THIS REVIEW OF KIT + THE WOLF IS SPOILER-FREE.
by Jarrod Jones. Bootleg superhero comics, a longtime fixture in underground fan circles and a hot commodity in our modern digitized age, are a tonic for stale corporate cape comics. They offer a space where familiar heroes and villains from our favorite epics can be manipulated like mad puppets for whatever twisted fantasy their rogue creators might have in mind for them. Recently, Spider-Man was put through an unlicensed thresher to thrilling results. Batman’s got a beaut of a bootleg, too. When you have a superhero itch only you can scratch, don’t wait for an email from Marvel or DC — take that stylus of yours and get to skritchin’.
The X-Men, thanks to decades’ worth of iconic looks and soapy character dynamics, will always be a crew of characters ripe for an unsanctioned riffing. If John Byrne can do it, then certainly there is no reason why John Allison, the quite brilliant and also quite British creator behind Steeple and Giant Days, can’t take a poke at Marvel’s Merry Mutants. So here comes Kit + The Wolf, a joyous, squishy riff on those halcyon Kitty Pryde/Wolverine team-ups of the Eighties that X-nuts, Bad Machinery devotees, and other smart people can read in serialized form for free right now.
Kit + The Wolf is comedy magic in the way only Allison can conjure. His reverence for the mid-80s Marvel format plays a part in its genesis. But, really, this comics delight exists in tribute to Marvel’s esoteric Bruce Springsteen analog, “Brick Springstern,” whose first and only appearance in 1986’s Transformers #14 had, to Allison’s dismay, been contradicted in an issue of Captain America where Cap and some pals grooved to albums recorded by The Actual Boss himself. So John’s here to give good ol’ Brick his day in the sun.
Observe the cover of Kit + The Wolf; the essence of Brick lives on. This issue, which runs for 28 chortle-inducing pages, comes packing a simple premise: Kitty is gifted tickets to an upcoming Springstern concert and decides to bring Wolverine, who submits to her charming invitation even if he is more of a Gordon Lightfoot guy. (“Punchin’ the air ain’t Logan’s tempo,” he informs Kitty.) Brick’s powerhouse set gets thrown for a loop when Madison Square Garden’s security complement is replaced by Lady Deathstrike and her Reavers, whose nefarious plans portend dire things for “The Chief.”
Naturally, in Allison’s hands, the Marvel method gets daffy. Kit + The Wolf shares the comic rhythms of his other work — there’s at least one great gag on each page, perfect for the serialized format — but this is still an X-Men comic; lovely hangout sessions among the Xavier School’s student body always descend into superpowered dust-ups. Allison’s squidgy lines lend vitality to Kitty and Logan, and when his spunky comic exchanges give way to violent mutant clashes — which, without giving the game away, this most certainly does — he meets the moment at his mannered Bad Machinery best.
John Allison’s X-Men riff rocks like a proper bootleg comic ought, harnessing what made these characters work for him and repackaging them with his unique creative charms. His itch to make this came from a place of love, and a memory of happier, quieter times when the only worry in the world was finding a shady spot to read the latest issue of X-Men. Allison’s knack for goofs is matched only by the amount of heart he puts into his work. Kit + The Wolf is a confluence of both: all goofs, all heart, and great comics.
9 out of 10
Kit + The Wolf is serialized on badmachinery.com. To read the entire issue, head over to John’s Patreon page.
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