Last week, while reading X-Force Vol. 6, I kept wondering where Wolverine was. Now I know.
This new volume of Wolverine has Logan hunted, cornered, and turned into Beast’s personal weapon. Beast has become as much of a monster as he’s ever been, and he’s finally being sniffed out. It’s a simple concept, but that’s what this Wolverine run has cashed in on: being conceptually simple — maybe a little recycled — but executed in an entertaining way. It falls short where it falls short, but it excels in enough places that I want to follow along.
There honestly wasn’t a ton worth digging into here, but stuff definitely jumped out. Maybe the most striking here was the art, which was a big shift from the Kubert masterclass that presented the series up to this point. It’s impossible not to miss him — he was the major part of why the book loomed so large for me — but Ryp and D’Armsta put some stuff up that I do think is good.
Ryp’s line work really really works with the kind of book Wolverine is. He draws expressive faces that allow for the writing to be sparse or not even there, and he also draws those faces so grossly. All of these guys are wrinkled and gnarled and just generally not doing so well in a way that’s just so good. His action is maybe a little too static in places, but even those moments are pretty cool pin-up shots, so pretty forgivable. The buckets of blood are fun, if maybe a bit too goopy at times, which makes things feel a bit more goofy than might be called for. I’m excited to see how much harder he goes on the next volume.
Now, D’Armata I’m not quite as sold on. There are certainly places where he shines — mostly in lower light, or orange light for some reason — but in general, I don’t understand why everything he colors looks so wet. The shininess makes everything look plasticky instead of whatever he’s going for, and for the most part it just doesn’t work for me. It’s a style of coloring that I’m not a huge fan of, and here it’s mostly distracting.
As for the story that’s unraveling, similar to my opinion on X-Force, I like this, but I think it misses some good opportunities. I think this volume explored Logan’s long history of pain and trauma in an actually meaningful and succinct way, and played with those ideas by having Beast manipulate and torture Logan through a whole new painful and traumatic experience. There’s definitely juice there, but I’m not sure we needed a retread, especially when it feels like we just had that opportunity with X Lives/X Deaths of Wolverine. I am happy that we didn’t get a therapy—please no therapy arc—because I like the feeling that Logan’s done this stuff, he knows how to deal with it, he’ll be okay.
There’s a degree of this that leans toward torture porn, which isn’t bad necessarily, but it’s worth mentioning. Wolverine books pretty quickly and easily go to that territory, so it’s not surprising or unexpected, but a whole arc where Logan is captured and being physically or psychologically tortured throughout has been done before and better than here, and it probably goes on for a little bit too long.
Still, I think I’m here for this book till the end of the line, at least at this point. It’s been consistently entertaining, which is more than I can say about the rest of the X-line, and ultimately, Wolverine is one of the best Marvel characters. This has me more excited for what’s to come than I’ve been in a bit, and I’m ready to see Beast get wrecked as much as possible.
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