Colourist: Bryan Valenza, Letterer: Cory Petit
After a few issues with Logan babysitting Leonard, a teenage infected with the Wendigo curse, we've finally gotten back into the main thrust of this first arc, which sees a mysterious infection that's turning people with Adamantium in their bodies into mind controlled killers; as well as turning their Adamantium from silver into a golden coloured metal instead. We pick up with Logan after his fight with Constrictor, Lady Deathstrike, and Cyber last issue, joining him in the middle of a vision that makes him think he's trapped deep under the earth, like Adamantium ore, after having been infected in the final moments of issue five.
Drawn out of his vision by Nightcrawler, it seems that Logan is no longer infected, whether because his healing powers allowed him to fight it off, or the infection chose to let him go, it's not clear yet; but Logan is back in the game and ready to go after his foes. However, they've vanished, leaving bodies and destruction in their wake. It's amidst this destruction that Logan comes across family, as the other Wolverine, Laura Kinney, is in the middle of fighting Leonard. Luckily, Logan is able to stop the fight, and father and daughter are able to team up to continue their chase of their infected enemies. It turns out that Laura has been on their trail too after a group of metallurgists in the UK were killed, leading the two Wolverines to come to the conclusion that anyone with knowledge of how to create Adamantium is being targeted by the infected.
The two of them are able to track their foes to a facility in Arizona using the Blackbird's tracking system, and head there to continue the fight. Finding even more death, they're surprised when they come face to face with Donald Peirce, the mutant hating Reaver, who's cybernetics are coated in Adamantium, allowing him to be infected too. Joined by the other infected, the two Wolverine's have to fight for their lives; but discover a familiar, ancient face, leading them in a final page reveal that promises some interesting things to come.
It feels like Wolverine has begun to increase in quality over the last two issues. After a fairly promising start the book seemed to lose a lot of momentum as Logan took a few issues out of the main story to deal with Leonard, something that so far doesn't seem to have added much to the series. Perhaps he's a Chekov's Gun, and he'll end up being important at a later point. The last two issues feel more like what people tend to come to a Wolverine book for though, as we get lots of blood, and action scenes where Logan and Laura fight their way through familiar and fan favourite faces.
The story is still kind of thin, there's some kind of ancient entity called the Adamatine that wants to change Adamantium and make the people with it in their bodies into mindless drones to its will, but that's about it. We don't know what it is, where it came from, or why it's doing this; though the final moments of this issue do give the impression that some kind of explanation will be coming next time. But, what we have here is enough in the sense that it's what we need as an excuse to have our titular hero and his daughter get into some fights. After all, we don't really expect complex, intellectual stories in a Wolverine title, we expect fighting and some Logan angst; and that's what we've been given so far.
The art team, Martín Cóccolo and Bryan Valenza, make some great work, and even if the story isn't to your taste it's hard to deny that the book doesn't look really nice. Everyone looks crisp and clean, character designs are really nice, and you get a great sense of the death and destruction happening around Wolverine as the background details are usually really well crafted. Even when the book felt a bit slow for my liking on previous issues I couldn't fault the artwork, and that continues here with some really great fight scenes and smaller character moments that never leave me disappointed.
After the last page reveal I'm very curious to see what's going to be happening next. It's something of a morbid curiosity as my experience with this character has been in stories that I've not hugely enjoyed, but perhaps Ahmed will change my mind on them and this will be the story that makes me see them as an interesting and impressive antagonist.
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