A Logan Wearing A Miles Suit: Reviewing ‘What If… Miles Morales’ #2

There is one thing that can be said for certain about a lot of the books that carry the What If? title or logo upon them: they give you exactly what they advertise. Sometimes that means you actually get that plus more, depth and complexity, and other times you’re just getting what the title promised and little more.

What If…Miles Morales #2 asks what if Miles Morales was Wolverine instead of Spider-Man, and that’s exactly what the issue gives.

Every hallmark of a Wolverine story from clawed origins, Weapon X, Sabretooth, ghosts from the past, down to the X-Men (with a weird swerve we’ll get to soon) can be found here. It’s exactly a Wolverine story with Logan and his supporting cast/villains mostly cut out and Miles and his supporting cast inserted into their now open spots. If one is coming for something deeper looking into anything to do with what this would mean for the character on a personal level, other than a few family moments, this is not the issue for that.

To be fair, sometimes just action-packed stuff one expects can be a tasty midsize meal rather than having to be a full course deeply stomach filling meal. At the same time, as noted in my recent Miles Morales: Spider-Man #37 review, the multiverse, and all its trappings are becoming quite the anchor holding Miles back from what he could be. Miles as Captain America did a few intriguing things and this did too, but if all the issues are just cutting the regularly white dude heroes out and pasting Miles in their place the intrigue is going to wear out really fast.

Farid Karami and Chris Sotomayor do a really great job at bringing this alternate universe to life and really bringing that Wolverine sort of energy to the book. All the action is slick and cuts to the core, and the paneling choices are top-notch as they make the action move even better. With the colors that peak mix of colorful but also heavier and dark/shadowed is reached pretty easily. Watching elements, we know get remixed as Wolverine slices and dices through things is a great visual no matter how one feels about the overall idea this issue presents.

Cory Petit is on letters and gives us some really great Wolverine feeling caption boxes while making all the dialogue flow and fit the given tone throughout the issue. All of the dialogue gives off the right personality vibes where you can feel not only the tone of the regular Wolverine-related character but also the tone of the Miles-related character that has taken their spot.

John Ridley offers a little something at the start that is different and touches on the type of stories he usually writes, touching on topical things, before it slides into the Wolverine stuff that we know. At times though, there are moments where it all feels far too Logan and not Miles enough, even when we can see a bit of Miles coming through the moments. Uncle Aaron as Sabretooth and Ganke somehow being the Professor X of this world both felt almost like gratuitous moments of sliding Miles’ related characters in just because one could rather than it really fitting.

This isn’t on Ridley or anyone else involved, but it feels like these same beats such as the multiverse and Uncle Aaron and the rest are just hit on over and over and over in every Miles story done lately in comics. After barely a decade of life, the character is already stuck in a pretty deep rut and there doesn’t seem to be any actual push from the publisher to get him out of there.

What If…Miles Morales #2 is available digitally and in print from Marvel Comics.