Story Line: One Shot
Date: June 11th 2008
Price: $3.99
Writer: Charlie Huston and Jason Aaron
Artist: Jefte Palo and Werther Dell’Edera

Synopsis: There will be blood. Gallons of it. Because Cyclops needs only one scalpel for a surgical strike mission and Logan’s the ideal man for the job.  Tonight, Wolverine flies solo—dressed in black and operating off the grid.  And when the night is through, there will be mountains of corpses, and no one to answer to.  What could be better?  PLUS, this one-shot features a solo Warpath story, as he learns what it really means to go home again.

Opinion: Fresh off the heels of an X-Force issue the week before, the timing on this comic couldn’t have been any better.  With 48 pages of pure badass-ery and a fair price to boot; I am happy I bought this book.  It gave some writers and artists a chance to shine too.  There were a couple things I didn’t like but nothing that would push me over to disliking the book, just pure taste when it came to the writers’ storytelling.

Read my full review after the jump.

This one-shot was seriously fun to read.  Yeah, it featured Wolverine and that’s always cliche, but it tied in well with the ongoing series very elegantly.  The Warpath backup story was interesting as well, and more focused on character development.  All in all a very good read.  The first story was relevant and it helped to outline some of the ongoing plot in the recently launched X-Force title.  The second story wasn’t quite as connected, but it did do a good job of defining Warpath.

In the first story, we see Wolverine being dispatched to foil a trap sprung by a member of the Purifiers who tricked Cerebro into tagging one of them as a mutant, so the X-Men would be drawn into a trap and a bunch of crazed Purifiers would swoop down upon them and kill all of them.  Appaarently they underestimate the X-Men, as their plan has holes big enough for Juggernaut to lie down and take a nap in and Cyclops sends Wolverine to retrieve the device that fools Cerebro.  What ensues is pretty much an old-school slaughter fest.  Much like the one shots from the late 80’s to early 90’s, just replace the ninjas with Purifiers and there you have it.  The Wolverine-only narration is fun and something I haven’t seen in a while.  The one thing I didn’t like about this short story is the emphasis on smoking, it was definately an interesting device for the plot, and it did work well - but I think I am just irritated by Joe Q.’s comic-wide ban on smoking.  I think it’s silly in a book like this one.  I can see the merit, but I don’t think I can ever get used to Wolverine not chomping on a cigar.

The second story is narrated by and features Warpath.  It wraps itself up perfectly in a nice little package, and we learn a lot about this warrior and what makes him tick.  Not necessary to much other than getting to know one of the cooler characters to be brought back to the X books in a while.

I think this book was a great price for what you get and I’d recommend it - especially if you miss the old school Wolverine solo stories.  The art’s a little messy - but so is the subject matter.  I think it suited the book just fine.

Oh yeah, and the Kittie Pride nod was pretty classy too.

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