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Inner Demons and Exposition.

Published 1996

To talk about this story, first I have to clarify how I think Wolverine ought to operate. Whenever he encounters a new adversary, I believe that Wolverine, due to his own moral code, starts the fight using non-lethal attacks. He has a healing factor so he can risk injury more than your average bear.

However, if this adversary hurts too many innocents or harms someone Logan cares about: He will switch to lethal fighting techniques. And he will feel justified in doing so. And if Cyclops tries to lecture him on morality, he’ll spit it back in Scott’s face, scolding him for any injuries bystanders or friends sustained.

The problem I have with this comic is that it makes Wolverine’s trademark animalistic rage into a disease he needs to recover from. The animalistic rage is a core part of the character and should be a tool in his toolbelt, not something to bury. It doesn’t help that this “Beast Within” looks extremely goofy with this art.

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Also have you ever seen a 1-issue story spend about half its pages on exposition before? And not light exposition. Here’s 1 of 5 consecutive pages in one of the expository sections:

So other than the “Beast Within” part of the story, its a very convoluted version of “Unkillable Ruler of another dimension wants to steal dimension-hopping tech to come rule this dimension.”

It takes them five pages to get this concept across. I would say “its nice to get a tour of the organization Logan is working with while they exposit,” but the art is so dark and muddy that you can’t make anything out, anyway. And the art does not improve. I spent most of the book squinting, trying to work out what I’m looking at.

What is this? What is the perspective here? I understand they were going for a more Japanese woodcut look overall, but it does not work for conveying information at all.

Oh, and Wolverine doesn’t have claws in this. Apparently, back in the day, before they really solidified all the Weapons X stuff, it was up-in-the-air whether he had claws beforehand. What’s weirder is it had been pretty well solidified a couple years before this came out, but they went that route anyway.

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This comic isn’t bad. Truly bad comics can often be an absolute joy to read. I still remember where I was when I got to the Scarlet Witch/Quicksilver incest part of the Ultimate Comics because it was SO BAD.
But no, this book earned the death-penalty of the superhero genre: it’s boring.