**WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD FOR X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #3**
Ooh, what a cover! I hope you can see that properly in the title image but the background is the golden/black Wolverine and the foreground is a layover of Daken, X-23, and Scout. We open with X-23 and Scout in the forest with a lovely drawn waterfall backdrop. Scout’s incessant chatter is disturbing Laura. Following the events of the last issue and encounter with the techno/golden and black Wolverine, Xavier calls to X-23 and projects his image to show her the golden/black Wolverine attack from X Deaths of Wolverine #2. They don’t know who it is but they need her help.
California now and we’re in an auditorium where a tech entrepreneur of sorts, Arnad Chaklandar, is being warned not to take the stage—he’s been targeted. Outside, a police car comes screaming along and crashes through the wall. It’s none other than the wolverine who stole the police vehicle. “Hands up!” warn the police snikt “or how about hands down?” Classic.
We then get a Moira voice-over as Wolverine goes on the attack. She reveals the Phalanx-patterned Wolverine as an assassin from the future to wipe her out. Within the thought bubbles, Moira explains how she has been pitted against a foe in order to get ahead and escape the trouble she is in (potentially ending the mutant race) and now she has the entrepreneur, let’s call him Mr. Chak, as a hostage. Her message to Mr. Chak is a bit vague, and she details everything to Arnad including who she is, Krakoa, and now somehow he is going to help get rid of the Omega Wolverine hunting them both.
Slip back to the auditorium and Phalanx Wolverine is wiping the floor with bodyguards but then out of nowhere comes X-23. The art here really jumps from the page and throws you into the action. Logan says he won’t hesitate to kill Laura but then Daken appears and the fight continues. Daken thought it was an imitation of Logan but by the speech, fighting style, and smell he knows he is the real deal.
And after the intense altercation, Daken asks the question, “it’s really you, isn’t it, Dad?” This question provides the opening for the first slice of humanity we have seen from this black and golden Wolverine. He knows how each of them dies. Then he collapses. Is he hurt? No, worse. He’s sick.
Back with Moira and Mr. Chak, they’re in his tech room with a plan. He is going to build a machine that allows for mental upload, providing Moira with her eleventh life. Arnab Chak also builds Moira a cyborg-style arm replacement. They are going to create some sort of augmented intelligence to keep mutantkind in check. An interruption by a black screen with a quote from Moira: “Forever is where I live. I tried to take you all with me. You chose not to come.”
In the final pages, we are transported to the future, a Millenium from the present, to The Preserve. Here, Wolverine reveals himself as the last living mutant and he emerges to speak to someone who knows too much. It’s Moira. She attacks Logan to kill the last mutant in an amazing sweeping shot of electrical pulsation juxtaposed against their silhouettes. It was the end of one story [insert flashback to present Wolverine and friends] but the beginning of another.
As I’ve been saying all along, this series has been really heavily focused on mystery. What’s Moira doing? Who is this assassin-Wolverine? What’s Mystique doing? And slowly, we’re getting some answers. Although we don’t know yet why Moira is killing mutants, I have confidence this answer will be revealed in the two coming issues.
I liked this much better than the previous issues. The story moved along a lot quicker. And, despite some failings where there is assumed knowledge or details glazed over, the comic as a whole, works a lot better and smoother, i.e. the setting jumps weren’t as jarring. In terms of artwork, this issue of X Deaths of Wolverine is striking. The action scenes have the detail you would not expect and my favorite page, the last one, was so awe-inspiring that it made me want to grab a pencil and start drawing. Really, really impressed here—I’m speechless. I am without speech.
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