What better way is there to ring in the fall season than with vampires?
Wolverine #5 continues this story arc after Logan had been trapped and tortured by anti-mutant haters, only to be kidnapped by Omega Red shortly after, and then dropped into a frozen lake. To catch new readers up, Omega Red has been working with Dracula, who has a very precious item to Omega Red – the Cabonadium Synthesizer – that will allow him to survive without having to consistently suck the life energy out of people. The irony of pairing Omega Red up with Dracula is not lost on us.
In this issue, Wolverine has been frozen in a block of ice like Han Solo. Teenage vampires break into the cabin he has been locked up in and drag Wolverine out into the woods to free him. These teenage vampires are punk rebels who refuse to comply with their vampire customs. They instead feed off the blood of animals while looking for a cure to their disease, which is why they sought Wolverine’s help. This story then becomes a comical one of Wolverine teaming up with teenage vampires to drive snow plows with stakes attached to them into their vampire enemies.
The problem with vampires in the Marvel universe is that they don’t quite fit the mold of the story. While Dracula has shown up in the past to fight the Avengers, and even turn some of the X-Men into blood-sucking creatures of the night, it has never fit the mold of the story. Vampires are fun, but like Marvel Zombies, they should have been kept to their own universe. They make about as much sense as Destiny turning out to be the real Irene Adler from the Sherlock Holmes mystery books. When vampires are tossed into a Wolverine title, it’s both a waste of these monsters and also a good solo story for Wolverine.
While the issue is fun, it lacks any real story. It so far has no greater bearing on the rest of the X-Men universe and seems to have been haphazardly thrown into the story to accommodate another face off with Omega Red. Benjamin Percy as so far written a very interesting Wolverine; Logan has been questioning the toxic behavior he keeps repeating in his life, but unfortunately none of that carries into this issue.
If you want a fun one-off story of Wolverine fighting vampires, this is definitely for you. It’s very “comic books”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the world Jonathan Hickman is building for the X-Men.
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