Comics / Comic Reviews / Marvel Comics

Wolverine: Weapon X #1

By Andy Frisk
June 7, 2009 - 16:45

Blood, death, claws, guns, and dismembering, then some more blood, death, claws, guns, and dismembering, but the claws aren’t always of the adamantium kind that are doing the cutting. Turns out, there’s a new group of laser clawed killers on the loose, who were created from the knowledge learned, and processes gleaned from “old files from Weapon X.” This time, the killers are augmented employees of a private military contractor named Blackguard, a name that has to be intentionally similar to the real life, now renamed, and infamous Blackwater. Blackguard is a “subsidiary of Roxxon.” All you Marvel readers out there know that if Roxxon is involved, it’s not a good thing. For all you non-Marvel readers, Roxxon is an evil corporation bent on, what else, world economic, and therefore, political and military, domination. Logan is tipped off to this troubling development by Maverick, a former Weapon X product and teammate of Logan’s. Of course, Logan gets right down to the task at hand, which consists of terminating Roxxon’s project and its products.

 

Wolverine: Weapon X #1 supplies its readers with the aforementioned blood, death, claws, etc, which, in reality, is pretty much what they’re after. Logan, asleep on a train while riding out to meet Maverick, at the San Francisco docks, wakes up just in time to save a young woman from a mugging by hacking off one perpetrator’s hand, and sticking the other perpetrator’s gun, literally, where “the sun don’t shine.” The hacking is graphic and bloody, but, thankfully, the sticking isn’t. It’s more humorous than anything, but at this point it’s worth mentioning that the cover of this book does come with, albeit a rather hard to spot, parental advisory warning. 

 

So far, it all looks like we’re just going to keep getting pretty much the same standard Wolverine type story, including Logan’s over present self loathing. In response to Maverick’s observation, directed to Logan, “You smell like a distillery,” Logan retorts, “If you were me you’d drink too.” Yes, Logan, in his epically long life has been tortured, experimented on, brain washed, used as a weapon of mass destruction, and has witnessed loved ones die, unfortunately by his own hand at times. By this point though, shouldn’t the poor guy be looking for the positives around him to cling to? Isn’t the fact that he is an accepted member of a super-team that saves the world regularly, with a chance to influence troubled teens, supposed to help him deal with all these issues? Wait, I’m probably confusing the Logan of the many Marvel series he’s the star of with the many Marvel movies he’s the star of. Granted no matter what, Wolverine is not intended, and never will be the happy go lucky type of hero, and if he became such, he really wouldn’t be all that interesting, but one would think he’d have lightened up some by now? Maybe that just wouldn’t sell this book in particular, since it is conceived of as a jumping on point for new Wolverine readers that might decide to pick up a book about their new favorite character, and actually need a book that can be followed from the start, since Wolverine’s story is so convoluted. 

 

As odd as this may sound at this point, I’d like to say that I really do like Wolverine, the character, and he really has been one of my long term favorites since I got into comics in the early to mid 1980’s. In fact, I like the character so much, that I hate to see him stagnate, and hopefully this series will lead to some more adventures in line with some of Wolverine’s Best stories I’ve commented upon recently. The adventures don’t have to be “light-hearted” per se, but it’d be nice to see Logan be a hero again on a scale that is grander than that of a subway vigilante slasher, and a wind him up, and turn him loose, killer.

 

As far as the art is concerned, Garney’s pencils and inks are superb. His panel layouts and action sequences mesh well with each other, creating a heightened sense of suspense as the Blackguard killers aren’t shown in full. This creates all sorts of imaginative ideas in the readers’ minds as to what they’ll look like when Logan finally tracks them down. His depiction of Logan is dead on. He is depicted in his signature outdoorsman duds while in street clothes, and sports the dark hero look in his working clothes, a pretty cool new costume, sans face mask. Garney’s detailed facial expressions also accurately capture the characters’ reactions and moods.  If this issue was to be rated on quality of its art alone, it would easily be in the 9 to perfect 10 range.

Wolvie's cool new duds.

 

Unfortunately, for a comic book to be truly great, and live up to its art, and vise versa, its story has to be great as well.  With Logan tramping through familiar territory where he, yet again, finds out about a rogue-like Weapon X derived project, and has to “kill ‘em all,” the story will have to rank as mediocre at best.  Hopefully, as this series plays along we’ll get some stronger stories.  Aaron’s proven that he has them in him with this stint on Ghost Rider and Scalped, so maybe they’ll migrate over to Wolverine: Weapon X.

Rating: 6.5 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12