{"id":4242,"date":"2018-08-05T20:55:55","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T19:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4242"},"modified":"2018-08-05T20:56:19","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T19:56:19","slug":"hunt-for-wolverine-weapon-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4242","title":{"rendered":"Hunt for Wolverine: Weapon Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marvel haven’t exactly done themselves any favours in the way they’ve gone about the death and return of Wolverine. \u00a0Old Man Logan<\/em> is so similar to the original that there’s been little scope for absence to make the heart grow fonder. \u00a0The\u00a0Marvel Legacy<\/em> one-shot where he returned was nearly a year a go, and it took months to have any follow-up. \u00a0And now we have… a series of four miniseries, leading into another miniseries in which he actually returns? \u00a0I suppose it’s helping to belatedly build anticipation, but sixteen issues of prologue is patience-testing stuff.<\/p>\n

So we have four miniseries, each with different creators, and each featuring a different cast of characters who more or less knew Wolverine. \u00a0Adamantium Agenda<\/em> is basically a\u00a0New Avengers<\/em> miniseries;\u00a0Claws of a Killer<\/em> is pretty much a\u00a0Weapon X\u00a0<\/em>mini;\u00a0Mystery in Madripoor<\/em> has the X-Men themselves; and… um.<\/p>\n

If you just looked at those three, you might think that the idea is to define Wolverine by his absence, with each series playing up a different aspect of him, through a different group of associates and a different milieu. \u00a0But if that’s the idea, what the heck is going on\u00a0with\u00a0Weapon Lost<\/em>, which features the seemingly random grouping of Daredevil, Frank McGee, Misty Knight and Cypher? \u00a0It’s a downright odd premise for a miniseries, and the thinking behind it doesn’t get all that much clearer by the final issue – yet it’s also the lead-in mini written by Charles Soule, the\u00a0writer responsible for the main return miniseries.<\/p>\n

The first issue cover is by Greg Land, but fear not, because the internal art is by Matteo Buffagni and colourist Jim Caralampidis, which means it’s a lot more atmospheric. \u00a0Buffagni likes his angles and shadows, so he’s a good choice for this Daredevil-y take on a nocturnal mystery procedural.<\/p>\n

Having already been enlisted to help find Wolverine back in the lead-in one-shot, Daredevil decides to haul in some suitable investigators. \u00a0In that sense, Frank McGee is a sensible choice. \u00a0His whole concept is that he’s an ex police officer who reluctantly trudged off to join the Inhumans after getting his new photographic memory powers, but refuses to play along with the silly names and costumes; he works very well as a counterpoint in\u00a0Inhumans<\/em>, but he’s also quite effective in the wider Marvel Universe as someone with a foot in both worlds. \u00a0Plus, he was clearly one of Soule’s favourite characters when he was writing\u00a0Inhumans<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Misty Knight is… a detective who was in the\u00a0Official Handbook<\/em>? \u00a0From the look of this series, she’s actually here mainly because Soule figured she’d bond well with McGee; and fair enough, since they’re both career detectives who were never quite willing to become superheroes but can’t just go back to their old careers either. \u00a0In fact, he’s setting them up for a romantic subplot, though heaven knows where, given that the Inhumans experiment seems to be decisively over by now.<\/p>\n

And Misty rounds out the team by bringing in Cypher (who… she knows…?) on the perfectly sensible grounds that they might need a translator. \u00a0Cypher gets a radical overhaul here, as he tends to do whenever he shows up these days. \u00a0Last time round, we had the idea that his translation powers extent to interpreting pretty much anything – body language, general pattern recognition, whatever – which is a logical enough extrapolation from his powers. \u00a0Soule’s take is that Cypher has become obsessed with trying to interpret the Internet and, from the look of it, has encountered something so vast and paradoxical that it’s beyond him, or at least leaving him obsessed with the task until he’s finished it.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure about this. \u00a0It feels like an unrelated concept that’s been bolted on to Cypher. \u00a0If you want to be nitpicky, Cypher’s powers have never worked by actually analysing data – he can understand languages from tiny fragments of text, which is plainly impossible – so much as by some sort of magical instinct that leads him to the right answer. \u00a0So it doesn’t feel like the internet should be presenting him with that much of a problem. \u00a0More broadly, if this is how his powers work, why isn’t he paralysed by any large set of information, such as a library, or just the world in general?<\/p>\n

Anyway, Cypher helpfully trawls the internet for Wolverine sightings – of which the numbers are vast – and the group start chasing down the leads. \u00a0After a bit, this takes them to Saskatchewan, where Wolverine is possibly attacking some park rangers. \u00a0But it isn’t. \u00a0It’s Albert, the robot copy from the Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri run back in the 1990s. \u00a0Again, I’m not sold on this book’s take on Albert. \u00a0In the original stories, he worked rather well as the loyal muscle for the absurd Elsie Dee, a robot shaped as a stereotypically cute little girl. \u00a0This story plays him straight, hunting for his “daughter” Elsie (which really isn’t how I see the relationship). \u00a0But at any rate, this whole thing seems to be a red herring.<\/p>\n

Or then again, maybe not, since Soule gives Frank and Misty a whole scene to talk about whether the story they’ve just been in had anything at all to do with finding Wolverine. \u00a0It seems unlikely that Soule would lampshade it like this if he really had just spent most of the miniseries filling the pages by going on a wild goose chase; he’s a better writer than that. \u00a0Yet at the same time it’s hard to see the connection. \u00a0This is one of those cases where the writer’s previously earned goodwill leads me to give him some benefit of the doubt. \u00a0But then again, he did write\u00a0Wolverines<\/em>, and in retrospect, what the heck was that all about?<\/p>\n

The more direct plot connection comes in the final part, when it turns out that somebody else has gone after one of their previous leads. \u00a0This leads them to a company called Soteira (it’s Greek for “saviour”), which naturally turns out to be one of those Marvel Universe companies that keeps “level four killteams” on call. \u00a0I quite appreciate the fact that otherwise, it’s a standard cubicle-based office, though. \u00a0There’s a brief skirmish and presumably Soteira are being generally established as the baddies for the main story. \u00a0Oh, and they recover a scary video of Logan apparently saying that he’ll do whatever they want. \u00a0So it seems we’re doing Logan mind-controlled by bad guys again, or at least that’s the suggestion. \u00a0But hopefully there’s more to it than that, because “Enemy of the State” has been done before.<\/p>\n

Judged as a four-issue miniseries in its own right, this is a weird and rather unsatisfying affair. \u00a0It doesn’t tell a complete story, and even as a lead-in to the main event, it spends much of its time on a lengthy detour to Saskatchewan that doesn’t seem to contribute to the plot at all. \u00a0But I’m keeping an open mind about whether the next phase of the story will tie back to this book in a more satisfying way, and explain… well, why the heck Hunt for Wolverine<\/i> has Daredevil chasing after a cyborg in Canada. \u00a0As it stands, I’m confused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marvel haven’t exactly done themselves any favours in the way they’ve gone about the death and return of Wolverine. \u00a0Old Man Logan is so similar to the original that there’s been little scope for absence to make the heart grow fonder. \u00a0The\u00a0Marvel Legacy one-shot where he returned was nearly a year a go, and it […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4242","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\/4242","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=4242"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4245,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions\/4245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}