I have been reading quite a few Manga comics lately. Which has lead me to a deeper appreciation for the black and white comic format. After listening to Jim of Clan Weird talk about this book on the Marvel podcast last month I was looking forward to check this series out. I read last issue to prepare for this issue and I think I may have liked it more that thee Grand Wizard Werner himself. With a rotating cast of writers and artists this series is designed to be a grab bag for Wolverine fans but I’m here for the blood. Let’s see if I leave satiated.

“Unfinished Business” Is a thinly veiled Wolverine vs. Sabertooth story and that is about it. There isn’t much depth here. A Doctor Price who’s forte is biochemical research has come up with a cure for the x-gene. The doctor goes missing and Wolverine goes out to find him. Sabertooth lays in waiting for whomever comes for the Doctor. The fighting ensues and it’s not very impressive. Even the use of the color Red does not seem to add anything to the story. The story itself constraints the use of Red. It’s a one on one fight between two people that have a healing factor that ends in stalemate. If anything that calls for a minimalistic use of red.

“Seeing Red“ Is a story where Arcade wants to play his little games the way he is want to do. With a human life as the piece of cheese, Wolverine is encouraged to make his way through the Tower of Torment. I at first thought this was going to be a sweet gauntlet of torturous devices to inflicted massive damage on Wolverine. Unfortunately it really just boils down to Wolverine having to make his way up a fire escape while battling robots. Then it turns out every time Wolverine destroys a robot the victim comes closer to death. The art on this story I like quite a bit more than Greg Land’s. It’s easier to follow, but yet again this doesn’t seem to be a good story for the use of the color red. Really there is only one page of this story that has any significant amount of red in it. Combine that with another really generic story and you could almost say this whole book is a paint by numbers, but someone stole every color but one.

“Do We Die Today” Is the last story. This story seems to be closer to hitting the nail on the head. We get a way more profound use of color and the art itself is absolutely gorgeous but for me it got a little confusing. With out color separations for characters and a lot of characters on the page in close quarters battle it can be hard at times to understand who is who. This does seem to be a story directly tied to the Wolverine and Kitty Pryde mini from over twenty years ago, which unfortunately for me I have not read yet, so I am left feeling like I am not gleaming everything from this story I should be, that is on me. This is the better of the three stories that is for sure.

Final Thoughts:

In the last issue you had Wolverine slaughtering many men, blood everywhere. You had him going against Wendigo and that was a brutal fight, (with blood everywhere), Hydra agents (with blood everywhere), would be assassins (with blood everywhere). It wasn’t just blood they used to highlight the red. They put it in foreground, background, the surround sound everywhere. Plus the stories in last issue felt fresh. These stories felt like the same old recycled material that have plagued Mutant lead titles for awhile before Dawn of X.

6/10