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Sunday 14 June 2015

Death of Wolverine: The Weapon X Program Review (Charles Soule, Salvador Larroca)


The Weapon X Program - a talkshow hosted by Wolverine as he gruffly but charmingly interviews a series of Marvel characters? Nope, just another shitty team book - this time starring nobody you’ve ever heard of! At least Charles Soule’s Inhuman series had Medusa…!

Recently, Wolverine got turned into modern art and Marvel are insisting that counts as “death”. As he was in the process of being turned into a statue, he saved some people in tubes and in this book we get to see them wake up and fight some random dudes with guns. Our main character has a voice in his head and he’s cosplaying as Star-Lord - he also kinda looks like Logan! The others are generic nobodies and we’re supposed to care about their journey to find out who they are. Or something. 

It really does seem to be the case that when good comics creators get hired by Marvel or DC, they begin churning out the shittiest comics imaginable. Bad editors, demanding schedules, who knows what the reasons are. But Soule is actually a really good writer, and to be fair his She-Hulk was lots of fun, but this whole Death of Wolverine event has been one long flatline. 

The characters in The Weapon X Program are so tediously written - there’s even one scene where we get to see Soule brainstorm their codenames on the page! Their quest - who cares? Are we meant to give a crap about these one-dimensional nobodies? And what’s with that cover - who’re all those shadowy Wolverine-type clones with claws?! That doesn’t happen in the book! 

Shit prevails for most of the book until the final one-shot, Life After Logan, which had some life to it. Cyclops eulogises Wolverine by going to a bar, beating up some mutie-haters, and having a pint; Colossus and Nightcrawler head to Agarashima, Japan, to pay their respects to their fallen comrade and of course get into a brawl - Logan would’ve approved; and Armor, Wolverine’s last in a line of young female proteges, mourns his death. 

Life After Logan is fun and sweet in equal measure and is the sole reason to pick up this volume. If you want to read a bad team book of nothing characters with dull powers, pick up Soule’s Inhuman books which are marginally better. But really I’d skip the whole lot and read Soule’s Strange Attractors or Strongman books instead to see why he’s considered a quality writer.

Death of Wolverine: The Weapon X Program

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