‘The Wolverine Files’ – Mike. W. Barr (Simon & Schuster)

I saw the new ‘Wolverine’ film, a couple of weeks ago and absolutely loved it to pieces. Wolverine may be well nigh indestructible but the film makers made up for this by having him beaten up in a variety of cool ways, just what I like to see!
I know my way round the Marvel Universe (a little bit) but never really followed Wolverine’s life outside the X-Men. The film hinted at more to Wolverine than just the X-Men and I wanted to find out more but don’t have the time, or the money, required to wade through years of back story.
As luck would have it, I was sent a book that answered a large number of my questions...

‘The Wolverine Files’ is basically an outline of Wolverine’s life as documented by the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (just had a quick look at Wikipedia and this acronym could stand for anything...) It details his origins and history (as well as known accomplices, enemies and so on) leading up to the present day in a manner that gives you the facts in an informative and entertaining way. The book also gives you a good insight into Wolverine himself and may lead you to see the man in a new light. I certainly came away knowing a lot more about Wolverine than I started off with! What I particularly liked though was the way that the book doesn’t give too much away other than the bare bones, if you wanted to go on and read the comics then reading ‘The Wolverine Files’ wouldn’t spoil this experience for you. There’s still a more lot more going on underneath the surface...

It goes without saying though that a book of this nature can contain spoilers if you’re reading certain Marvel comics and haven’t caught up with the events contained in this book. This wasn’t so much of a big deal to me personally as I’m not really following Marvel right now and the book gave me a rather neat overview of everything I needed to know as well as interesting bios of characters that I didn’t know a lot about. This may not be the case for you though so be warned...

Presentation wise, ‘The Wolverine Files’ works a treat with plenty of gorgeous artwork of the man himself that clearly shows how the character has developed over the years. I also liked the way that all the information is dressed up as an official report with accompanying memos and comments from higher up the chain of command. The book may just be a collection of facts but I came away with the impression that I’d read something that was a lot more.

‘The Wolverine Files’ may contain its share of spoilers but that depends on the person reading it I guess. I had great fun with this and would recommend it to the casual reader who wants to learn more about one of Marvel’s more enigmatic heroes...

Nine out of Ten