Wolverine #27 Review & Analysis

Issue #27 of Saladin Ahmed’s Wolverine is out and features Logan alongside the Savage Champions–his multiversal counterparts–going up against Adamantine. As a refresher, Adamantine is the entity that is the manifestation of metal itself, and is waging war against the Savage Champions.

Watch out, bub. Spoilers ahead.

Initially, the squad is overwhelmed by the power and versatility of Adamantine’s physical manifestation. Victory is eventually captured for the Wolverines when Logan perseveres through sheer willpower. It helps the Savage Champions hold on long enough to mystically transfer him strength (kind of like a Spirit Bomb from Dragon Ball Z), allowing him to scratch alongside the manifestation until he finds a weak spot. He cuts it open, and the fight is over. 

Willpower is a commonly used trope in Logan’s story, although not as common as other ones. However, I don’t think this usage of the willpower trope had enough emotional substance to really hit home for Logan. The main reason is because there’s no real stakes. 

We don’t know these random Wolverines well enough to care about them. They’re mostly just solid character foils, and give weight to Logan’s arc, but not their own. 

For example, refusing to become an animal is one of the core aspects/discussions around Logan’s character. One of the other Wolverines is Boneclaw, a Beast-like Logan who still is a protector with a kind heart, despite the appearance and inability to speak a human language. He’s an animal, but only in name. He doesn’t follow the characteristics that come with one. The same is true for our Logan. 

It works, but the dialogue surrounding Boneclaw didn’t do enough to make me feel for his own character. The same is true for the other Savage Champions, and better character dialogue for them would’ve emotionally paid off when all the Wolverines were close to death during the battle’s climax. 

On the topic of conveyed emotion, many of the attempted bridges at introspection and character emotion don’t hit home for me. A reason is because of the internal dialogue. Logan saying things like “The grimy depths of my miserable excuse for a soul” doesn’t sound like something Logan would say. For starters, it’s too wordy for Wolverine, who’s a king of delivering one-liners with depth. Secondly, Logan has dry humor, but this felt too serious instead of jokey to me.

Additionally, a lot of these low self-esteem lines usually arrive in situations where Logan’s feeling down about himself. In this situation, he was triumphing. It’s hard to make a line like that flow well in general unless he’s joking with a friend, but this time it’s internal. Delivering this line becomes harder when it doesn’t work considering the context.

I feel the same way at the end when he’s transported back home. He says, verbatim, that the X-Men care about him because they’re his friends, but also because he’s“An unkillable bastard that gets the job done”.

Again, it’s too wordy. But also, that would be something I could imagine him saying when he first met the X-Men. Now, with decades and decades of character relationships and friendships, I feel Logan knows he’s valued by the X-Men beyond his fighting ability. Even if he could no longer fight or was no longer unkillable, they’d still have love for him.

Previous issues in this same run feature Nightcrawler coming to check on Logan. It ends with him taking Logan on a trip to the beach just to cheer him up. Safe to say, the X-Men don’t only look at him fondly for that reason. 

Of course, that reflection was a set-up for Logan’s delivery of the iconic “The best there is” line. But there’s other ways to say that. Logan’s internal voice discussing protection would have worked. They could have both talked about how he loves to protect them and how they appreciate that. Lines like, “They know I’ll do anything for them. If that includes killing, so be it. Because I’m the best there is at what I do”. Something along those lines works.

The thing I did really like about the issue was Logan accepting both the beast and adamantium parts of himself. Both those things have caused him so much pain, yet he finally makes peace with them. 

Even though it doesn’t work for me in a lot of ways, I do admire and appreciate the attempts to try something different instead of the typical Weapon X and sins of the past storylines that permeate Wolverine books. He’s facing something in the present.

I just wish the execution was a little bit better. 

Rating: 3.1/5