Wolverine: Weapon X #15 – Review

by Jason Aaron (writer), Ron Garney (pencils), Jason Keith & Matt Milla (colors), and Cory Petit (letters)

The Story: Can a Deathlok find salvation?

What’s Good: Without a doubt, the main Deathlok focused upon last month is the strongest point of this issue, as he takes center-stage yet again.  He makes for an unlikely protagonist, but a compelling one, as Aaron turns the tables by making the human inside the cyborg the sociopathic monster, while the AI is the empathetic side, showing an interest in humanity and emotion.  In the end, it’s a clever move by Aaron, as he makes the machine component of the Deathlok more human than the actual human component.  The end result is a robot that’s easy to root for and has allied itself with humanity, and as we learned from Terminator 2, that’s badass.

Much of this is accomplished through a fantastic use of textboxes, which act almost as parallel thought bubbles, or even conversations between the AI and the killer inside the Deathlok.  The slow, coming to consciousness for the AI is elegantly done and its eventual superseding of the killer’s mind feels appropriately momentous.  Once the AI is firmly in control, Aaron does a great job in making those textboxes feel claustrophobic and trapping, as the killer’s dialogue goes totally ignored, those textboxes become a kind of prison where the character is locked away.

Wolverine: Weapon X #14 – Review

by Jason Aaron (writer), Ron Garney (pencils), Jason Keith & Matt Milla (colors), and Cory Petit (letters)

The Story: We peek into the mind of the most successful Deathlok and his creation before Miranda and her commandos attempt to complete their desperate sabotage mission.

What’s Good: Opening with an intense monologue and moving on to depraved narration throughout, Aaron does a fantastic job with the voice of the serial killer turned Deathlok who takes center stage for much of the issue.  I’ve always appreciated it when a writer puts so much into what would otherwise be an incidental character.  The murderer’s voice feels authentic and very unsettling.  There’s also a definite cool factor to seeing what thought processes rest behind the automaton behaviour and dialogue we’ve been getting from the Deathloks thus far and it’s wonderfully horrific to learn that what lurks behind that cold droning is something very, very evil.  It imbues the Deathloks with a very nice sense of internal conflict and it’s sickeningly enjoyable to see how for a serial killer, being a Deathlok is like a video game.

Aaron shows us that what hides beneath the surface is often far more disturbing than what we can see, even if what we can see is violent and awful enough already.  It puts the Deathloks into a whole different light, making them even more menacing when we aren’t privy to the narration, now that we know what’s going on behind those dead eyes and robotic statements.

There are other little demonstrations of Aaron’s twisted imagination as well.  The machine the rebels in the future use to convey their psychic messages to the present day Miranda is guaranteed to give rise to plenty of ghoulish grins.  Meanwhile, the book’s ending is a wonderful twist in that it involves present-day Miranda turning the tables on the Deathloks by effectively using their own tactic against them; the most innocent character thus far looks to get just as brutal as the Deathloks themselves.  Then there’s the implied identity of the rebels’ “general,” which looks to be another inversion.

Garney’s art is a joy on this title, as it has been throughout.  The man is clearly made for a Wolverine book, particularly one as gritty as this.  His Deathloks continue to look great and his facial expressions are expertly done.

Wolverine: Weapon X #13 – Review

by Jason Aaron (writer), Ron Garney (pencils), Jason Keith (colors), and Cory Petit (letters)

The Story: The New Avengers get involved as Cap and Logan confront the inventor of the Deathloks.

What’s Good: Going into this issue, I was not overly thrilled with the idea of Aaron bringing in the New Avengers.  I liked his inclusion of Captain America, but bringing in a whole team, I feared, would dilute the comic.  What I didn’t count on, however, was the fact that Aaron writes an awesome Spider-Man.

His Spider-Man is absolutely hilarious.  His banter is awesome and his constant ribbing of the Thing is equally riotous.  But Aaron’s Spider-Man’s wit is so sharp that it borders on the metatextual.  For instance, his complaints regarding the fact that characters from the future always come from a dystopian wasteland, or his mocking of the sheer number of catch-phrases that the Thing has are both wonderfully done.  When Aaron writes Spider-Man talking and bantering exactly like the Thing, it’s utter genius and a hilarious statement on the character.

Then, not done yet with character, Aaron presents us with a grizzled, commando Spidey of the future who is a tragic shadow of his present-day go-getter.  Aaron’s Spidey, so madcap and hilarious in his present day version, finds himself unable to tell a joke or find humor in the future.  This alone speaks volumes about the darkness of his environment and in retrospect, is chilling.

Beyond this, what we get from Aaron is basically a smattering of coolness.  We get a headless Deathlok flailing about and punching through a guy’s chest.  We get a surprising callback to Aaron’s Wolverine: the List one-shot.   Then there’s a demoted mad scientist who makes cyborgs from roadkill, who serves as a surprising source for comedy (“Take care….of my possums…”).

Wolverine: Weapon X #12 – Review

by Jason Aaron (writer), Ron Garney (art), Jason Keith (colors), and Cory Petit (letters)

The Story: Logan and Bucky Barnes battle Deathloks to save the future.

What’s Good: It was clear last issue and it’s even more clear this issue: Jason Aaron loves the old Terminator movies.  The influences run throughout, and given that those movies are two of the greatest science fiction films of all time, that’s far from a bad thing.  We have the dystopian near future with a hunted group of underground rebels, and when one character discusses the Deathloks’ plan of coming to the present to snuff out the future leader of the rebellion, well, it’s just all kinds of cool.  The idea of taking a classic plot like that of Terminator and tossing it into the Marvel Universe and involving Wolverine as a kind of wildcard is just total genius.  It shouldn’t work, but it does, and it’s all kinds of fun.  If you have any love for the Terminator films, it’s hard not to totally geek out.