WOLVERINE #41

 

"Sabretooth War" Part 1

    I remember reading the first few issues of this series. Considering I stopped reading it, I'm guessing it wasn't very good. But #41 brings a new 10 part "Sabretooth War" storyline leading to #50. The cover also proclaims that it's "The Most Violent Wolverine Story Ever Told." Okay. I figured I'd check it out, since I've been pretty much oblivious to what's been going on in any of the X-Men books since I named House of X and Powers of X the best books of the year in 2019. Those books created a new island home base for the X-Men, Krakoa. That story, created by Jonathan Hickman, was compelling. Then he immediately left the books and I didn't care anymore. I've never really been the biggest X-Men fan. I remember enjoying the visuals of X-Men and X-Force in the early 90's when Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld were drawing them. And I enjoyed the series Brian Bendis wrote when he brought back the original X-Men thanks to time travel. Other than those few and far between storylines, there hasn't been much that caught my eye. Maybe it's just the fact that there's so many X books and they're constantly cycling through different writers and artists and new #1's that it's hard to even care anymore. Would it kill Marvel to just have a monthly Uncanny X-Men book with the same writer and artist for, say, a few years? Apparently. From what I can figure out reading Wolverine #41, everyone has left Krakoa and mutants are (sigh) yet again illegal or banned or something (which makes no sense considering in the other Marvel books they are, in fact, not). X-Force is living on the North Pole for no good reason (cool visuals I guess?). Sabretooth is now the leader of a group of other Sabretooths from different dimensions. Yawn. I can't possibly be the only one tired of the multi-dimension characters in everything, right? The last two Spider-Man movies (the live action and the animated one) dealt with the multiverse. The Flash movie also did. And constantly in the Spider-Man books these "other" Spider-Men show up. Fucking give it up already, the multiverse plot has been done to death. Jesus. So Sabretooth and his crew decide to attack Wolverine and the X-Force in the North Pole. The final page has Sabretooth and his gang hacking up body parts to spell out "Happy Birthday" for Wolverine to find. Is this the most violent Wolverine story ever? Maybe? I can't say I've read a ton of Wolverine issues. Marvel doesn't really do too much blood and guts. I wonder why they went this route. Probably just to see if the hook of being so violent would give them more sales. Benjamin Percy, who started writing this book with #1, co-wrote this with Victor LaValle. There's also two artists; Geoff Shaw and Cory Smith. The book is being published twice a month until #50, so I guess that's why there's two writers and two artists. One big problem is that neither artist is very good. The writing isn't very good, either. There's a reason why I haven't been reading too many Marvel or D.C. books lately, and it's mostly because the writing and art isn't very good. I'm not sure what happened...but it seems like talented writers and talented artists just aren't going into the comic book field anymore, or, at least, not working at Marvel or D.C. Maybe the pay isn't any good? Maybe it's because talented people would rather work independently than at the big two? I don't know...but this book is borderline awful. 1/2*