Wolverine #302

With Jason Aaron's run on Wolverine coming to an end, I am more sad for the note on which it is wrapping up than with the fact that is ending. Aaron has been with Wolverine for a few years now, starting with "Wolverine: Weapon X" and the entire run of Weapon X plus the first dozen or so issues of the relaunched "Wolverine" were FANTASTIC. Some of the best stuff Marvel was putting out. Then Aaron started to repeat his own ideas (from within his own run on his own title, plus some other places), and drag out stories too long... and while the title has gotten a bit better again since the end of the over-long and rehashed "Red Right Hand" saga, it's still going out on a weak note. It seems clear that Wolverine is just not the right character for Jason Aaron to have written for a prolonged length of time, as it is evident that his strong connection to the title has been petering out for the past year.

This story still has its moments that exhibit the strengths of the better days of Aaron's run on the title, like the very idea of the "mind ninjas" Wolverine and his ninja posse encounter here, but ultimately the story's still failing to ultimately drag me in. The revivals of Sabretooth and Mystique are as-yet feeling somewhat arbitrary (though I do feel the X-Men universe is made stronger for having Mystique back in it), and all the more-so for the fact that Mystique's death was still fairly fresh and was never really addressed anywhere in such a way to absolutely have placed her in the "really and truly dead" column at all. Shapeshifters are hard to kill, donchaknow.

The biggest weakness of this final storyline, for me, is Steve Sanders' art. I'm just not feeling it. Following after stories featuring eyepopping art by Renato Guedes, Ron Garney and others, Sanders' minimalist, cartoony style just does NOT feel like a good fit. There are certain places where his style makes for strong images, such as the surprising amount of expression he manages to work into the demented masks of the mind ninjas, but ultimately the art is flat, distractingly so. It does the story no favors that Sanders is the first to depict the new Silver Samurai, who blurbs for the story would have us believe is an important new character. Sanders' design for his armor just looks plain silly. Sanders comes off looking weaker still for having to share the issue with a few pages from Billy Tan, whose far more detailed style looks great and clashes harshly with Sanders' cartoony style. It makes sense for there to be two different art styles at work in this issue as some of it is a hallucination, but it doesn't have to have been so jarring as this.

One place I'll give this issue some props is in the editorial column. While I feel like handing this assignment to Steve Sanders was a bad editorial decision, most aspects of the story do a good job of paying homage to what's come before, and, in the case of a reference to "Dr. Rot" from Weapon X and has been said to be returning in upcoming writer Cullen Bunn's first storyline, previewing what is to come. This aspect of the issue is handled with subtlety, and does help one to appreciate the issue as part of a larger tapestry and not merely a weak installment.