‘Wolverine by Benjamin Percy’ Vol. 6 is just competent at what it does

Aggressively average, and I wish it weren’t so.

October 18, 2023

In the process of gathering my thoughts on this new volume of Wolverine, I went back to see what I wrote about the last one. I don’t always do this, but since I’ve been covering the book for a while, I wanted to avoid repeating myself.

For the most part, I’ve been enjoying the book since I started reading. It’s a fine comic, sometimes with excellent art, and a writer who understands Wolverine better than most writers understand their characters. But after going back and reading, I realize my reaction has pretty much been the same as long as I’ve been reading it, with just the art changing. It basically comes down to “lacks depth, but is efficient, mostly good art, Kubert is a god.”

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This time the shallow efficiency shows itself with the clones, both with Logan’s and Beast’s. I like the art better this time – it seems like Ryp is an actual regular artist, which is nice to see. And as always, Percy just knows how to write Logan, both his voice, and entertaining stories featuring him.

But like, that’s my reaction. There’s really not much more to say about it, which reflects on the book just as much as it does me. For one, why am I still reading this book that fails to move me? Sure, part of it is that Logan is a fun character, and that the story has been generally entertaining so far, but at a certain point, is that enough? Is it enjoyable enough to keep reading a thing that is just average in most ways? Maybe. But what if I could be reading new things that I love instead? If not, why isn’t that hypothetical enough? Why do I have this pathological desire to read bottom-of-the-barrel comics (stay tuned for my review of the new Amazing Spider-Man volume)?

For another, why is this a story that Percy, Ryp, and Marvel feel the need to tell? For money, fine, true, boring. Is this book leaving enough of a mark on the character to truly matter? Will we be talking about Logan’s Krakoan adventures ten years from now? Is it really making enough money for that to be the excuse? At this point, this is the second or third longest running book in the era. Huh???

I’m contributing to that! I’m reading this, and opining about it, as if it merits that kind of response, rather than the honorable duty of reading it then forgetting about it completely. I should be refusing to think about this book!

A lot of my frustration here is shared with X-Force as a series too. They’re both books that I think are actually trying to interact with Krakoa on an interesting level, where they’re critiquing it as much as they’re using the aesthetics and events in the status quo. Wolverine greatly benefits from basically stealing X-Force’s most interesting and long-running storyline (Beast’s ramp into fascism) and using it as the plot engine throughout the volume. It doesn’t get solved here, but we do get to see Beast eat lobster in a horrible way, so I’ll call it even.

I’m also a little impressed by the ending here, which is a solid cliffhanger in its own right, with Logan quitting Krakoa. Like a lot of what Percy has written for the character, it’s still pretty generic, but I understand how we got here and why it’s something worth doing. Of all the mutants on Krakoa (barring those in the pit, at least—check out Sabertooth War coming whenever), I think Logan has seen why and how the island is imperfect, and deserves to be tired of these X-Men that are leading.

Wolverine is a book that is competent. That’s pretty much it. It’s very standard, average stuff that flirts with being very good in some brief places. It’s almost like it strives to stay at the exact quality that won’t annoy me. Except it failed to do that this time.