Reviewer: Andy Campbell
Story Title: N/A
Written by: Paul Jenkins
Art by: Claudio Castellini
Color Art by: Paul Mounts
Lettered by: Dave Sharpe
Cover Art by: Claudio Castellini
Assistant Editors: Schmidt, Wiley, & Lazer
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: Marvel Comics
This is the final issue of Wolverine: The End, and I, for one, am relieved. This story was just not for me.
The short version: Weapon X reared its ugly head again, so Wolverine tried tracking them down. His search led to Japan, where he met his long-lost brother John, who tried to get Logan to join his (somewhat-twisted) plan for changing the world. Wolverine threw John off a cliff, but John didn’t die. Wolverine then went after him for a final confrontation, and that’s where this issue picks up. Most of this issue deals with said confrontation between the two brothers, so there’s not a whole lot I can say about that, descriptively, without giving everything away.
As I said earlier, this book just didn’t do it for me. Now, I’m not Wolverine’s biggest fan, and I’m certainly one of those who thinks that Logan is over-saturating the market. That said, I really liked “Origin,” so I figured I would check this out so that I could see how Wolverine both begins and ends. “The End” jumped around too much for me, so it was kind of hard to follow what was going on. I suppose the loooooooooong waits between issues didn’t help either. I also just don’t think that’s Logan’s brother John was given enough characterisation to make us care about him one way or the other. At the dramatic conclusion of this issue, what should be a powerful scene falls flat, in my opinion, because I’m not invested in the character of John. Plus, the way the book finishes, unless I’m missing something, it doesn’t actually show Wolverine’s end! Talk about your misnomers.
If I’m being honest, the art really didn’t do much for me either. There were times when it was good, but most of the time, it appeared to me as “rushed” (which is odd, considering the book came out seemingly quarterly). There were quite a few instances in this issue where, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what was going on in the panel. That’s not a good sign.
