Writing: Larry Hama
Art: Val Semeiks
What Went Down: Wolverine starts the issue with a splash page (no pun intended) of him being hosed down. Well, he’s not entering a wet t-shirt contest. He’s actually getting ready to run into a burning building to rescue a little boy. When Wolverine jumps off the ladder to save him, the boy runs back into the fire to save his teddy bear. The roof starts to collapse, so Wolverine and the boy can’t make it out the way he entered. To calm the boy named Sean, Wolverine puts his mask on him to convince him that he’s a super hero and can’t die.
Elektra’s sensei Stick just happens to show up. Since he is blind, he has no problems leading Wolverine through the smoke. The escape involves having Wolverine leap through a huge wall of flames. After healing from some horrible burns, Wolverine runs back into the building to try to save Stick. He is thanked with a crack on the head.
Stick fights Wolverine on the roof of the burning building. Wolverine reveals that he knows who Stick is and that Stick should be dead. Stick then goes through a whole explanation about how Wolverine hasn’t been the same since he lost the adamantium and how he needs to pull himself together. As the roof collapses, Stick points to an area in the smoke and tells Wolverine that he’ll survive if he jumps there. The Human Torch appears at the end telling Wolverine to meet them at Four Freedoms Plaza for the final battle with Onslaught.
How It Was: Once again we have another Onslaught issue that is not about Onslaught. And to tell you the truth, that’s fine at this point since nobody is allowed to progress the story anyways. Instead we have our hero saving some civilians caught up in the destruction. Ignoring that the firemen’s trucks shouldn’t be working after the EMP, this issue has a perfectly fine set up. It’s nice to see Wolverine interact with the small child, and there is a kind of cute part where the victims he saves can’t remember his name. All fine and very competent. On the other hand, it does feel a little generic, as in you could take out Wolverine and put any other Marvel hero in this story and it would still work.
Stick’s appearance comes out of nowhere, especially due to the fact that he’s supposed to be dead. I understand Elektra, his disciple, is supposed to be helping Logan through his recent changes, but Stick’s own help feels redundant. What makes it worse is that Stick is kind of a jerk to Wolverine after he goes back to help the old man, and all the advice he gives to Wolverine is stuff that we already know he needs to do at this point. All I can say is that I really don’t care about Stick at all and he feels so out of place here. Wolverine is out doing what he should be doing, there’s no real need to do the chastising mentor bit right now. At least Wolverine’s speech patterns are back to normal.
It’s not bad, it just feels like Hama is stalling until he can get back to his own storylines. The appearance by the Human Torch at the end serves only as a reminder of how little is going on at this point as all the heroes are pretty much just gathering for the final issue.
C-
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