Wolverine MAX 15, Marvel Knights Hulk 2, Night of the Living Deadpool 1

Wolverine MAX 15
Starr (w) and Ruiz (a) and Brown (c)

Logan searches the house of the people he just killed trying to defend for a means to start his new life. He finds a little bit of money, showers, and takes some new clothes with him back to Vegas where he gambles the money into a good amount more money. Before he can take off, though, he's drugged and brought to Mickey Gold's penthouse again and put in an adamantium cage. Gold comes in and soliloquizes about who Wolverine is and a little about his past (apparently he was hunted by a Frank Castle in a weird plot twist that will go nowhere as this is the last issue) before revealing that he was the one who paid for Wolverine's adamantium claws and that he also put adamantium claws into himself after finding out Wolverine was a disappointment (guys, this doesn't make any sense. Gold himself admits to not having a healing factor. How would he make his bones the hardest metal ever without a healing factor? Okay, I run a comics review blog, there's no need to call me a nerd for that statement specifically). They fight to the death over Gold's dead son and Wolverine eventually wins out. He also kills the security guards who come to assist Gold and he gets out of town. His last stop before movie on to a new life is to some train tracks, where he sticks his arms out to be run over by a coming train, hoping that his claws won't regrow next time.

I continue to not be sad about this book ending as it still disappoints more than anything else. Frankly, I think this and SAVAGE WOLVERINE should probably be one book, the all-the-gore-you-could-want Wolverine title. A friend of mine was talking with me a couple years ago about the brief introduction of Wolverine to Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and how excited that friend was to see Wolverine disembowel a villain on the show (it's shown through a shadow on the show to avoid showing too much gore but it's very clear how violent Wolverine is in the moment). Not because my friend loves grisly deaths but because that's what Wolverine does and, if I may be so bold, is the best at doing. He doesn't typically do that much in a standalone WOLVERINE series because they want to show him with heart and with a moral center that hates doing the violent things he does, which is totally fine. But if you're going to make a book about Wolverine that promises a return-to-basics Wolverine or if you're making a book that exists in order to show gore and sex and you have the ability to use Wolverine, you should be having a blast. This book was never having a blast. SAVAGE WOLVERINE seems like it often has more fun than this one but can't go as far and this one never has the fun it feels like it should. I don't know. Anyway, not upset this one's ending (though I will sincerely miss the monthly awesome Jock cover). It feels like it was meant to do something different and just never got around to it. Speaking of...

Marvel Knights Hulk 2
Keatinge (w) and Kowalski (a) and Filardi (c)

The two gamma-infused super soldiers detonated on Banner and took down much of a city block to do it. SHIELD officer Molly Fitzgerald is sent to collect Banner from the French authorities holding him but doesn't get there before Banner's stolen away by the very people who were trying to capture him anyway. They're apparently an off-shoot of AIM, led by a High Commander Harrow, intent on permanently separating from AIM. To do that, though, comes at the cost of making AIM an enemy and, in that respect, Harrow and her off-shoot are a bit outgunned. Harrow wants Hulk on her side but can't get Banner to remember anything nor to actually Hulk out. She injects him with the same serum the super soldiers had that will hopefully enhance his Hulk powers and make him loyal to her. Eventually all of the torture and everything else works and he Hulks out, possibly remembering who he is in the process, but the serum works as well so after he defeats the attacking AIM forces, he bows to Harrow.

There are three MARVEL KNIGHTS series currently running in the Marvel Universe, between this, MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN, and MARVEL KNIGHTS X-MEN. Each book seems to mix some sort of interesting new self-involved story with a really interesting and different art style that might not work thrust into the mainstream series but that really differentiates itself from anything else out there. Except, I would say, MARVEL KNIGHTS HULK. MARVEL KNIGHTS HULK tells a story where Banner has amnesia (which is, I suppose, maybe a new-ish idea but it's mistaking the idea that we really care about Banner and, since by issue two we've seen Hulk, the stakes are quickly lowered on that front) and Hulk is controlled by someone else, which is kind of a running theme for Hulk books. Not that it happens all the time, but that it happens enough (particularly if you've ever read just about anything in the Ultimate Universe). Also, the art is fine but it doesn't stand out in any way from other books on the market, particularly not in the same way that Marco Rudy's amazing MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN art flows around a page or the way that Brahm Revel's pastel-like art creates a tone for MARVEL KNIGHTS X-MEN. This one just kind of is. I don't think it's an awful story or something particularly poorly written, I'm just not that engaged by it and I'm finding it hard to see why this is in the MARVEL KNIGHTS line. Maybe I would be more lenient on it if it was called "HULK: THAT TIME HE HAD AMNESIA" or something like that but putting it in the MK line means that it has a sort of implied standard to live up to and I don't think it's doing that.

Night of the Living Deadpool 1
Bunn (w) and Rosanas (a and c)

Deadpool awakens after a food coma to find the world almost empty but for the zombies roaming every corner. Despite the papers flying around with headlines like "Dead Walk!" and "Dead Rising From the Grave!" and the hints he may have seen in the previous few weeks (of which there are plenty), it takes Deadpool actually running into a zombie and attracting a horde to himself when he fires a gun to realize that maybe there are such thing as zombies. He's ready to start slicing and dicing as he's surrounded on all sides before a human tells him to duck and promptly mows down a path of zombies so Deadpool can jump into their truck. They tell him they're headed to a potential army outpost that's hopefully still okay (assuming the contact they have with them can live that long) and inform him that the virus spread remarkably quickly, quickly enough that he missed it in the couple of days he was asleep in a chimichanga restaurant. Also, all the other heroes are apparently dead.

Hope you're not tired of zombie stories because HERE'S ANOTHER ONE. There are parts of this one that make it enjoyable still and if you're a zombie fan, likely you're going to want to flock to this. This one spends a lot of time establishing the zombie-run world (these zombies are a bit different as they still seem to have a human consciousness trying to reach out but unable to actually fight their body from attacking) and showing Deadpool ignoring the signs of the virus as it was happening. It's hard not to compare this one to THE WALKING DEAD, the major zombie series in comics and now in other media. For starters, the zombie world is all black and white (except for Deadpool), like THE WALKING DEAD comics. Even Deadpool waking up from a "coma" and finding himself in the middle of a city overrun and saved by a group of other survivors harkens back to TWD (though it's not unique in that respect). Still, the book obviously won't continue to be exactly the same as TWD features a sheriff with a complex history and a family to look after as its protagonist and this one features Deadpool. It's a pretty book (though I couldn't help wondering if I'd feel that way if it weren't black and white with splashes of Deadpool color) and, I mean, it's a zombie story, so you probably already know a lot about it, right?