Title: Hunt For Wolverine: Claws Of A Killer #1
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Mariko Tamaki
Artist: Butch Guice
Release: May 16, 2018
Price: $3.99
“As word spreads that Wolverine may have returned from the grave, a handful of his greatest adversaries come together to track him down and put him back there.”
I feel bad for serious comic book fans. The amount of money people have to spend to get a complete story in one of these crossover events is staggering at times, made worse when most of the tie-ins do nothing to advance the main story that’s been sold to us.
Hunt For Wolverine: Claws Of A Killer #1 is another book where a team comes together to search for Wolverine. And yet again there is very little Wolverine (only a few panels) with the rest of the story pretty much doing its own thing. Again, this is another case where removing the Wolverine event from the book would make for a far more interesting title.
We are now over a month in and we are still setting up teams to track down Logan, and with most of these tie-ins being only a handful of issues each, most are already padding the hell out of the story. Hunt For Wolverine: Claws Of A Killer #1 is no different, but at the very least it has the most interesting story of the lot so far.
The problem is that the story takes this team of Logan’s biggest enemies and throws them into a cliché zombie story. I thought we were beyond this, but like I said earlier, this event needs a lot of padding. What we get is Daken, Lady Deathstrike and Sabertooth looking coming together (the bulk of the book takes place in a diner) to do a lot of talking.
They rehash what we already know and even recall other books in the event, but the comic simply doesn’t move anything forward. Heck, it may be the least story-relevant book in the event so far. Like the others, the intro is a flashback (flash-sideways?) showing our potential Wolverine making a mess of things.
The crew track down Logan’s last location (where the intro took place) and proceed to do nothing but take a pee break. The only real action and thing of interest comes from the zombies that the team run across. Apparently, Logan killed everyone in town and after activating some MacGuffin they turned into The Walking Dead (TM).
Hunt For Wolverine: Claws Of A Killer #1 just feels like a Marvel mandate to stick things people think are cool into a book to fill space and stretch this event. Since this arc is now dealing with zombies, I feel they are going to drop the Wolverine aspect until right at the end. In fact, if this wasn’t a tie-in it would probably make for a good story. So it’s not a good sign when the event becomes a hindrance to a story.
Mariko Tamaki does a fair enough job with the story, even if nothing much happens. The characters are an interesting lot with their connection to Logan, but I fear that they won’t accomplish much in this arc. At the very least we get an interesting end with Daken seemingly having his healing factor negated after a nasty encounter with said zombies.
That said, I once again can’t really recommend this book if you want any sort of answers, or are looking for the plot to be moved forward. But if you want what might be a neat little zombie story in 2018, then you might get some joy from this as it develops.
“Hunt For Wolverine: Claws Of A Killer #1 is a zombie mini-series with only a tangential connection to Wolverine.”
Final Score:
2/5
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