Review by Karl Verhoven

Destiny is a clever volume title for this finale to Wolverines. Actually, all volume titles have been smart, and as we head into the final accounting two main plots prevail. The newer characters are still looking for a way to avoid their pre-programmed decline and death, and Mystique has some plan she’s not revealing, but the remaining cast are fed up with her and in The Living and the Dead departed on their own missions.

All roads lead to Mr. Sinister, not as dead as might have been assumed following his decapitation two volumes previously, and the readers familiar with Mystique’s backstory may well have picked up on what it is she’s attempting to do. “These are some of the deadliest warriors in the world and we’re here to watch their last battle”, gloats a character forgotten for the previous two volumes, as a great stramash kicks off in Sinister’s hideaway.

To the bitter end Wolverines persists with the woeful idea of a different artist on every chapter, meaning there’s no consistency about the way the cast look. They can shed or gain considerable bulk from chapter to chapter. The greatest beneficiary of this policy has been Juan Doe, whose sketchy and distorted figures laid over colour backgrounds have not only blighted three of the four volumes, but also the covers to the serialised issues. Far more satisfying has been the progress of Jonathan Marks, whose storytelling still needs some work, but there’s great imagination to the way he composes panels. Ario Anindito and Ariela Kristantina have both been retained from the previous volume, leaving Juann Cabal (sample art) as the only newcomer, and with a bright future ahead if this delicacy is anything to go by.

Having set the series in motion, Charles Soule writes the concluding chapters, with the remainder by Ray Fawkes. Hampered by Doe’s art, the finale is a damp squib. There’s a twist, but not a great one, and Soule would have us all believe the entire series was a set-up to have Mystique be at a certain point at a certain time, which certainly could have been achieved by the person pulling the strings with far greater ease. It leaves the nasty taste of the entire series having been a tryout for new artists at your expense.

All four volumes of Wolverines are also available as part of the Death of Wolverine Omnibus.