Wolverine MAX #3

by BradBabendir on January 17, 2013

Damn.

I really wanted to believe in this one. A Wolverine MAX book should be great. The format is molded for the character. It’s like the stars aligned and it was meant to be. There’s no measure where, in theory, the concept and character don’t have a happy, loving marriage with lots of vicious mutant babies that swear regularly and kill stuff.

But this book is really, really bad.

And it bothers me more than usual because of how much potential this had for the jump. This book is a massive failure, pretty much across the board. The cursing is anything but natural, the plot is dry and while the art itself is good, the paneling and direction it takes are very run-of-the-mill.

Up to now, the premise of the story has been that Wolverine doesn’t know who he is, so he’s trying to figure it out, but everyone else does know who he is, and he was also on a plane that crashed in Japan. And that’s pretty much it. He visits some girl’s (who may or may not be his girlfriend) parent’s house and then they get murdered and the dad says a bunch of stuff to Wolverine in one of the worst pages in the series that takes way too long and doesn’t even really make sense.

To get to the point, a story where the character tries to find themselves only works if nobody else knows who they are, either. If everyone else knows, somebody would sit him down and tell him. It’s not like it’s hard for Wolverine to go “Hey, I was in a plane crash and don’t really know anything about who or what I am. You seem to know. Would you mind filling me in? If you tell me I won’t kill you with the knives that I’m holding to your throat that just came out of my hands. Does that sound good?”

A horrible plot isn’t always damning (I mean, it’s damning 98% of the time, but sometimes people get lucky), but when the dialogue is flat and irritating, it’s pretty much over. The team can’t decide, it would appear, on how often to curse and when, and at times it feels as if they’re writing with a complete disregard for how people usually talk.

A Wolverine book doesn’t get the luxury of being inherently essential to the Pull List’s of his fans. Marvel has oversaturated the market with his titles, and because of that, it’s really easy to not pick up one or two or three of them. And this one is definitely at the bottom of the list.

There really isn’t much else to say. I’m left feeling angry and disappointed with this book, and all I’ll have are fantasies of what could have been. With the success and quality of the Nick Fury and Punisher books, I had my expectations high up, and I can’t begin to explain how far away this was from meeting them.

Damn.

Our Score:

2/10

A Look Inside

Comments

Tori B.'s picture

Glad I didn't pick this one up then.