Wolverine: Revenge #1: Nothing Like a Catastrophe to Ruin Your Holiday

It’s gotta suck to be Wolverine, honestly, healing factor aside, a guy can’t even take a break in the Savage Land without a global catastrophe happening. In this case Magneto kicks the bucket and the ensuing EMP blast leads to a almost complete blackout of the Western portion of the globe. Wolverine gets drafted into a desperate mission by Nick fury and what’s left of Shield to try salvage the situation by going after a revolutionary energy source. Easy enough right? Wrong. It goes badly, very very very badly.

Now I have to be honest. I am a huge fan of Hickman as a writer, so when you hear that the guy behind East of West and House of X/ Powers of X is taking on one of your favorite characters, it’s hard not to get hyped. What’s his take going to be, what unseen edge is going to get exploited, because I mean it’s Hickman, there must be an angle right? Well kids if there is an new angle here, it’s not self evident in this opening issue. What we get is very much standard Wolverine in a terrible do or die situation. What we do get is LOTS of people dying sudden, violent and horrible deaths including several well known Marvel heroes and characters (read the book I ain’t spoiling it bub) thanks to a whole bunch of traditional Wolverine baddies including Sabretooth, Deadpool  and Omega Red. Hickman does touch on the idea of patriotism trumping friendship or loyalty to ones found family using Colossus as the focal point. Then more people blow up and there’s the inevitable healing factor revival and the face of a man who’s gonna get some revenge. I really hope there’s something more in store than Wolverine just going after the responsible parties involved in the deaths here because if not, I fear that as gloriously violent and bloody as the ensuing issues will be, it’ll end up being a beautifully drawn but rather vacuous and empty affair. I’m really hoping Hickman isn’t just aiming at bloody meat and potatoes Wolverine because really the worlds had plenty of that.

Greg Capullo is a really great artist at the height of his talent, and between his pencils, Tim Townsend’s inks and colors by FCO Plasencia’s colors they deliver a perfect hirsute, short, stocky and solid Wolverine page after page after page. Everything is on point from dynamic and well panelled action scenes, great splashes and moody darker scenes with Townsends and Placencia’s contributions being additive and never subtractive. Cory Petit shows off why he’s one of the best in the business, every speech bubble and sound effect is perfectly shaped and placed. It’s so close to perfect that it seems like a sin to even suggest there are any flaws but I did find myself wondering at some of the facial expressions where Fury is delivering horrible earth shattering news to Logan with a smile on his face. Anyway its small potatoes in a book where the art team alone makes the price of admission seem paltry.