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Wolverine #18 - Goodbye Chinatown, Part Two

4

Wolverine, Gorilla Man, Fat Cobra and a femme fatale: this book evokes bad 80's movies in a good way.

The Good

This issue felt like an homage to Big Trouble in Little China; horrible, overacted, and downright hilarious. Wolverine plays a very convincing Kurt Russell-type character, and the Gorilla Man-Fat Cobra tandem playing the straight man and comic relief, respectively. It's great to see that Wolverine books don't always have to be brooding all the time.

On that note, it's always great to see Immortal Weapons in other books, especially when the situation calls for them. Seeing the Bride of Nine Spiders in SPIDER ISLAND: DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU and Fat Cobra in this issue definitely added some mystic flavour that the book needs to survive.

The whole "child scamp" character was smart-aleck-y without being overly precautious; I found him funny, not annoying. This is a precious balance that sidekicks need to strike.

The Jade Claw character was definitely well-introduced, and the "the price of my cheapest bra could feed your family for a year" monologue definitely made it easier to see why people would follow her. I didn't realize that she had ties to AGENTS OF ATLAS, which is a great tie-in to Gorilla Man's appearance in the book.

The Bad

On that note, my only concern was how this Jade Claw character would be able to run such an operation without any of the other major crime organizations knowing about it. This role could have easily been passed over to a Madame Hydra-esque character, as it seems like a bit of a waste to build up this villain when Logan will be spending so much of his time at the school.

While she's previously-established in the Marvel universe, I would've liked something a little more Wolverine-centric.

The Verdict

Like I said above, this book has a great theatrical flair to it, and though it's labelled as a REGENESIS tie-in, it's got little to do with the main events of the X-Universe. It's a great little romp, with kung-fu, witty dialog, some hair-brained schemes and a menacing villain - definitely worth a buy.