WOLVERINE #175

By: Tony Whitt
Review Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2002

What is it with Marvel killing off its biggest characters lately? First they kill off Captain America, only to bring him back in a series ten times better than the one he previously starred in; and now they've killed off Wolverine. He'll be lucky if he fares as well in the afterlife as Cap has, though, because if this last issue is anything to go by, his original series wasn't anything to write home about.

In the main feature, written by Frank Tieri and drawn by Sean Chen and Norm Rapmund, Logan's search for his kidnapped foster daughter draws to a close when he's captured by his old nemesis Victor Creed, otherwise known as Sabretooth. Sabretooth's using stolen resources from the Weapon X project to get his revenge on a now-powerless Logan, and for bait he's using a set of files from the project that supposedly tell about Logan's lost memories. Carnage ensues. Ugh.

Bad enough that we have to slog through Tieri's tough guy, dialect-heavy dialogue, which makes Ben Grimm sound like a Harvard professor by comparison to Logan and Creed. It's even worse that the artwork makes this a truly unsavory experience. This issue is nearly as violent as this month's DOUBLE SHOT, but the rating still sits at "PG" - hard to credit when there's so much blood, guts, and (ouch!) eye trauma. Apart from all that, there's one important element missing from this story: a sense of closure. If this is meant to be the culmination of a lengthy story arc that brings the title character to an important climax in his development - in this case, his death - it certainly doesn't feel like it. If anything makes us suspect that Logan will be back soon enough, it's the hamfisted way in which his death is handled here.

The second feature isn't much better, in which the Japanese crime lord who killed Mariko awaits Logan's yearly visit to take another piece of him - literally. The story at least has a sense of grim humor as each missing part is revealed to us, though again the artwork somewhat kills the effect - especially when the missing nose is depicted several pages too soon. If Tsurayaba's amazement that Logan has missed his appointment is supposed to drive home the "fact" that Logan is dead, it's no more effective than the last panel of the former story.

The only thing saving this last issue from being a total wash is the final feature, written by WOLVERINE writing contest award winner Jason Aaron with art by Udon Studios. In it, Logan stops in the middle of being chased by a group of Alabama rednecks to help a religious woman whose car has broken down on the backroads. Udon avoids their normal animated style to render Aaron's script more realistically, and it certainly deserves it. Aaron delivers a very well-written character study revealing something of the reasons for Logan's anger and bloodlust. While it also dovetails nicely with Tieri's "final" Wolverine story, it manages to surpass both of the earlier features with a sensitivity that Tieri's scripts lack.


Despite this, perhaps this was one series that deserved a trip to the grave. But is it truly Logan's last stand? Are you kidding?