The Very Definition Of A Filler Issue– Reviewing ‘Wolverine Deep Cut’ #3

It’s hard to think of a more a water-treading comic than Wolverine Deep Cut #3. The retro charm and sheer noir-ish machismo of writer Chris Claremont‘s Wolverine has gone a long way to making this miniseries entertaining, there needs to be SOME sense of development beyond that, either for the plot or the characters, to make reading it worth the time. This issue unfortunately fails to meet that standard: even with issue #4 still to come, it seems like one could easily skip this issue and move right from #2 to the finale without missing much. 

Wolverine Deep Cut #3 opens where the previous issue left off: a pause in the fight between Wolverine and the Marauders prompted by Wolverine’s reveal of the original Marauders in stasis tubes, serving as genetic fodder for Mister Sinister clones (like the ones Wolverine is fighting).

What follows is a continuation of the Wolverine/Marauders fight, which ends when Wolverine has killed them all off, only for the original Sabretooth to have emerged from his tube during the melee and freed the rest, meaning now Wolverine has to face off against the *real* Marauders (and kill them — then, presumably, dispose of the bodies — to prevent Sinister from making more) in the finale. Which is all well and good, except there’s no earthly reason the previous issue couldn’t have ended the same way. 

By stretching the Wolverine vs. Clone Marauders fight over two issues instead of one, Claremont and artist Edgar Salazar gain very little. The fights here are more or less the same as in issue #2. In fact, some specific details are repeated outright. Wolverine does the same “slide under Harpoon’s energy harpoon, then redirect it with his claws” move in both issues.

Scrambler does the same, “that’s not really how his powers work, but okay” move where he physically scrambles Wolverine’s body, only this time it’s less horrific to see since it’s been done before, and Wolverine is able to somehow still stab a Marauder to death while jumbled up. This extended fight doesn’t add anything, and it’s never made clear why Wolverine couldn’t have just done all this last issue — other than the fact that, presumably, the series needed to be four issues and the creators were lacking for other material. 

The one minor addition this issue makes to the proceedings relative to the previous issue’s fight is having the “original” Sabretooth wake up early and briefly offer counter-commentary to Wolverine’s fight. This helps tie the proceedings back to the first issue and setup a potential one-on-one reprise for the finale, but otherwise, it’s largely negligible. Certainly, nothing so significant or revelatory that it necessitated extending the Wolverine/Marauders fight out over another issue.

Wolverine Deep Cut #3 ends almost exactly where issue #2 did: with Wolverine facing off against the Marauders. This time, they’re the real deals — and Sabretooth is with them — but there’s nothing in the preceding pages of the issue to justify not just having this be the finale of issue #2 and cut the fight there a little short. Unless Claremont introduces one heck of a swerve in the fourth and final issue to justify the (repeated) events here, it is the very definition of an issue created to pad out a story by an extra issue.