Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Wolverine #70
Marvel Comics
Millar, McNiven, Vines & Hollowell

Part Five of the Old Man Logan saga answers many of the questions as to the reasons behind Logan leaving behind the Wolverine side of his personality. It’s a straight forward enough of an issue, but the craftiness in the twist at the end and the incredibly gruesome bloody artwork makes this issue stand out in a big time way. The cool part about this issue is you really don’t have to had followed any of the previous four to enjoy this one. Tremendous issue all around.

The issue begins with Logan telling his story to Hawkeye. The flashback is many years ago, somewhere in the current continuity one would assume. Wolverine is at the X headquarters monitoring distress calls from all over the place: SHIELD, Avenger’s tower, etc. then the bad guys bust in, killing Jubilee in the process.

The cast of bad guys is pretty wide in scope. You have some Spider-man villains, like Doc Ock, and you have usual X-Men villains like Sinister. There seems to be some news ones on each page. Wolverine goes berserk. His goal is to fend off the cast of bad guys long enough for the kid mutants to escape. The main problem is that none of the other X-Men are around to help him.

After cutting through arms, tentacles and other body parts Wolverine is left with Bullseye. They fight and fight until Wolverine finally wins. Enter a villain by the name of Mysterio and he blows Wolverine’s world apart. We don’t really find out what happened to all the others and how the villains actually won the war, but this piece to the puzzle ended Wolverine’s involvement. For all we know he could have been the last one left, but something tells me he wasn’t.

This story was outstanding. Sure, it’s a What If type story, but it works well. For me, the question about Wolverine has always been: how can you kill him? This issue reveals an answer in a different, more believable manner: how do you end Wolverine’s existence when you can’t kill him? And this is a very satisfactory answer.

The art has been outstanding throughout and doesn’t slip at all here. The twist is the only thing that really outdoes the art. It’s a battle with tons of blood and body parts and it’s terrific. The direction makes use of a huge cast of villains and it shows some good planning and thinking on the part of the entire creative team. I mean, why wouldn’t you lead with the guys you can keep the claws at a distance? If I had to pick out a personal favorite it would have to be his tussle with Omega Red. Wolverine hacks him up like a roll of salami.

The only downer in this entire issue is the reveal at the end that Venom is tracking Wolverine and Hawkeye. This was a downer for me because it seems we will waste another issue on some filler instead of dealing with the main plot at hand. We’ll see, but this was not a sight I was happy about.

This issue is the goods and may be the best in the entire arc so far. I can’t recommend this enough, whether you’ve followed this arc or not, I think you will find something to like about this one.

5 out of 5 geek goggles