Wolverine: The Best There Is #1

Here's the good: a great cover by Bryan Hitch.

And... that's about it.

I have no idea how this comic came about, but here's my guess. Some guys at Marvel played the X-Men Origins: Wolverine video game, which was surprisingly good, although it was very gory.

Of course, the gore shouldn't be a surprise, since the main character has those big, sharp, unbreakable claws - what else are they good for? Still, the comics tend to sanitize these things a bit.

So someone decided, "Let's do a Wolverine comic that's like this game - brutal, graphic violence, blood and guts." So they did.

Writer Charlie Huston provides lots of graphic, disgusting situations for the title character. Wolverine is all through the comic, but never acts in character.

The story shows plenty of violence but draws the line at profanity - so you have numerous word balloons with key words garbled. Buckets of blood are ok, bad words are out. Got it.

There's a lot of death, a good bit of blood and virtually no humor at all. Oh, there's a big (and dopey) Edward Scissorhands swipe.

The ending makes no sense at all, and frankly, I'm not even sure what was happening there. But it doesn't really matter, because by the time you get there you're just anxious for it to be over.

The art by Juan Jose Ryp isn't bad, but the accent here is on gore and filth - not really my thing, so he doesn't get much of a chance to make a good impression. The action seems jumbled and too many times I wondered, "What's going on here?" In one scene I thought, is Wolverine being electrocuted or pelted with rats?

Obviously, this isn't my kind of comic. I had to laugh at the oversized warning on the cover, "Parental Advisory! Not for Kids!" Yeah, that'll stop kids from picking this up.

You know, my dislike for this comic isn't really connected to the gore - it didn't bother me in the video game because it fit the story. But here, there's no real story - just an attempt to shock (or gross out) the reader with graphic violence.

Waste of time and money. Stick with the game.

Grade: D

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