Wolverine: Origins reaches its first anniversary issue - well, 25 is kind of a round number, isn't it? - with the final part of "The Deep End."

This, you'll recall, is the five-part story largely devoted to Wolverine and Deadpool fighting one another.  With the final part, it finally ties into Way's wider story, as Daken shows up to hijack the fight for himself.  So Deadpool fights Daken for half an issue, and then Wolverine's plan pays off, as it should.

Now, to give credit where it's due, this is a pretty decent issue.  Deadpool and Daken work reasonably well together, as Wade makes a decent comedy foil for him.  And the moment where Wolverine's scheme is revealed is very well done, tying together a bunch of stray plot threads, and getting across how it all works without lapsing into clunky exposition.  I can't say it actually makes me any more interested in Way's overall storyline - but as an exercise in pulling the threads together, he does it well.

The real problem with this story has been the languid pacing of the arc as a whole.  The book has taken too long to get to this point.  But having got here, they made it work.

In fact, this issue would normally be a B+.  It's only an odd piece of packaging that brings down the rating.  Marvel have added a dollar to the price, and thrown in a reprint of the whole of New Mutants #98, Deadpool's first appearance.  If you're going to reprint that story, I'd have thought Deadpool #1 would be a better place to do so.  But it's a Rob Liefeld story from 1991, most of which is taken up with other subplots, so frankly it's not really worth running on its own.  And I find it very hard to imagine that any fans of the slow-paced, deliberate storytelling in Wolverine: Origins will be particularly interested in Liefeld's hyperdayglo randomness.

So, the issue is padded out with an irrelevant story that doesn't work in isolation, and which is a terrible fit with the lead strip.  And for that, they're charging us more.  You've got to mark the book down for that, really, haven't you?  But the main story itself, well, it's not bad at all.

Rating: B

back | continue