Ultimate Comics: Wolverine #3 Review

I mentioned in my review of Wolverine and the X-Men #27AU this week that at some point I resent Wolverine always being positioned as the center of the X-Men universe. Unfortunately, that sort of comes with the territory in the Ultimate Universe now that Wolverine has been established as Mutant Zero. The second issue of Ultimate Comics: Wolverine seemed to go a little too far by suggesting that Wolverine was actually the father of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. But issue #3 reveals the actual, less forced, and more sensible family tie. The series improves markedly in this penultimate chapter now that many of the pieces of the Project: Mothervine conspiracy have fallen into place.

As Cullen Bunn sheds more light on the ties between Wolverine, Magda, and their various children, the true standout player in the series becomes Quicksilver. Bunn writes what might be the strongest interpretation of Ultimate Quicksilver to date. He's cunning, suave, and scarily creepy at times. Ultimate writers seem to have completely given up on portraying Pietro in a heroic light, and that seems to be for the best. The only downside to Pietro's rise is that it sometimes comes at the expense of Jimmy. Jimmy doesn't do much but stand around and weakly react to Pietro's actions, which pretty well diminishes the effect of the final page.

Another problem the book faces now is the fact that Bunn still has so much to resolve in the fourth and final issue. In a way that's a good thing, as the Project: Mothervine mystery has really picked up and grown more interesting in this chapter. But it's going to be a challenge for Bunn to wrap up his various loose threads, especially considering how the series is still divided between past and present time periods.

David Messina's artwork improves a bit over the previous issue as well. Most notably, his figures don't display the same obvious attempts at photo-referencing that really tore down certain panels in issue #2. The sequence involving a mutant outburst in a shopping mall stands out as Messina's strongest storytelling to date on the series. However, there are a number of panels towards the end that seem overly cramped.

Ultimate Comics: Wolverine could have turned out to be just one more quick, dirty attempt to tap into the pre-movie buzz. Instead, the creative team have crafted a story that legitimately adds to the mythology of the Ultimate Universe.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

Source : ign[dot]com