Death of Wolverine: Comic Book Miniseries
For my first comic book review, I have decided to go with probably the most risk and ambitious title that has happened in the past year or two. Killing off a major character, like one of your top selling flagship characters, is always a bold move. They kind of killed Spidey so they could do the excellent “Superior Spider-man” series and they killed off Cap at the end of Civil War, but this one was always going to be a hard sell. He’s freaking Wolverine! No one believes he can die!
His healing factor, which has had varying degrees of powers over the years, makes him seem invincible. The funny part, is the fact that there are lots of Marvel characters with stronger healing factors (Deadpool anyone?). There are even characters who can heal others much more powerfully, like Elixir or even Angel. Anyone remember in the 1992 animated series when he needed days to heal? I specifically remember Jean Grey saying, “Not even you can heal this fast,” yet in the movies he heals in seconds. In X2 he passes out for couple of minutes before pushes the bullets out of his head and in X3 he reforms body parts just as fast as they get disintegrated. Hooray for inconsistent writing!… Man I hope that property goes back to Marvel sometime soon…
Anyway, back to “Death of Wolverine.” This title was very hyped with a pretty huge amount of lead-ins. To get you up to speed: A virus from the microverse has permanently burned out Logan’s healing factor. His scientist friends like Beast and Mr. Fantastic have offered to find a way to restore it, but in the meantime he fights with an exoskeleton that includes claws. He can’t use his own because he can’t risk either the wounds they’ll cause and the infection that might come from that. Before his friends can find a cure, he finds out that there is a contract on his head and all of the most dangerous assassins in his history come to collect. That’s where this miniseries starts!
In the four issues of the core miniseries, Logan fights a few of the contract killers, starting with the over utilized character of Nuke (who cares about this guy?). He of course beats them for answers and finds out the source of the bounty is Dr. Abraham Cornelius, the head of the Weapon X program. You know, the people who so generously erased his memory, implanted his adamantium skeleton and has been making his life a living hell ever since, either directly or through their other creations.
He makes his way to the Weapon X facility where they are predictably expecting him and in classic Wolverine fashion, murders everyone there. That’s pretty much the gist of this entire miniseries. Oh and he doesn’t wear the exosuit the whole time. The only difference here is his death itself. Which is honestly pretty awesome. The final shot in the series is a splash of Wolverine, covered in fast-drying liquid adamantium, reflecting the sunset.
The series is honestly pretty lackluster for the sendoff of such an immense presence in the Marvel Universe. Wolverine has had some pretty amazing stories as well as some pretty ridiculous one over the course of his forty-one years of existence. This one falls somewhere in the middle. The follow ups are much better reads, “The Logan Legacy” and “Life After Logan” in particular have some pretty interesting reactions from Wolverine’s friends, family, allies and enemies.
One should take killing a major character off pretty seriously. This one fell pretty short in my opinion, but it did have its high points. Cap’s Death was meaningful, Superman’s was epic, Spider-man’s was deeply tragic and Batman’s was hugely shocking. I would say the best deaths in the history of the big two publishers are Barry Allen, Hawkeye and Colossus (In no particular order). Wolverine deserved better than this cliched, last-run style story.
This is comics however, so of course everyone will come back (except in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe apparently). I expect Marvel’s upcoming Secret Wars event to provide a convenient way to bring a different, less weighed down version of Wolverine to replace/resurrect Marvel’s favorite mutant. That’s exactly what the did with Secret Invasion for half of the Marvel U! After all, why would they release Origin II and Death of Wolverine within a year of each other? There’s too much they can still do with this character to let him rot.
Jonathan Thomas Jones is a speculative fiction author and founder of geekhavenreviews.com. He has been passionate about all things geek for his entire life. See more about him at jonathanthomasjones.com and follow him on twitter @jtgloryjones.
