A Bloody Shiny Trip Down Memory Lane: Reviewing ‘Wolverine’ Vol. 5

A malevolent force has taken control of Wolverine. Stripped of his sense of self, he’s a mindless weapon once more. Of course, part of Logan remains and is fighting back, ready to strike back at the one that wronged him. Sound familiar?

Don’t worry, you didn’t pick up any number of classic comics starring the Canadian clawed mutant. No, you are just reading the fifth volume of the current Wolverine solo series.

All sarcasm aside, at least for the moment, there are several things that one can point to about this series that are good. There is no disputing, at least in my book, that Benjamin Percy writes a very solid Logan. The character feels accurate and true to the version as most of us know him, and often the emotional moments are strong. This feels like an older, wearier version of the character trying to balance his pain/past and the reality Krakoa brings.

Often the artwork that has been found in this book, like that of Adam Kubert, has been stellar and perfect for the character.

Unfortunately, here it comes, so much else about this series has screamed ‘been there, done that’ for quite a long time.

This goes beyond Percy though. Logan is such an iconic (over)used character, that tons of stories have been told about him. This seems to cause some creators to somewhat stick to the same well of stories in some fashion. It’s an echo chamber of repeated stories or ideas with small new bits mixed into the recipe. Those bits do not change the dish, like switching out one cheese for another. There surely will be a slight taste change, depending on the cheese, but overall, the dish will pretty much be the same.

Rather than Weapon X or the Hand being the controllers, here it’s Beast who is behind it all. Instead of it being standard brainwashing or memory wipes, it’s Krakoan technology as the culprit. It’s a mix-and-match situation.

Artistically the mixed bag is still somewhat in effect. Juan José Ryp on the one hand is good at capturing the emotional aspects on display. There is a ruggedness, wrinkles, and marks and flaws, that make the characters feel quite real. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near dynamic enough for a series like this. Often, it’s very static and just sort of there.

A lot of these issues rely on montages where the artwork might as well just be static poster shots, rather than a moving breathing kinetic story. It displays the savage/barbaric nature of what is being done to Logan, but not in a way that stands out.

This artwork is paired with the colors from Frank D’Armata, which are okay. They are far too glossy and shiny at times but do really bring the darkness and heaviness needed. They just also feel very muted, and a bit too faded out in some respects. In some Krakoa scenes, they work better at fitting in the slightly lusher feel of the place.

Cory Petit brings emotion and energy through the lettering per usual, it feels like the smugness of Beast is just dripping from his every word. I love the great use of sentence case, it just to me feels more natural for conversation even in a comic book because it allows one to use the all-caps to do so much more with louder dialogue, setting it apart from the normal dialogue.

As I said this is not inherently a bad or poor series. There are flashes of things here, but overall, it’s not a very memorable one in the scheme of things. Well, outside of the big climactic moment with Beast that is somewhat cathartic. At the end of the day this just sort of will exist amongst the long list of Wolverine solo stories that have been created over the decades.

Wolverine Vol 5 is now available from Marvel Comics.