What If? Wolverine: Father #1

Overall: This issue gets started with the Winter Soldier killing Wolverine's wife, Itsu, just like in the regular, 616 Marvel Universe. However, in this particular reality, Wolverine walks in on the scene and kills the surprised Winter Soldier and cuts his son out of his dead wife after hearing the infant's heartbeat. From there we move forward 12 years and discover that Wolverine had moved to Tibet with his son John, to live a quiet, violence-free life. Needless to say, John isn't happy with this life of peaceful tranquility, and Wolvie begins to notice little things that indicate that John may be a mutant. Wolvie's fears are furthered when Prof. Xavier arrives at Wolvie's quaint little home and asks him to join the X-Men. Wolvie turns Prof. X down, which annoys John, who was hoping Prof. X would get him out of the village. Two years later, John begins to get into fights with other children, with one fight leading to a boy being gashed by what seem to be claws, although John claims ignorance to how the boy received the wounds. To punish John, Wolvie decides to leave him alone for a few weeks, telling John he was responsible for all of the chores that needed to be done around the house. With Wolvie gone, John begins to realize that he might have some special abilities when a girl from the village searches him out, even though she was obviously terrified of him. Before anything can develop between John and the girl, Sabretooth arrives on the scene and tosses the girl off of a mountain, before throwing John off the mountain too, figuring the boy would have a healing factor like his father. By this time Wolvie returns and decapitates Sabretooth, tossing his pieces off the mountain before rushing down to find John. Wolvie doesn't find John's body, just finding some blood, and upon returning to the village he discovers everybody dead at the hands(or claws)of John. From there John heads east, takes up the name Daken and winds up taking over the Japanese crime scene in just a few short years. Wolvie tracks his wayward son down, and after dealing with his goons, stabs Daken with the Muramasa Blade(which negates healing factors)killing him, before turning the blade on himself, putting an end to his cursed bloodline.

First off, I enjoyed this comic. I do love What If? comics, so right off the bat I was expecting good things here, and for the most part, that's what I received. There were a few things I could nit-pick if I wanted(how easily the Winter Soldier was dispatched, the lack of Romulus), but I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to say that I liked this glimpse into a world where Wolvie raised his son. I'm an unabashed fan of Daken, and while I didn't like the fact that Wolvie killed him so easily here, nor how obvious the ending was(who DIDN'T see that coming?), I liked most everything else. I guess the lesson here is that a bad seed is a bad seed, no matter how he is raised...

Score: 8 out of 10.Daken: Trouble in ANY world.