I find it amusing that this is the smallest week I've had yet, and it takes me three times longer to do the review for it. I blame ... Uhm ... I blame the planetary alignments. Yeah. They made me extra freaking lazy. Anyway, only one issue this week, and it's Ultimate X-Men #35.
- Ultimate X-Men #35: 3 out of 5
On the down side, no X-Men except for Wolverine appear in this issue. On the up-side, with Bendis writing, I don't really care until I get to the end of the issue and then wonder where the heck everyone's gone. So what that means is that as far as your general idea of a comic book goes, this is great. If you were hoping to find a mutant -- ANY mutant -- besides Wolverine, then you're going to be disappointed. Consequently, this issue is only average, but it's a good average, trust me.
As "Blockbuster" progresses, it becomes more readily apparent Bendis is writing Wolverine's redemption. Wolverine is the victim, being ruthlessly hunted by an unknown organization with ties, at least informally, to Weapon X. In other words, Logan is being doggedly hunted by his past. It's quite fitting that his visits another element of his past in the Black Widow (another red-head that Logan has wronged) and is summarily rejected. Forgiveness isn't that easy to come by.
However along for the ride, despite Logan's protestations, is Spider-Man. Young Peter Parker is playing the part of Logan's own innocence in this storyline. He's is taking everything in stride, but Peter is very much out of his element in the gritty underworld Wolverine is crawling through, and I imagine the journey will cost Peter somewhat before it's all over. Logan will, before this arc is over I predict, save Peter from something or another, and achieve a moral victory.
Sounds very nice, doesn't it? So it may be surprising to hear that I hope I'm wrong. For two reasons, really, the first having to do with the story and the second being personal preference.
See, I like bad-ass Wolverine. I liked the fact that he was generally untrustworthy and unscrupulous. You never really knew what he was going to do next, and what he did do may have very well the single most unheroic thing imaginable. That was awesome to me, and felt so right. It shouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to see Logan taking what he wants through guile, manipulation and outright treachery. Does that make him a bit questionable as a hero? Hell yeah, and that's what made him interesting. Who the heck needs yet another Wolverine who's exactly like every other Wolverine that's forced down our throats every month in multiple servings? He's either a cookie-cutter "bad boy" hero, or an outright villain in an alternate universe setting. It's been that way for decades, and we're still supposed to get excited by either one. You can't tell me that I'm alone when I say "YAWN." But Ultimate Wolvie, that was something new and different. Logan was neither full good guy or full bad guy, and he was, literally, unpredictable. I actually cared about what this Wolverine would do next, he was exciting to watch. But with Logan's redemption (which is coming, there's no denying it as Bendis has specifically stated it's one of his first goals), he'll simply be 616-Wolvie with a goatee, and we're back to "YAWN" again.
The second reason that I hope I'm wrong is that it shouldn't be happening this way, plain and simple. It's all well and good for Logan to achieve that redemption through the largely innocent Parker, but there's a slight problem with this -- Peter isn't the one that Wolverine hurt. It was Kitty, not Peter, who Wolverine tricked. It was Peter--er, Colossus, that Wolverine betrayed, not Peter (Parker). It was Jean, not Peter, that Wolverine lied to. It was Scott, not Peter, that Wolverine let fall off a freaking cliff and left to die. So yeah, I just don't think that Wolverine should taking this quest without at least one other X-Man involved.
Which sort of brings up the question of when exactly is this issue set? In #33, Scott finds Logan and convinces him to return to the team. Now we have Logan separated from them, which I wouldn't think much of except for the fact that this issue specifically has a conversation between Logan and Peter where Spidey suggests contacting the X-Men. When Logan refuses, he does so with a definite air of shame. Now given what he did, obviously shame is an acceptable response (although I can't help but reflect on how he showed little or no guilt whatsoever while he imagined Scott was dead, but that's for another time), but since the last interaction we saw between Wolverine and the X-Men was Cyclops making it quite clear that he was leaving the past in the past, things feel disjointed. What happened between #33 and #34? This is a question left jarringly unanswered, and is making it all the more difficult to buy into Wolverine's personal quest. Had it just been Logan off on his own and the question of calling the other X-Men left out of the equation, I think I would've happily gone along with the story without really thinking about it, but now my attention has been directed, I can't help but wonder. It's like when your tongue suddenly discovers a cut you've been happily ignoring for days. Suddenly it can't focus on anything else.
I still have high hopes that my fears will be laid to rest and the arc after Blockbuster won't have Wolverine strolling back into the mansion and everyone welcoming him home happily with smiles on their faces. Since I'm obviously forced into saying goodbye to the Ultimate Wolvie that I prefer, I feel it's imperative that the X-Men regard Logan for what he is -- a man who may be a little bit good waaay deep down, but who was placed into their midst with the specific intention of killing Xavier and who attempted to murder one of their own for no reason other than to remove competition for Jean. Their forgiveness of him should absolutely not be resolved in six easy issues in which they don't even appear.
