What do you think?
Rate this book
Marvel Noir: Wolverine & The X-Men
Book by Van Lente, Fred, Moore, Stuart
210 pages, Paperback
First published March 12, 2013
About the author
Fred Van Lente
1,388 books324 followersFred Van Lente is the New York Times-bestselling author of comics as varied as Archer & Armstrong (Harvey Award nominee, Best Series), Taskmaster, MODOK's 11, Amazing Spider-Man, Conan the Avenger, Weird Detective, and Cowboys & Aliens (upon which the 2011 movie was based), as well as the novels Ten Dead Comedians and The Con Artist.
Van Lente also specializes in entertaining readers with offbeat histories with the help of his incredibly talented artists. He has written the multiple-award winning Action Philosophers!, The Comic Book History of Comics, Action Presidents! (all drawn by Ryan Dunlavey), and The Comic Book Story of Basketball with Joe Cooper (Ten Speed September 2020).
He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Crystal Skillman, and some mostly ungrateful cats.
Van Lente also specializes in entertaining readers with offbeat histories with the help of his incredibly talented artists. He has written the multiple-award winning Action Philosophers!, The Comic Book History of Comics, Action Presidents! (all drawn by Ryan Dunlavey), and The Comic Book Story of Basketball with Joe Cooper (Ten Speed September 2020).
He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Crystal Skillman, and some mostly ungrateful cats.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 21, 2026
this one got real weird with it, I dig it
May 27, 2026
I wanted to like this one but NOPE. All four noir stories in here try too hard to have a twist and it doesn’t work at all. It just makes each already messy story more difficult to follow. They all start off fine but none of them stick the landing.
October 17, 2020
The reinvention of the X-Men and Brotherhood into a Noir setting was really great. I loved the thought that went into how they were reinterpreted.
The problem is the main character: Thomas Halloway. He isn't even a remotely mutant adjacent character. If you want a blatant and poorly written Gary Stu, this is your man. He bangs Jean Grey and flirts with Emma and Wanda. He is constantly being like "Oh you didn't trick me because I figured it out and was just playing along." He's so "special" that he isn't impacted by seven days of sleep deprivation torture so he spends the tail end of it physically, emotionally, and verbally abusing Wanda (up to choking her when she lets him down) just for shits and giggles. Every page I kept hoping that one of the far more interesting characters would just kill him.
The art is all over the place, ranging from good to really off model. However, the art has trouble differentiating the characters so it was sometimes confusing who was the subject of a panel.
I'd say read this from your library if you are interested. Only buy it if you can get it hugely discounted.
The problem is the main character: Thomas Halloway. He isn't even a remotely mutant adjacent character. If you want a blatant and poorly written Gary Stu, this is your man. He bangs Jean Grey and flirts with Emma and Wanda. He is constantly being like "Oh you didn't trick me because I figured it out and was just playing along." He's so "special" that he isn't impacted by seven days of sleep deprivation torture so he spends the tail end of it physically, emotionally, and verbally abusing Wanda (up to choking her when she lets him down) just for shits and giggles. Every page I kept hoping that one of the far more interesting characters would just kill him.
The art is all over the place, ranging from good to really off model. However, the art has trouble differentiating the characters so it was sometimes confusing who was the subject of a panel.
I'd say read this from your library if you are interested. Only buy it if you can get it hugely discounted.
November 30, 2023
Ehhhhhh.
I want my heroes to have superpowers.
There.
I said it.
Without, they seem incredibly lame.
I want my heroes to have superpowers.
There.
I said it.
Without, they seem incredibly lame.
January 23, 2022
This a was pretty drab story overall. What if the X-Men were actually sociopaths, not mutants.The art was really too dark-literally. I am also pretty sure the Wolverine Noir story is not set within the same continuity as the first story which seems prety baffling since they're collected in the same book.
May 17, 2026
Lots of fun when it gets into the swing of things, although I don't really understand why most of the x-men seem to be the bad guys/siding with the over reaching government. It seems to me to be an abuse of the source material.
It has that sort of overwrought, misanthropic world view that I suppose is a trapping of the noir detective genre. Enjoyable, if not taken too seriously.
It has that sort of overwrought, misanthropic world view that I suppose is a trapping of the noir detective genre. Enjoyable, if not taken too seriously.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 2, 2018
Disappointing, while I liked the Wolverine story, the rest of the book was a muddled mess with panels so dark they just all merged together
November 16, 2021
The X-Men series is incredibly original and fresh. The Wolverine series is less effective but still pretty cool.
August 10, 2014
The X-Men world is recast into a noir setting with characters with cynical attitudes, stark tones of light and dark and narrative structures using flashbacks amongst other traditional noir elements (which acknowledging no definite characteristics of noir).
The art in this world is uses too much darkness that at times, it was very hard to know what was going on. Whatever one seeks to achieve in the choice of art, its functional purpose must still be maintained and here, the darkness obscured far too often rather than be a desired effect.
The stories themselves were middling, only occasionally reaching the point of genuine interest. Some characters seemed so far removed from their real/Marvel-616 counterparts as to genuinely raise the question as to how different a character’s portrayal has to be from the ‘base character’ before it can no longer be considered a different version of that character but simple a different character. Is Cyclops without some sort of eye issue still Cyclops? If Professor X doesn’t have some sort of enhanced intellect, is he still truly Professor X? Is Wolverine still Wolverine without three claws from each hand? I felt that I had more "I get that reference!” moments rather than moments of actual enjoyment in the stories.
This is not a terrible book, yet I only had limited moments of actual enjoyment. I suppose that seeing the characters in this different world had moments of diverting amusement and there were a few good story moments, but it was a pretty weak collection in the end.
The art in this world is uses too much darkness that at times, it was very hard to know what was going on. Whatever one seeks to achieve in the choice of art, its functional purpose must still be maintained and here, the darkness obscured far too often rather than be a desired effect.
The stories themselves were middling, only occasionally reaching the point of genuine interest. Some characters seemed so far removed from their real/Marvel-616 counterparts as to genuinely raise the question as to how different a character’s portrayal has to be from the ‘base character’ before it can no longer be considered a different version of that character but simple a different character. Is Cyclops without some sort of eye issue still Cyclops? If Professor X doesn’t have some sort of enhanced intellect, is he still truly Professor X? Is Wolverine still Wolverine without three claws from each hand? I felt that I had more "I get that reference!” moments rather than moments of actual enjoyment in the stories.
This is not a terrible book, yet I only had limited moments of actual enjoyment. I suppose that seeing the characters in this different world had moments of diverting amusement and there were a few good story moments, but it was a pretty weak collection in the end.
January 10, 2014
Wow,I really expected this to be better. The artist for the X-Men issues takes the term "noir" far too literally, dousing the panels in so much darkness and shadow it was hard to tell who the characters were or what was going on. Also, the X-Men here are so removed from the versions of the characters I'm used too, it was a bit off-putting. The Wolverine story in the middle of the boook is better drawn and has more action, saving this book from a one-star rating.
March 22, 2014
There were parts of this that let me down, and parts that drew me right back in. I get the logic behind collecting all of the noir stories into one volume, but it really is unfortunate that they were of such varying quality. The best by far was the final arc, the Weapon X Noir. That story truly sucked me in. I'm a fan of noir in general, and the genre was done well enough throughout, but only the final story truly had value in its own right, beyond "Oh, hey, I caught that reference!"
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews