Review by Karl Verhoven
As it was an event, Wolverine’s ‘death’ is available in a number of different formats. This is the midway stage between the core Death of Wolverine graphic novel, and the exhaustive hardback Omnibus. Here you get that core story, along with the the content of The Logan Legacy and The Weapon X Program tie-ins, and a teaming of Captain America and Deadpool otherwise only available in Deadpool collections.
If accepting the distasteful premise of a marketing campaign based around a character’s death, the title story is the best here. Charles Soule and Steve McNiven deliver a taut four chapters of Wolverine settling a few affairs once he realises that without his healing factor (see Death of Wolverine Prelude), the virus he’s contracted will kill him. Soule ensures little sentimentality, and avoids guest appearances from assorted friends over the years, restricting the score settling to old enemies. Mystique is notably absent, but she appears later in the collection. McNiven’s pages are imaginative and Soule has a good handle on the assorted personalities, with Sabretooth supplying a memorable eulogy in “Hnh. He ain’t any different from me. Never has been”.
The core story connects with the Weapon X programme, through which Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton was installed. The military sponsored programme to create more compliant super soldiers never stopped, and a new batch of test subjects awaken from experiments on them shortly after Wolverine dies. This is also written by Soule, as a taut action thriller, and looks great as drawn by Salvador Larroca, but not as appealing when Angel Unzueta and then Iban Coello finish things off.
Soule also starts off the next story in which several substitute Wolverines have a threat hanging over their head, but then assorted tryout creators take over, few supplying anything memorable and some not very good at all.
Gerry Duggan and Scott Kolins team Captain America and Deadpool, but this isn’t Captain America as we know him most of the time, but Steve Rogers as an elderly man. The concern is ensuring none of Logan’s DNA survives to prevent any further cloning, and only one item remains, hidden in a Russian secure facility. Duggan establishes camaraderie among recollections as the mission is carried out, while overdoing the film references joke. Seeing Cap in action as a pensionable civilian is interesting, the mood never becomes too sombre, and Kolins combines detail and action to a high standard. It’s very enjoyable.
Most Marvel events of the period tended toward a decent core story dragged down in larger collections by tie-ins by new creators, but having Soule write so much of the connected material serves this well. The one item left hanging is the fate of Daken, Lady Deathstrike, Mystique and X-23, which picks up in Wolverines.
