Fear Itself: Wolverine #3

Now it's time for me to review the comic I was least looking forward to reading this week... And you want to know what? After reading this comic I completely understand why I was dreading this one...

Fear Itself: Wolverine #3(of 3):

Summary: So Wolverine has been strapped to a nuclear warhead aboard a HAMMER helicarrier hovering above New York City that was stolen by some nutjob who used to serve STRIKE. Oh, and Melita, Wolverine's girlfriend is trying to get information to Wolvie telling him that the nutjob(whose name is Sutton) is actually crazy... Uh-huh... Anyway, Sutton has begun to kill his own people because he is, as previously stated, crazy and didn't want any of them to stop him from nuking the Big Apple. Sutton finally arrives in the helicarrier's weapon bay and tells his last two soldiers that yes, he was indeed going to nuke New York, much to their surprise... Now honestly, why would these two soldiers be surprised?! You don't take a helicarrier containing nukes, strap Wolvie to one of the nukes, fly to New York and then NOT use the weapons! The two soldiers suddenly want no part in blowing up New York and attack Sutton, but not before cutting Wolvie free. After Wolvie gets free, Melita manages to contact him to tell him that Sutton was driven crazy due to experiments done to him by Project Blackbox... Gee, thanks for the helpful hint... Sutton manages to wound one of the two soldiers and Wolvie tells the soldier still standing to help his comrade get away from Sutton. With that, Wolvie tries to talk to Sutton, explaining that he too was nearly driven insane due to the Weapon X Project. Sutton pretty much shrugs that off and pushes the button to drop the nuke anyway... HA! Wolvie cuts off Sutton's hand a second too late and leaps out of the helicarrier, landing on the nuke, which he manages to disarm... In midair... Because Wolverine has apparently become a genius. With that, the cops come to take care of crazy Sutton, and Wolvie and Melita make nice.

Thoughts: Damn was this a bad mini-series... Besides the obvious, which is the fact that this mini had next to NOTHING to do with the Fear Itself event, the story just wasn't my cup of tea. Here's an example... For the first two issues, Melita gets information on Sutton and is doggedly determined to get said information to Wolverine. Basically Melita's info was that Sutton was crazy thanks to Project Blackbox. Now I don't know WHY Melita thought that information was somehow going to turn the tide of the battle for Wolverine, but whatever. Anyway, we get to this issue, Wolverine gets this oh so important information from Melita, and it ends up playing NO role in the final outcome of this story... So then my question intermediately becomes, why the HELL did we waste so much page space on Melita when everything she did didn't matter!?! And that's not even mentioning the fact that Wolverine was able to disarm a state of the art nuclear warhead IN MIDAIR... To say that I regret spending money on these three issues is an understatement...

Score: 2 1/2 out of 10.Good thing Wolvie took those "How to disarm a nuke in midair" classes...

Secret Avengers #15 & Fear Itself: Wolverine #2

Last two comics in my new comic pile, both of which are Fear Itself tie-in comic books. I'm not looking forward to either series, so let's just get this over with...

Secret Avengers #15(Fear Itself tie-in... kind of...):

Summary: This issue begins with Black Widow crashing through the window of a Internet news company which had posted an article stating that Captain America(that would be Bucky Barnes) wasn't dead. Needless to say, Black Widow is interested in seeing where the evidence of this article is. It turns out that the reporter who wrote the article had no evidence and fabricated the entire article, which was fine by the editor since the site was getting way more traffic than ever before. From there, the two sides(Black Widow and the reporters) debate super-hero deaths vs definitive, real life deaths. Both sides make their points, and this issue ends with the editor deleting the Cap death story from the website out of respect to Black Widow.

Thoughts: Um, okay. This was an odd comic in that nothing REALLY happened. In a way, the premise here was interesting, with the reporters representing “real” people and Black Widow representing comic book characters, with each side arguing why their version of death was worse. My problem was that that kind of debate didn't make for a great, page-turning experience... I was into this comic for the first couple of pages, then I found my attention drifting a bit, and by the end I was wondering what the point was. Like I said, I enjoyed the first few pages here, but I kind of think that this argument would have worked better in like 1/4 the pages.

Score: 6 out of 10.When in doubt, post a Black Widow splash page!


Fear Itself: Wolverine #2(of 3):

Summary: While Wolverine is fighting some mercenaries on a HAMMER helicarrier, his girlfriend, Melita, is getting information on the man leading the mercenaries from Pete Wisdom. It appears that the merc's leader, a guy named Sutton, was part of a British super-soldier program that tortured it's subjects until the program was shut down by the government. Upon hearing this Melita decides that she has to get this information to Wolvie... I legitimately have NO idea how/why this information is important enough that Melita feels the need to risk her life getting across Fear Itself plagued New York to tell Wolvie, but it is apparently... Back with Wolvie, he loses to the mercs and winds up unconscious. Upon waking up, he finds himself strapped to a nuclear warhead with Sutton bragging that he was going to drop the bomb on NYC.

Thoughts: I have to admit, I could care less about this mini-series... Maybe I'm simply burnt out by the plethora of Fear Itself mini-series/tie-ins that don't actually tie in to the main Fear Itself story... I just couldn't get into this comic. So Melita is running across Manhattan to tell Wolvie that Sutton was a crazy British super-soldier or something... And Wolvie is beaten by some random mercs... Yes, the characters in this story were feeling the whole fear effect thing that the Serpent is giving off, but that was the only real connection to the main Fear event. What more can I say, Wolverine and his reporter girlfriend vs a crazy British super-soldier and his band of misfits just doesn't interest me.

Score: 3 1/2 out of 10.I had to post something from this comic, so here ya go...

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #1 & Fear Itself: Wolverine #1

We've got some more Fear Itself comics to get through before I call it a day, this time two brand new 3-part mini-series, both starring Wolverine. I'll be interested to see how closely tied into the main Fear Itself comic these minis are. Without even reading them my guess would be they're BARELY connected to the main Fear story, and are just a way to get Wolvie's name out there. But who knows, maybe I'm wrong! Only one way to find out...

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #1(of 3):

Summary: Okay, this issue gets started with two separate threats for X-Force to deal with. The first one is a crazy suicide bomber who screamed out the word “Purify!” before killing a bunch of people, the second is a quick Internet video showing what appeared to be a tied up, super-powered kid in what would seem to be a pretty dire situation. X-Force feels the two events are both connected to those crazy Purifiers, and decide to get some answers. To that end they sneak into the penthouse of a secret Purifier financier and kidnap him. With the rich bigot tied up, Wolvie threatens to let Psylocke loose in his mind unless he talks. Not wanting a dirty mutant mucking around in his brains, the bigot tells X-Force the name of the Purifier's leader, Jonathan Standish, as well as the most likely location of the kidnapped kid, an abandoned military base in Baltimore. X-Force rushes to the scene and tears through the Purifiers stationed there, but are unable to find the kid. Wolvie grabs one of the Purifiers and threatens to do him grievous bodily harm(what, he did!) unless the Purifier gave up the whereabouts of the kid. Unfortunately for Wolvie and company, this Purifier explains that his group didn't have the kid, and that Standish was leading a splinter group of the Purifiers... And what of Standish? After seeing the actions of the Serpent's Worthy on television, he has come to the conclusion that the Purifiers were wrong to only target mutants, since all superhumans were obviously wicked abominations. With that, he enters the room with the captured kid, turns on the camera, puts the gun to the kid's head and warns everybody to save themselves from the hell superhumans had made the Earth by taking their lives. With that, he pulls the trigger and ends this issue.

Thoughts: Okay, so there really wasn't a STRONG Fear Itself connection in this issue, but Rob Williams did use the Fear events to advance this story, which is a good thing. Sure, we didn't get X-Force vs any of the Serpent's Worthy, but at least the events in this issue occurred BECAUSE of the events of Fear Itself. As for this issue, it was good. I have to admit, I enjoyed it. You had crazy bigots, X-Force killing said bigots, and the head bigot acting like a loony religious fanatic! All in all, good stuff!

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.Crazy religious fanatics... The bane of every mutant's existence.


Fear Itself: Wolverine #1(of 3):

Summary: After Wolverine deals with the Scarecrow in New York, Wolvie's girlfriend, Melita, heads over to shoot the breeze with him. While the two are talking, Steve Rogers calls Melita and asks to speak to Wolvie... Considering Wolvie has an Avengers card and presumably a phone of his own, that makes absolutely NO sense... Anyway, it seems some British terrorists from STRIKE stole a HAMMER helicarrier and were flying it to NYC. Needless to say, Steve wants Wolvie to deal with it. Wolvie gives Melita his Avengers access card and tells her to see what she could dig up on STRIKE and the stolen helicarrier at Avengers Tower, while he deals with the STRIKE goons. When the helicarrier arrives in New York, Wolvie hops off a building and cuts his way inside, while Melita heads to Avengers Tower to see what kind of information she could dig up on STRIKE. Melita discovers that the stolen helicarrier has chemical, biological and nuclear weapons on board, and Wolvie gets jumped and taken down by two of the STRIKE goons.

Thoughts: See, now THIS issue had nearly nothing to do with the main Fear Itself event, which annoys me... A lot. Terrorists steal a helicarrier and it's up to Wolvie to stop them. There's nothing about that premise that needs the Fear Itself stuff attached to it. That easily could have been used for any Wolvie mini-series at any time. So yeah, right off the bat this comic kind of irked me. Add a bunch of British terrorists from a defunct evil spy organization and one of Norman Osborn's helicarriers and you have the recipe for a comic I could care less about... Oh well. They all can't be winners.

Score: 5 1/2 out of 10.Eh, I only posted this picture because I liked the bad guy calling Wolvie, "THE Wolverine".