Wolverine Weapon X #1 – A Review

Wolverine Weapon X #1

Publisher Marvel Comics

Writer Jason Aaron

Art Ron Garney

Colors Jason Keith

Price $4 for 22 pages of story and art

I have been an on and off Marvel fan over the many years, but more often then not I have tried to follow along in all the myriad continuity that is going in the X-World. Unfortunately there is just too much and so I have let the X-Men slip away to a few books over the massive number of titles they have. Correspondently I was giddy when Marvel announced they were giving Logan all his memories back and that we were going to get Wolverine Origins. I hoped it would be a wonderful long form story that told his long history and origin. Instead it became a meandering book that I dropped. The regular Wolverine title is the waste of Steve McNiven’s artistic ability story called “Old Man Logan” and the other 15 Wolverine titles appear to be spurious at best. All of what brings me to Marvel’s newest Wolverine title, which looks like it could be the core Wolverine solo book on the stands. I still love the character Wolverine and I like Jason (Scalped) Aaron’s work and Ron Garney is a very strong and classic comic book artist, so I signed up for Weapon X.

The first issue was a very good start. It was a little light in actual content, but it did set the stage for what could be the main story line for this book for a very long time. We open up in Columbia and see some children killed (off camera), then we see a whole jungle village has been killed. Then we see the off panel bad guy take out some rebel force that has been attacking Roxxon Operations in their country. The last panel shows Wolverine like claws going into one of the rebel’s chest.

Cut to San Francisco and a girl being mugged on a train. Wolverine happens to be riding along snoring and apparently drunk under a newspaper. Wolverine chops off the arm of one assailant (not off panel) and scares the crap out of the other one. Wolverine had saved a newspaper reporter and Logan brushes her off. Obviously she will be part of the supporting cast of the book.

Next we learn the crux of this storyline and perhaps the long term plan for the book. Logan is on his way to meet Maverick, who passes on information to Logan that someone got a hold of the Weapon X program and notes and is creating more weapons. Logan dons his black suit and finds the empty lab which has at least 10 or more tanks like the one that changed him into a man with admantium bones.

So now we know who was killing all the people in the beginning. We have an idea that Roxxon maybe behind recreating these weapons and maybe using them to protect their worldwide operations (or Roxxon rented them) and we know there are a lot of these weapons out in the world. Wolverine will go and hunt them down and I’m guessing the newspaper reporter will help him in piecing together who is behind all of this and why they are doing it.

A decent set-up and a good job establishing what this book is and it was very reader friendly as I believe anyone could have picked this book up and had no issue with worrying about back story. The extra pages with four pages of text and 30 different head shots of people associated with Wolverine and / or the Weapon X program made my eyes glaze over as I don’t know or care to know all of them, but I think it was a mistake to include all of that background. The reason why I think it was a mistake is that it could scare off a new reader showing you how much convoluted crap you should know going into this book.

Ron Garney’s art was beautiful. Ron is doing pencil and inks and I believe he is getting better and better as the years go on. Many artists establish a style and then use short cuts to help improve the speed of their work and often end up becoming a lesser artist then they are or worse case a parody of themselves. Ron is just getting better. He has a realistic style, but it has developed more weight and gravitas to his art. As for layouts and page design, Ron is at the top of his game in that department also. Just an around great art job and the coloring was well done and set the mood and enhanced the art.

Overall Grade B Minus – The minus is because it was a $4 book for 22 pages of story and art. It was a very good opening issue.

It did not get an “A” because it needed to move a little faster in my opinion. Look at all the information Irredeemable gave us in issue #1 versus what this gave us.