Marvel has a laundry list of iconic, fan-favorite characters to choose from when creating new stories. Spider-Man, Captain America and Iron Man are some of the big names today, but one of the X-Men will always be one of the most popular Marvel characters. That would be Wolverine.
Marvel launched a brand new series for Logan today with the introduction of “Wolverine #1” from writer Benjamin Percy. Interestingly, this first issue contains two stories that, at least at the moment, are completely independent from one another.
The first story, titled “The Flower Cartel,” sees Wolverine wake up in the snow to find his X-Force companions murdered, seemingly by his own hand. As he sets off to track someone who escaped the scene, we backtrack to a few days before the incident as the story actually leads up to that point.
I enjoy this type of storytelling, because it downplays the deaths of major characters right off the bat. That might sound like a negative, but comic books constantly undercut the significance of character deaths all the time by resurrecting them over and over again. And with Krakoa at play in the new series, we know a resurrection is coming for all of the fallen characters. So why not get the death out of the way in the beginning and just tell us the story of how we go to this point and why it all happened.
We follow Wolverine as he investigates missing Krakoan plants that are used to create the super drugs they’ve been distributing throughout the world. We are simultaneously introduced to narcotics agent Jeff Bannister who is investigating the same thing.
Along the way, we learn of a new street drug called Pollen, the involvement of the Flower Cartel and one of their leaders known as the Pale Girl. There is a new drug war going on around the world, and the mutants of Krakoa may very well be the ones to blame.
This is an interesting story, though I do have some reservations. It feels small, which is fine for a first issue of a series following one specific character. It may seem odd that a worldwide drug wars feels small to me, but in the scope of other Marvel comics, yeah, that’s a small issue. It also doesn’t introduce a villain that seems like a real threat moving forward. Sure some kind of mind control is at play, but that doesn’t seem like an issue for a team that was created by the world’s greatest telepath.
With that being said though, this first stroy was an interesting one and I’m curious to see how it turns out.
The second story feels bigger in scope and has everything a Marvel Comics nerd could want: Wolverine looking for a fight, an interesting story pulling in elements from the current events of the Marvel Universe, a very worthy big bad and even the return of a fan-favorite villain!
This story, titled “The Catacombs,” wastes no time in bringing Omega Red through one of Krakoa’s gates and Wolverine doesn;t exactly greet him with a friendly reception.
Despite Wolverine’s wishes, Red is kept as a prisoner in Krakoa until he can heal from his mysterious wounds and Wolverine can find out what he’s up to. Red’s information leads Wolverine to France where he encounters a mysterious woman as well as some bloodthirsty vampires.
After surviving and initial attack, with some help, Red sends him back to France to gain more information. Wolverine learns that there is a much bigger threat than Red on the horizon as he once again encounters those vampires.
This story doesn’t leave me with either of the reservations I had for the first one. In fact, the cliffhanger ending and tease of the imminent looming threat has me on edge waiting until the next issue hits stores.
Overall, it is nice to see Wolverine in his own brand new series and Percy has certainly proved that he can take the character in some very interesting new directions. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Marvel’s “Wolverine #1” is available now.