Here we have a classic example of that Marvel curio, the three part story which is blatantly just the first half of a six part story, but gets a separate title for no discernible reason beyond the possibility that it might justify the drastic change of art style in what would otherwise have been part four.<\/p>\n
So while issue #20 – which is already out, because I’m hopelessly behind – has the cartooning of Ricardo L\u00f3pez Ortiz, these three issues have Yildiray Cinar, who is more of a conservative house-style artist, and plays it all pretty straight. \u00a0The ideal tone for\u00a0Weapon X<\/em>‘s stories would probably be somewhere in between, since they’re gleefully over the top but played fairly deadpan. \u00a0But Cinar is solid, and helpfully for this story, he can do some good night time snow.<\/p>\n As the title would suggest, Old Man Logan is not feeling too good, and decides to put Sabretooth in charge of his oddball team. \u00a0Both this book and\u00a0Old Man Logan<\/em> are playing up the idea that his ageing body is finally on the verge of collapse, which sure looks like the groundwork is being laid to get rid of him. \u00a0Come to think of it,\u00a0Old Man Logan<\/em> has a storyline where he has special healing injections that he can use to power himself up for brief periods, so I guess we’d better brace ourselves for him to go out fighting in a blaze of movie re-enactment.<\/p>\n But anyway! \u00a0Logan decides to appoint Sabretooth as team leader in his absence, ostensibly on the basis that Sabretooth has the same powers so he’s the natural choice. \u00a0This is transparently absurd, but the idea seems to be that Logan is trying to play up to Sabretooth’s sense of rivalry and position this as a chance to prove he can do what Wolverine does better. \u00a0We get the general impression that everyone else on the team is only playing along with the whole thing because they’re convinced that Logan must have an ulterior motive here. \u00a0In fact, the idea seems to be that Logan is expecting to be out of the picture soon, and wants to force Sabretooth into a position where the others might keep him on track. \u00a0Sabretooth himself seems to take it as a genuine endorsement of his alpha male status, and evidence that he proved some sort of point to Logan in issue #16.<\/p>\n So Logan packs off Weapon X to deal with Omega Red, who has broken out of a Russian prison again. \u00a0Given his usual alpha male tendencies, Sabretooth’s first reaction is to decide that he doesn’t need a team to take down one guy, so they can tag along if he wants but he’s not going to make much use of them. \u00a0That goes predictably badly, so Omega drags Sabretooth out into the Siberian wilderness while the rest of the team show no particular urgency in trying to rescue him.<\/p>\n This is where things get a little more interesting, as we get an extended head to head with Sabretooth and Omega Red. \u00a0Since we’re clearly in a phase of Sabretooth reverting to his original personality, he’s vaguely conscious that something’s not right with him – not his moral axis, which he seems to have forgotten about entirely, but just a lack of planning and self-discipline when it ought to matter. \u00a0Without anyone around to bluster in front of, Sabretooth finally does calm down and start thinking properly, and makes a decent fist of reasoning with Omega Red from the standpoint of somebody who can understand him.<\/p>\n Omega Red is generally a horrendously one-dimensional character – a psychopathic serial killer with overcomplicated powers – but this story does find an angle on him. \u00a0He’s taking orders from his brother, who turns out to be the Russian equivalent of Nick Fury, and wants him to kill off an inconvenient general. \u00a0The common thread with Sabretooth is that both are quietly aware that despite their self-image as alpha males, they’ve basically fallen into henchman status. \u00a0Sabretooth is being given the opportunity to take the role he thinks he deserves as along as he plays the hero; Omega Red just doesn’t see a way out, and he’s simply defeatist and bitter.<\/p>\n None of this is subtle, and some bits are pushing it even for\u00a0Weapon X<\/em>. \u00a0There’s some really heavy handed stuff with Omega Red and a pet tiger cub. \u00a0There’s a downright silly bit of Sabretooth and Lady Deathstrike removing nanites from Omega Red’s bloodstream by hand, which makes me wonder what Pak and Van Lente think nanites are. \u00a0But despite it all, there’s enough substance that it somehow plays out alright. \u00a0Sabretooth’s is still a bit incoherent as a character, but that feels enough like a deliberate choice to make it interesting rather than annoying.<\/p>\n Even though this is clearly the latest incarnation of the\u00a0X-Force<\/em>-style hit-squad book, and it’s built from elements that ought to annoy me, I keep liking Weapon X<\/em>\u00a0more than I expect to. \u00a0It’s too tongue in cheek to be grim, and it’s got some heart under the surface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here we have a classic example of that Marvel curio, the three part story which is blatantly just the first half of a six part story, but gets a separate title for no discernible reason beyond the possibility that it might justify the drastic change of art style in what would otherwise have been part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4202,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201\/revisions\/4202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}