Jessie Robertson reviews Death of Wolverine #1 – 4….
Spoilers Ahead! Do Not Read On – This is Not a Spoiler-Free Zone!
How do you kill Wolverine? His skeleton has been bonded with adamantium, the most indestructible metal ever created. He has a mutant healing factor, which allows him to recover from any wound, break, puncture, virus or affliction rapidly. Just like with Origin, a story that some thought shouldn’t be told, this seems just as unlikely because as we know, all comic book characters who are killed, are always brought back; seems like the unwritten rule. Let me break down the plot thread and then I’ll give my thoughts on this limited series.
Wolverine’s Healing Factor has degenerated from a strange virus. It’s been used up and gone. Popping his adamantium claws over and over again and having the foreign metal inside his body his whole life has also been slowly poisoning him. None of Marvel’s top scientific minds can find a cure. And there’s a bounty on his head. Wolverine is determined to find out who put it there and to keep himself alive long enough to find out. He dispatches of a multitude of generic bad guys and villains while camped out on an island until a mercenary from his past named Nuke shows up and gives him a bit of a fight. He gets information that someone in Madripoor (Wolverine’s old stomping grounds) that the person who put out the hit is there. He arrives incognito to find Viper , who has coerced his nemesis Sabretooth to take out her former husband. Before that battle can conclude, Lady Deathstrike rears her altered face to collect. Luckily , a well placed call to Logan’s old training partner and kid pal Kitty Pryde saved him, as she shows up to stop Deathstrike. They find out Logan’s former master Ogun is the one looking for him, so they travel to Japan. There, Ogun has possessed Kitty’s body to lead Logan to his trap; but he finds out and tracks Ogun down into the body of an innocent man. Ogun swears he will kill this man unless Wolverine stops fighting him and turns himself in. The man who put the hit is Dr. Cornelius, the Weapon X scientist who put Wolverine’s skeleton inside him.
Wolverine returns to the facility where his nightmarish journey began and finds numerous subjects about to be subjected to the same procedure. Cornelius wants to get it right this time and build an army of soldiers more suited to the job than just an animal which is what Wolverine is. When he finds out Logan’s healing factor is gone, his plan is shot. So he orders a warped Colonel to kill Wolverine. Easier said than done. Logan dispatches him and bashes through Cornelius protective glass as he hits the switch to start the bonding process on a young kid. Cornelius leaves, wounded from stray glass, as Wolverine saves the kid by cutting down the jets that were going to shoot the adamantium into the kids’ body. Liquidized adamantium covers Logan’s body as he stalks Cornelius outside. Cornelius, lay dying, cursing Wolverine and asking what he’s ever done to help humanity as Logan’s body becomes slower and slower, covered in cooling adamantium, before he gets one last look at a beautiful sunrise.
My Thoughts: I’d heard rumors Wolverine would go down in “Star Wars” fashion and wasn’t sure what that meant but not exactly how I imagined it. Overall, I never got into this book. Death of Wolverine should imply some importance but after the first issue where it seems he receives his death sentence (no healing factor) it was sort of foregone conclusion it would be something in that ballpark. Logan beating a second tier Punisher villain into the ground was nothing to get excited about and I didn’t care for the “guest star” aspect of the second issue, where it seemed they were putting in a cadre of famous characters just to have them in this series. Issue 3 was nice with the Japanese setting but again, seemed a distraction to get to the final issue, nothing major or revelatory with his moments with Kitty and Ogun was a throwaway character. Issue 4 is the meat of the series, what everyone came to see and I think it delivers. The villain is very apt, the man that made the killer, not the hero as he claims. Logan goes through the series nearly ready to give in to death the whole way so it seems he finds a chance to make it worthwhile by saving that child and not subjecting him to the life Wolverine has had.
I don’t think this series will be looked back at as anything profound or great storytelling, but the double paged panels by Steve McNiven (which they are at least 1 in every issue) are some nice pristine artwork. Beautiful backgrounds, like the garden in Japan or the desert as Logan jeeps through, are both peaceful in nature and scream for reflection, which is sort of what Logan is up to during this series.
What did you guys think of this story and when/ how/ if ever do you think Wolverine will return as a character?
Jessie Robertson
Originally published October 15, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
