Wolverine and the X-Men #34 – Review

By: Jason Aaron (writer), Nick Bradshaw (pencils), Walden Wong (inks), Laura Martin (colorist)

The Story: Who doesn’t love a good villainous breakdown?

The Review: Though the story continues to crawl along at a snail’s pace, each issue of Jason Aaron’s Hellfire Saga has been more engaging than the last. This penultimate issue is no exception and longtime readers of the odd-ball series will be happy to see that a seemingly satisfying end is in sight for this chapter in the tale.

This issue isn’t as cohesive as the last, amounting to little more than a series of brief snapshots from the siege of Hellfire Academy, but Aaron’s character work keeps it from suffering too much for it.

The action is big and impressive, but not fully realized. If you’ve ever dreamed of seeing Krakoa and a giant ice-Voltron fight off an army of living volcanos, you’ll see it here, however, the experience is distinctly two-dimensional. With so many battles to jump to and characters to revisit, there’s not time to give us more than single moments of combat.

The saving grace of this issue is Kade Kilgore. While the  Black King of the new Hellfire Club has been a polarizing figure, I think that most will agree that ignoble defeat suits him better than smug threats and easy victories. Kilgore’s been built up into such a loathsome schemer that it’s great fun to watch the house that he built come tumbling down. But, then again, there is one more issue and I’m pretty excited to see it, having read the end of this one.