I like Cullen Bunn a lot, his Deadpool Killology has been great and I hear his Sixth Gun series is awesome (I have Vol 1 on my to-read pile), so I was looking forward to his take on Wolverine. Unfortunately, it's not very good despite the many interesting elements thrown in.
Wolverine was hired by a mysterious group of ambiguously aligned individuals called the Covenant in the 1930s to assassinate a powerful psychic - except he let her go. She turned into glass as her dreaming spells were too dangerous if she were alive - years later and those dreams have turned into nightmares that could mean the end of the world. The Covenant approach Wolverine to once again track her down and finish the job but others are on the trail like Elsa Bloodstone, daughter of one of the members of the Covenant - will Wolverine get to her in time?
The story feels like both Bunn and Wolverine on autopilot. Wolverine snickts his way through kung-fu masters, killer robots, all of which should be fun but read quite flatly, until the weirdly magical plot resolves itself. The story doesn't seem very well thought out and despite the repeated end of the world murmurings, doesn't really convince the reader of any urgency or danger.
The artwork is so-so, it's neither terrible enough to distract from the story nor great enough to really impress. It's the Marvel house style of competent and overly polished digital artwork that'll serve just about any character. The colours feel a bit muted lending a rather drab aura to the already lacklustre story.
There's also a one-shot issue of Captain America and Namor set in WW2 where the two encounter the Covenant and fight the Kraken, which isn't bad but, like everything else in this comic, feels run-of-the-mill and strangely uninvolving. The artwork is a lot better in this issue though.
Despite Wolverine being a hugely popular character, he doesn't have many great books written about him - Jason Aaron and Mark Millar are basically the two who've written the best books about him. I hoped Cullen Bunn was going to join that elite group of writers but based on Wolverine: Covenant, that's not the case. A forgettable, trite comic.
Wolverine: Covenant
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