Weapon X-Men #2: Useless Tub o’Guts

Christos Gage is clearly having the time of his life, juggling a handful of Wolverines and one highly disgruntled cosmic entity. He manages to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the situation (Wolverine always has to be in everything, but there has to be a limit somewhere) while still managing to shove a little, but very real, beating heart in the middle of all of the testosterone fueled stupidity.

This time, the focus was on sad old Earth X Wolverine, specifically focusing on his willingness to make the hard choices. There’s a pathos in him giving up everything he was to keep the woman he loved, and losing her anyway because she couldn’t love what he’d become. His self-esteem issues serve to humanize him in much the same way that Old Man Logan’s intrusive PTSD humanizes him.

It’s also interesting to see this pack of jokers falling over themselves to help a version of Jean who is both older and also deeply flawed. I’m not-so-secretly hoping that she and Jane Howlett become an item. We need more overtly queer Wolverines.

Yildray Cinar’s art was as wonderful as always. He shoved a lot of emotion into two particularly packed pages — he made me feel more for Earth X Wolverine than I ever suspected that I could. He’s also very clearly having a fantastic time dishing out the mayhem. I’ve never seen a limb amputation that was depicted this joyfully. And, of course, there’s always a particular pleasure in watching Wolverine fighting with a dinosaur.