Hunt for Wolverine #1
Creators of “Secrets and Lives”: Charles Soule, David Marquez, Rachelle Rosenberg
Creators of “Hunter’s Pride”: Charles Soule, Paulo Siquiera, Walden Wong, Ruth Redmond
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Review by Greg Brothers
Wolverine has been a mainstay within the Marvel Universe for quite a while. Because of his popularity, Marvel had
a bit of a Wolverine problem. Every writer wanted him in their book knowing that readers would pick up the book simple because Wolverine was in it. With that popularity, his healing factor became more and more powerful. Instead of things like healing cuts and bullet holes, now Wolverine was literally being blown up, only to recover within a few panels. So, what do you do with a character who cannot be killed? You kill him of course.
So, in 2014 Death of Wolverine took Wolverine, who was lacking his healing factor, and encased him in Adamantium. However, four years is a long time to have one of your most popular characters as a statue that only his friends know the location of. So, with 2018 here, Charles Soule has been asked to bring back that same character that he killed off four years ago.
Hunt for Wolverine #1 is made up of two stories. The first “Secrets and Lives” focuses on the well-known cyborg enemy of Wolverine, the Reavers, searching for his body. Seems the Reavers have been a little down on their luck, and they know getting Wolverine’s body would be a big payday for them. Unfortunately for them, the X-Men had security measures in place to alert them if someone got to close to Wolverine’s final resting place. “Hunter’s Pryde” picks right up with where “Secrets and Lives” ends. Wolverine’s body is missing. Kitty Pryde feels guilty and is worried about who has the body and what they might plan to do with it. Kitty goes around asking some of the heavy hitters within the X-Men and the Marvel Universe for help in tracking down the person or persons responsible for Wolverine’s disappearance.
So, let’s get this out of the way first. Both parts of Hunt for Wolverine are done very well. Both advance the story of Wolverine very well. If you are a fan of Wolverine, then you will not be able to keep yourself from smiling from ear to ear at some of the panels. “Secrets and Lives” is an especially touching story. With Kitty Pryde being the narrator and telling the story of the Reavers trying to steal Wolverine’s body is touching. Even with only Kitty in the panels, the connections that the characters have is obvious. The way that the team works together hearkens back to some of the classic adventures during the prime of the X-men stories. Action, humor, and the witty banter hit all the right notes. If you are a longtime fan of the X-men franchise, you might even find yourself getting a bit misty eyed looking at some of the panels.
“Hunter’s Pryde” has a lot of the same feeling as the first story when it comes to classic interactions. The banter between Kitty and Tony Stark is particularly humorous as Tony finds out he was not the first non-X-Man to get a call. The story is a little weaker in the second story. That is a bit understandable as the story is meant to serve as the launching point for the four-part limited series. That said, they do an excellent job raising intrigue for each issues of the series and the teams that will be involved.
While they are different art teams for the two stories, both teams take on the Marvel style and execute it well. Characters are drawn with sharp and clean lines. Characters are easy to recognize. Colors pop through both stories. The use of shadows within the first story helps to hide the identity of a couple of characters to the point where there is a plausible deniability of their actual reveal. Marquez specifically does an excellent job with the action panels as he encourages readers’ eyes to the right spot.
Verdict: Buy it.
Hunt for Wolverine #1 really helps to highlight how important Wolverine is to the Marvel Universe, even when he is not among the living. I will admit that I was afraid that the series would just be a cash grab to bring back Wolverine. However, if this issue is any indication of how the rest of the series is going to go, then I am all in.
