Way More Fun Than It Has Any Right To Be — Reviewing ‘Wolverine Deep Cut’ #2

With its second issue, Wolverine Deep Cut continues to be far more entertaining than it has any right to be. The combination of Chris Claremont’s command of Wolverine’s narrative voice and the novelty of seeing the Marauders — signature villains of late 1980s X-Men comics who nevertheless didn’t appear in that many stories — makes for a winning combination which overcomes some continuity tweaks and occasionally awkward art. 

Wolverine Deep Cut #2 opens in the wake of the previous issue’s extreme battle with Sabretooth. Much like that issue, most of this one is dedicated to one protracted fight scene. Here, however, it’s Wolverine vs. the Marauders, so the sheer number of antagonists Wolverine is facing off against gives it some visual variety compared to the previous tussle with Sabretooth. After an extended training sequence in which Wolverine prepares for his fight and Claremont flexes his tough guy Wolverine voice, Wolverine infiltrates the Marauders headquarters beneath the orphanage where Cyclops grew up.

How the Wolverine of this story’s timeline — sometime between Uncanny X-Men #246 and #251 — knows A. where the Marauders base is and B. where Cyclops grew up and his feelings about it, is unclear; this is a case of Claremont either rewriting past continuity for the sake of a story, or Claremont incorporating some story he hasn’t told or bit of backstory that currently only exists in his head. 

At any rate, this leads to a fight between Wolverine and the Marauders. Taking advantage of the fact that the Marauders don’t recognize him because he’s wearing his yellow-and-blue costume instead of his then-contemporaneous orange-and-brown one, he quickly gains the upper hand (would the Marauders *really* not suspect his identity just because the colors are different? Probably not.

Then again, this is the era in which Wolverine successfully concealed his identity by running around in an eyepatch). Once the claws come out and the Marauders regroup, Claremont taps his ability to craft clever ways for powers to work in concert. This results in the Marauders teaming up to use Scrambler’s power to twist Wolverine into a hideous, misshapen form. 

This is another continuity tweak on Claremont’s part (Scrambler’s powers previously didn’t really work that way, they were more about scrambling powers and less about physically scrambling someone) but it results in a horrific image that is made all the more horrific by the relative mundanity of Edgar Salazar’s art. There’s a matter-of-factness to the way this twisted up Wolverine with an arm for a leg and a leg for an arm and claws coming out his face is presented in the midst of a drab, nondescript room that ups the grotesqueness of it. That moment aside though, its visual mundanity is one of the places Wolverine Deep Cut #2 suffers compared to the previous issue.

The beats of the plot have replaced the lush, snow-covered grounds of the Yashida estate with the generic sterility of an underground base. While colorist Carlos Lopez is careful to make sure the colorful costumes of Wolverine and his foes pop against the backdrop, the setting makes the whole fight feel like it takes place in a big gray blob. The contrast of the bright figures against the bland background almost make looking at the art exhausting.

Similarly, while Salazar is good at action choreography, the combination of the sheer number of the Marauders and the uniformity of the setting means he has limited ways to stage the characters. The end result is several panels where Wolverine is fighting one Marauder while the rest are just sort of huddled together in the background, watching the fight. It robs the action of flow and energy, especially compared to the ferocity of the earlier Wolverine/Sabretooth fight. 

Also, while it’s fun to see the Marauders in action again, the ease with which Wolverine stands against them is troubling. Claremont does his best early in the issue to sell the idea that Wolverine is training especially for this fight, but the fact remains, this is a group which dealt grievous blows to the collective X-Men (something the issue itself recaps) and were really only defeated by the heroes when they were juiced up by demonic energy during “Inferno.”

The thing that makes their appearance here such a novelty — they only fought the X-Men directly across three different stories — is the same thing that risks this story tarnishing their reputation. If Wolverine is now able to take them out all by himself, were they really that much of a threat in the first place?  

To be clear, these are all minor quibbles. Wolverine Deep Cut #2 is still a strong showcase for Chris Claremont’s version of Wolverine, heightened by the novelty of him facing off against a rare group of villains who, even in 2024, haven’t been overused (and who remain appealingly distinct in terms of their appearance and abilities, even if their characterization is rather thin). Though the circumstances of the setting create a sense of visual blandness to the back half of the issue, Salazar’s art remains clear and effective at depicting the various action beats. This isn’t a story that’s aspiring to great things, but it remains remarkably good at what it’s trying to do.