Death of Wolverine by Charles Soule
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The first 4 pages might be my all-time favorite Wolverine pages. Well, barring, “Now it’s MY turn!”
We get this cold open, and then a frank conversation between Reed Richards and Wolverine that’s just, to be a comics geek about it, totally heartbreaking.
Wolverine has survived a lot, and the simplicity of Richards saying, “Didn’t you tell me once you were present at Nagasaki?” followed by a panel of the mushroom cloud, followed by Wolverine’s “Yeah.” brought the whole thing home for me.
What’s it like to be Wolverine? The deathless, ageless X-Man who’s also seen and done some of the most heinous shit? Who could definitely accuse Charles Xavier of using him like a dog, keeping him around to do some dirty work sometimes.
After these pages, we got a few more good ones, and then we get to some C-class villains and nonsense that lead Wolverine down a trail that ends in decent fashion, but man does it feel like we waste a lot of time slumming it with characters I couldn’t care less about in order to get there.
Hats off to Steve McNiven, however. The facial expressions in those first few pages alone are really incredible. Great, great art.