My Dinner With Henry: Reviewing ‘Wolverine’ #34

Over the years, various writers and editors have done a lot to showcase how terrible a character Henry “Hank’ McCoy/Beast truly is. Numerous war crimes and genocides have been committed just for the hell of it. In the latest issue of Wolverine though, we can now add food crimes to the list.

Enemies breaking bread and speaking their piece before the final confrontation is a staple of fiction. Ben Percy pulls that into the current story arc as Wolverine and Beast come face to face once more. If I didn’t already hate Beast before this point his smacking & slurping food like…well like a beast…surely would have lit the proverbial fuse.

It’s an effective issue. We see more of Beast’s bullshit, the lies he tells himself, while Logan must play nice. Why is the snikt snikt guy playing nice you ask? Well, that’s because the issue starts off with action that leads to buddy Jeff Bannister seemingly dying. Instead, he ends up a prisoner of the Beast. Maverick is there too and through him, we learn that Beast isn’t as smart as he thinks. It turns out the harm done to his Logan clones is causing their healing factor to fix what he did to keep them controllable.

Supervillains are always underestimating things. It’s truly their cliché fatal flaw, and hopefully, for Beast it truly is fatal. I’m glad to see the storyline reach the point of Beast finally being a villain, but it’s taking too long. Essentially this is two mid-sized story arcs built to stretch out this final confrontation. Thankfully the next issue finally concludes this story.

Artistically, the work of Juan José Ryp has grown on me, but truth be told, it still feels wrong for this book. There are some scenes where it’s dynamic and pops and works, and then in others, it goes back to feeling relatively static. I think the overall glossiness doesn’t do it many favors, but the moments where it’s working are pretty darn good. It comes with a rough gritty feeling enhanced by the slick but dark colors that Frank D’Armata deploys. Together they hit the overall energy that a Logan book should have, albeit one that is a tiny bit too glossy for the rough-and-tumble mutant.

If we’re having an issue full of two foes talking (or at least one talking a ton) the energy and power that Cory Pettit brings is always welcome. It’s amazing how different cases of lettering bring such different energy. Sentence case works so well here at setting a sort of normal tone, that allows the bigger moments to hit harder.

Wolverine #34 is now available from Marvel Comics.