REVIEW: Wolverine #12 — I have…SPECIAL BLOOD

Maybe it’s me? I dunno, my eyes just glaze over when we get another plot about Wolverine’s special blood.

Wolverine #12

Scot Eaton (Artist), Oren Junior (Inker), JP Mayer (Inker), Tom Muller (Design), Benjamin Percy (Writer), VC’s Cory Petit (Letterer), Matthew Wilson (Colorist)
Marvel Comics
May 19, 2021

I’ve been harsh on Wolverine lately and I acknowledge that. The thing is, that harshness is deserved. We have what’s purported to be a bold new era in the current X-line, so why are we rehashing plots about Wolverine’s blood and vampires? This isn’t new territory in the slightest—he’s been here before in solo books, and his special blood was even a key plot point in the 2010 X-Men event Curse of the Mutants. His lack of special blood was then a plot point in the run up to 2014’s Death of Wolverine, and so I’m left wondering…the politics of the interconnected plotlines tying all of this to Russia and X-Force aside, what is the point here? What is this story saying? Does it exist for a reason other than to further that larger plot? Because I’m at a loss here.

Wolverine #12 ties up the larger plot contrivance of Dracula by having Wolverine essentially tell the mommy and daddy vampires of Sevalith what their errant child is up to so that they can come keep the big bad Dracula in line. I mean, I guess. Hopefully, that takes him off the board for longer? This Castlevania-ass version of Dracula was never as entertaining as the original flavor, anyway. Where this leaves his French connection, the vampire-hunting-whoops-almost-a-vampire-herself Louise Still-Doesn’t-Have-A-Last-Name of the Nightguard, is unclear; Wolverine takes her to Sevalith to entreat the Horseman Death for aid, but the issue ends there. Does she get to live with them now? Do they have a cure for her? I guess we’ll find out when this plotline somehow continues to go on, as though it were…clinging…to an…unnatural life…wait a minute.

Percy does that thing here where he names an issue’s story with a word and then has a character in the story literally define the word. It’s doubled up by having Louise originally say it in her native tongue before translating it to English for Logan’s benefit. This is funny for multiple reasons. First, while we all know Logan has a semi-hostile relationship with modern technology, that doesn’t mean he’s an uneducated bumpkin; he’s traveled the world for a hundred years, he speaks multiple languages, and not knowing some vocabulary looks weird on him. Second, the word in question is “penumbra,” which translates to “pénombre” in French…which is almost the exact same word, even accounting for French pronunciation! Like…the word has Latin roots, and French is one of the romance languages! Am I being nitpicky? Sure, probably. It’s just…it’s the weirdest scene to open a comic with.

Anyway. Scot Eaton continues art duties, and my prior criticisms of the work remain the same. He has a good grasp on character physicality, at least, and his dynamic action is mostly pretty good, one stake-throwing panel of Louise aside. I don’t really have much more to say here. It’s not an interesting or entertaining story, and it’s being tasked with what feels like second-string art at this point, which seems very…out of character for a Wolverine book.

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Nola Pfau

Nola Pfau

Nola is a bad influence. She can be found on twitter at @nolapfau, where she's usually making bad (really, absolutely terrible) jokes and occasionally sharing adorable pictures of her dog.

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