Well, this is complicated. \u00a0Hunt for Wolverine is the sequel to\u00a0Death of Wolverine, but it’s preceded by the four\u00a0Hunt for Wolverine miniseries, which had a lead-in issue of their own, and now get a further wrap-up one-shot to draw them together and set up the main event. \u00a0So it’s the coda to the prequels to a sequel to a finale. \u00a0Lovely.<\/p>\n
It’s a quirk of ultra-commercial superhero comics that the need for intertitle continuity and sprawling crossovers can lead to odd structures like parallel, intertwining narratives. \u00a0It’s not exactly a structure that other media are queueing up to use, but at the same time the serial format of comics does lend itself to this kind of thing. \u00a0So if you actually have a reason for doing four parallel narratives, it can be interesting.<\/p>\n
Does\u00a0Hunt for Wolverine really need four parallel stories? \u00a0Um. \u00a0Kind of? \u00a0It has an idea, at least – defining Wolverine by his absence, with different characters approaching the character from different angles. \u00a0In theory it ought to work. \u00a0There’s a lot to play with in Wolverine, plus it helps build up the dubious idea that he’s actually been absent, even though\u00a0Old Man Logan is still being published.<\/p>\n
The reality is a bit patchier. \u00a0Weapon Lost, the Daredevil book, was decidedly unfocussed. \u00a0Adamantium Agenda and\u00a0Claws of a Killer, the New Avengers and Sabretooth\/Daken books, hit their required tone. \u00a0Mystery in Madripoor wasn’t all that Madripoor-y and got a bit distracted rebooting Psylocke. \u00a0And in plot terms, all four basically established that Soteira are the baddies, while dropping some hints about what they might actually be up to.<\/p>\n
So in this issue, Kitty, Iron Man and Daredevil gather to compare notes. \u00a0Sabretooth isn’t there but apparently passed on what happened in\u00a0Claws of a Killer, since even though he was trying to kill Wolverine, his general post-Axis confusion has led him to tip off the X-Men anyway. \u00a0But the wider plot requires Soteira’s actual plans to remain a mystery – so the upshot is eight pages of Kitty explaining that the baddies are Soteira, which we already knew.<\/p>\n
I mean, if you didn’t read all four series, it’s a perfectly useful recap of the key plot points. \u00a0But I did read them, and there’s only so much the dialogue can do to jazz it up. \u00a0There’s one neat bit, where Iron Man recaps \u00a0Adamantium Agenda as if it had been immediately obvious to him that he needed to destroy Mister Sinister’s DNA collection. \u00a0This isn’t lampshaded at all, and it isn’t especially relevant to this issue, but if you\u00a0have read that series, it’s a nice touch that Iron Man is completely glossing over his big ethical dilemma and acting as if there was never any doubt that he would do the right thing.<\/p>\n
Anyway, this gets interrupted by Soteira attacking the Mansion. \u00a0I\u00a0think the suggestion is meant to be that they attack as soon as Kitty names them as the baddies, but that really doesn’t make any sense, because she’s clearly worked it all out before Iron Man and Daredevil arrived – she’s got a powerpoint presentation and everything. \u00a0So maybe it’s just meant to be coincidence.<\/p>\n
Soteira’s approach is to drop some metal rods from orbit in the general direction of the Mansion in order to keep the X-Men occupied – this is a genuine idea, by the way – so that they can set up a little presentation. \u00a0This is the first time we see Persephone, the woman in charge, who basically claims that she loves the X-Men, but she’s doing wonderful work and Wolverine is helping her with it, so would they mind leaving her alone, please. \u00a0Her big threat is that she’s got the stolen copy of Sinister’s DNA database from\u00a0Adamantium Agenda, and so she can find and kill mutants whose powers haven’t emerged yet (and thus can’t be found using Cerebro). \u00a0So basically, if the X-Men don’t back off, she’s going to keep killing random mutants.<\/p>\n
It’s a good looking issue; Ramon Rosanas does a reasonable job with the talking heads. \u00a0There are some solid locations in the opening pages, and plenty of energy in the action set piece. \u00a0Persephone’s swirly design looks pretty good as well. \u00a0The main problems here are that we’ve taken an awfully long time to get to unveiling Soteira, and the plot is pushing into seriously over the top territory. \u00a0It does seem we’re meant to take literally the claim that Sinister had a DNA database of everyone on Earth and, as I mentioned last time that came up, that’s just too silly for me.<\/p>\n
There’s a certain charm to Persephone’s evident conviction that she’s the good guy, but really she’s something of a Mark Millar character: totally absurd, seemingly oblivious to her own lack of subtlety, and kicking gratuitously at the limits of credibility. \u00a0That’s not an easy thing to make work, and the story is trying a little too hard to sell her as an A-list villain by making her All Kinds of Awesome. \u00a0Perhaps things will come together in time, but as it stands, I’m not convinced about where this is heading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, this is complicated. \u00a0Hunt for Wolverine is the sequel to\u00a0Death of Wolverine, but it’s preceded by the four\u00a0Hunt for Wolverine miniseries, which had a lead-in issue of their own, and now get a further wrap-up one-shot to draw them together and set up the main event. \u00a0So it’s the coda to the prequels to […]<\/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-4282","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\/4282","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=4282"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4284,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions\/4284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}