Hey, everyone, jrpbsp here… I will be trying to do two reviews this week but starting with the major title ‘Wolverine: Weapon X’. Hope you enjoy it.

Wolverine: Weapon X #9 (preview)
Writer: Jason Aaron
Art: Yannick Paquette

SPOILERS BELOW…

RECAP: The issue opens with Wolverine showing up at Melita’s doorway, in the middle of the night, covered in blood. He falls into her arms obviously devastated. A day before, we see Melita talking to Nightcrawler and Psylocke and giving them information on Wolverine’s status and whereabouts. Betsy wonders what their connection is and why Logan would have reached out to Melita rather then the X-Men.

Kurt teleports them to Dunwich, right into the room with the brain machine. Nightcrawler wants to destroy it but Psylocke warns that could render  everyone within nine miles completely insane. She is going to need to defuse it carefully.

Meanwhile the inmates are slaughtering the mafia goons that showed up at the asylum. Logan is still under the effects of the machine and does not know what to do but as Betsy takes it apart, he remembers who he wants to kill. He hunts down Dr. Rot and guts him. Rot’s nurse attacks but the drug she uses does not do much.

Rot attempts to strangle Logan with his own intestines but gets knocked away. Rot then stabs Wolverine in both eyes with hypodermic needles  and the nurse hits him with a fire extinguisher. Logan cuts through it and frees his eyes but Dr. Rot has already bandaged himself and has a giant nut cracker which he uses to remove the brain from one of the surviving patients’ heads.

Logan pursues but Rottwell has enough time to rig up an insanity bomb with the brain and triggers it. Psylocke and Kurt recover after thirty seconds and decide not to talk about whatever they may have done while out of their heads.

We return to Logan at Melita’s and see her sleeping while Logan tries to compose himself. Dr. Rot and the nurse are in an R.V. where she is attempting to stitch together his belly. While she works, Rot calls Logan and speaks a trigger word that makes Logan go blank. Forty-five minutes later, Melita wakes up and finds Wolverine with blood on his hands. He remembers nothing but outside there is a man with his head sliced open and the brain missing.

MY TAKE: This is a decent conclusion for the Dunwich arc although I did have some issues with it. I was glad to see Nightcrawler and Psylocke coming to aid their friend although they are pretty underused. Betsy does take down the brain machine but I would have liked to see Kurt do a bit more with stopping the killing that was going on in the asylum.

The issue had some really good action and some very interesting and unique situations. The brain nut cracker was a great visual in particular. I am not sure about having Wolverine being so easy to control with a trigger phrase but it does have some intriguing potential for the future. We have seen Logan being used as a weapon before but never by such a complete lunatic. I have to wonder why the doctor bothered to fight him though, rather then just freeze him in place.

It does a good job at wrapping up the story and giving us a satisfying conclusion to the plot. The bad guy escapes to plague Logan again, with the pretty interesting nurse at his side, and the Dunwich sanatorium is gone. It gives a pretty reasonable explanation to Wolverine and Melita’s relationship moving to the next level and advances the characterization of Melita in general.

I was not a fan of Rot’s portrayal here however. I do think he has potential and it would have been a waste to kill him off, however you do not have your guts pulled out and survive. While it is certainly possible he is more then human, if he could heal there would be no need to be stitched up later. He also seemed to have some sort of unusual speed considering that he builds a brain bomb in a few seconds and escapes the huge building in thirty with his intestines around his knees. It was unlikely enough to pull me out of the story.

My biggest complaint is once again Logan’s characterization. He has been through so much worse then this incident and yet he does not even clean himself up before staggering to the door of a girl he has only known a few weeks? It does not make sense for him to break down at all let alone go to her for comfort. Especially considering how much of an effect it had on him afterward. He has been shown to be brainwashed into murdering friends with less after effects. Even more, I really wonder why Wolverine did not track Rot down considering the blood trail he had to be leaving.

In the end though it was a good read but it just had a lot of plot holes to me. I do not expect everything to be explained to me in an issue but I do like to have it be a bit more logical. I enjoy the idea of a Joker-esque villain for Logan but it is hard for any normal human to stand up to someone like Wolverine. When you have to make up explanations for things, it is a much less interesting story. Still it is nice to see something different for Wolverine and I am definitely looking forward to the next issue where the focus will be on Logan’s love life.

Thanks for reading my review for Wolverine Files. I will be keeping to this format for the most part but please keep the comments coming and I will see everyone again next time.