some of the writing extraordinarily well these days - especially on Iron Man, which never used to be a favourite.