Ultimate Wolverine #16: A Dull Finale

Ultimate Wolverine started as a story that treaded familiar ground, but held tremendous promise with its access to the vast canvas of the new Ultimate universe. Over a year later since its first issue was released, I am disappointed to say that none of that canvas was used to make anything compelling. What began as a modern re-interpretation of Barry Windsor-Smith’s seminal Weapon X epic, spirals downward into a bog standard Wolverine story that makes you wonder just what the point of it all was. Characters and concepts are introduced and dropped in quick succession with no real resolution. It feels that there was either no time to develop all these ideas (which feels unlikely since the book got four extra issues to coincide with Ultimate Endgame), or the creative team simply lost interest in the very story they were telling.

The last four issues, including this one, essentially boiled down to “Logan goes to a place, fights someone, and Magik has a flashback” rinse and repeat. Our heroes and villains are woefully underdeveloped and the land of the Eurasian Republic lacks any characteristics other than snow and more snow. The concept of mutants and just how they are seen in Eurasian society is also completely glossed over in this often times paint by numbers story that the book becomes in its second half.

The villains lack any real sense of threat after Logan undoes their brainwashing. There is an attempt in the final this to give a bit more sympathy to Magik, but it ends up being too little too late as her backstory is unloaded in bits across the last third of the book (honestly these looks into her past would have functioned better as an issue all their own but that is an entirely different conversation). There isn’t even really a final battle, as Logan just deals with Magik as soon as he finds her in less than a page, then he and Jean just fly off supposedly to join everyone else in Ultimate Endgame. It was so abrupt and anti-climatic that I was waiting for some sort of surprise, but it never came. This feels like this was supposed to be a tale of cycles of abuse, but this story never earned that parallel. It was just told so clumsily that it at points comes off as kind of offensive.

As my first exposure to Chris Condon’s work, I can’t say this left a good impression on me. That’s not to say I will never read anything he does again, I am curious on what he does with Ultimate Impact, but I can’t see this as a story I will come back to over the years like I would other Ultimate titles.

The same goes for Alessandro Cappuccio. While there are plenty of standout visual moments in this series, they are bogged down by frustrating narrative choices that prevent Cappuccio from reaching the heights of his acclaimed Moon Knight work with Jed McKay.