Hey, everyone, jrpbsp here…Here is my fourth and final review for the week, ‘Wolverine: Origins’.  Hope you enjoy it.

Wolverine: Origins #39 (details | thread)
Writer: Daniel Way
Penciler: Scot Eaton
Inker: Andrew Hennessy

SPOILERS BELOW…

RECAP: The issue opens with Wolverine hanging over a vat of molten steel, a prisoner of Wild Child. Kyle is planning to kill Logan by lowering him into the vat feet first.

Wild Child reveals that Romulus’ plan was to give his position to the last one standing amongst the contenders and everyone that Wolverine had killed played into that role. Wolverine is not happy to learn he has been a pawn all this time.

Before Kyle can give Logan his metal bath Omega Red interrupts and attacks. The fight between Red and Wild Child buys a little time and allows Wolverine to escape by swinging himself into the molten metal wrists first.

Kyle sees Logan flee and takes his attention away from Omega Red, which proves to be a fatal mistake. Red drives his tentacles through Wild Child’s body and then tosses him into the vat.

Two weeks later Wolverine is in a warehouse in St. Petersburg where the Black Widow has left the Muramasa Blade. Wolverine calls her to tell Natasha to hide it even from him when Arkady interrupts again. Logan tells Red he is not going to fight for Romulus’ position but after Omega Red mentions Daken, Wolverine is ready to do battle.

He throws the blade into Omega Red’s chest where it immediately begins to kill the Russian. As he is dying, Red asks if the Muramasa can even kill Romulus and Wolverine says it can. Only to find out that the man is standing right behind Logan looking to put the statement to the test.

MY TAKE: This issue was pretty mediocre as per the norm for the series. Very little happened plot-wise except for the revelation that all of these different characters were competing for Romulus’ empire even if they did not know it. Yet it still contained two deaths of long established characters with very little fanfare or noticeable impact.

All that happens in the issue is that Wolverine escapes and gets hold of his blade. But somehow in that little bit of time, Romulus decides to go from being the hunted to confronting Logan, after he gets his sword. That makes no sense to me. I could understand a confrontation if Red was the last one that needed to die, but Daken is still out there.  Alternately if Romulus just wanted to confront Wolverine finally, it would have made more sense to do it when he was not holding a sword that could kill anything.

Of course my biggest problem with the issue was killing off Wild Child and Omega Red. Both have long histories in Marvel and deserved a better send off then they got. I can understand Kyle fitting into the plan more or less, but I still do not know why Red would have even been involved. He is not from North America nor does he have any feral mutations. It seems like he was brought in just to be killed off and that is a bad thing for any story.

The big reveal of Romulus’ face was not really a surprise either. Assuming he is indeed Logan’s brother, that has been predicted pretty much since his name started showing up. While it is nice to see the plot getting tied up, the ending had a certain anti-climatic feel. Especially since he looks like a more buffed version of the villain from ‘Wolverine: The End’ except for yet another configuration of claws.

Which brings me to a minor nitpick, how does a foot long claw manage to sprout from someone’s thumb? There is no way to house it in the wrist and the thing is longer then his entire hand. Of course that goes along with having Wolverine’s hands being bandaged two weeks after he burned them. Even in the old days he would have long been healed.

Even with all of those complaints, this was not too bad of an issue. I can actually see some good ideas and some nice plots in here that should have made for a decent read. But the execution of those concepts leaves a lot to be desired. There are simply too many plot holes and miscues to ignore. Which is a shame because I like the idea of someone controlling Wolverine’s life and making bad things happen to him. It just was not done well in my opinion.

In the end we have an issue that has been built up to for a long time but which ends with a shrug rather then a gasp. I was more surprised at the callous way that Omega Red and Wild Child were killed then the reveal about Romulus. Hopefully we will get some answers next issue and it will help make sense of this whole story arc.

Thanks for reading my review for Wolverine Files. I will be keeping to this format for the most part but please keep the comments coming and I will see everyone again next time.