Wolverine: First Class #21 Review: Kitty’s Final Lesson

Hey, everyone, jrpbsp here… Happy Thanksgiving for those that celebrate it. Here is my first review for the week ‘Wolverine: First Class’. Hope you enjoy it.

Wolverine: First Class #21 (preview)
Writer: Peter David
Art: Scott Koblish

SPOILERS BELOW…

RECAP: The issue opens with Kitty, in the woods, running from a murderous Wolverine. He catches up to her and tackles her down a hill into the water. As he prepares for the killing blow, Shadowcat flashes back to the events of an hour previous. She was in the Danger Room training while Xavier, Logan and Piotr look on.

The Professor gives her a test to go through the whole room and all manner of objects to reach the door. Wolverine bets Colossus that she will do it in under thirty seconds and she succeeds beautifully. Logan then offers double or nothing and the bet is accepted. Kitty leaves the room and gets congratulations from Siryn before being knocked out by a flash of light.

Kitty wakes up to a mental message from Magneto who asks her to leave the X-Men to their fate. Her last word is defiance and then she is attacked by a mentally controlled Wolverine. Knowing she can not win the fight, Shadowcat flees only to realize that her  powers no longer work. She makes it to the elevator downstairs but Logan pursues closely. She manages to trick him briefly by leaving her boots in the hall and fleeing back upstairs. Kitty finds the rest of the X-Men still unconscious and runs from the mansion.

That is when we get back to her being knocked down into the water. She pulls herself out of the river only to be confronted by Wolverine again. Shadowcat fights back but soon figures out he is talking strangely. Putting the pieces together, Kitty figures out that she is still in the Danger Room and the whole situation was a trick. Kitty storms off as Wolverine collects tells Piotr he owes him forty dollars.

MY TAKE: This is a good issue and a very well done story in general. Kitty is the central character, which is not unusual for the title, and does an outstanding job of holding my interest. Her initial confidence is highly appropriate and leads into a a very nice little tale of both her physical and mental toughness. Although, in the end, it turns out to be nothing more then a training exercise, I really enjoyed her struggle to survive Wolverine’s assault.

The plot is extremely simple and the entire comic basically takes place in one room. And yet it still allows for some very interesting internal dialogue and smart actions. Kitty is definitely better when she uses her brain rather then her power and I was glad to see her not be able to rely on it in this issue. I would have preferred to see more of Wolverine in the comic, of course, since it is nominally his title. The bets with Piotr were pretty amusing but other then that he is not really given anything do to besides looking scary and clawing things.

The biggest problem I had with the whole comic was relevance and that is pretty minor. Having the story simply be a training exercise removed a lot of the weight of the issue. It is like having a tale that is a dream or a fantasy, hard to take seriously. But in this case Kitty’s actions were valid even though the threat was not real. Still it would have been nice for Kitty to have prevailed over a real threat rather then another training exercise.

In the end though, this was a strong and entertaining issue, one of the better ones we have seen from Peter David. The lack of a major guest star was nice but the greatest strength was the depiction of Shadowcat. She carried the story single-handed and does so with ease. If this is indeed the final issue of the series. as it seems to be, then I will greatly miss getting to read about Kitty’s adventures as a young X-Man. But if it is the end, the series went out on a high note and hopefully there will be enough interest to see a relaunch some day.

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.

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