Death of Wolverine #4

by Charles Soule, Steve McNiven, Jay Leisten & Justin Ponsor

This week was the final installment of the Death of Wolverine mini-series. As you can imagine, Wolverine is now dead. The most over-used character of the past two decades of comics has finally earned some much needed rest. Knowing that this is comics we are talking about, it can be expected that Wolverine will eventually return. However, it’ll be a nice breath of fresh air to remove him from the Marvel Universe for a while and see what effect his absence will have.

When you write a mini-series about the death of one of the most beloved characters ever in comics, you are already facing an uphill battle. There is no way to please everyone and that can be especially true with Big 2 event series. Charles Soule had his work cut out for him. It seems like such a long time ago that this event was announced that some of the hype seemed to have worn off by the time it finally came out. However, going into this as a casual comics reader with no expectations, Death of Wolverine was a fun and well thought look at some of his history while leading to his eventual demise. No spoilers but I thought Wolverine’s “death” was almost poetic. Even though I enjoyed it, I can see where some people might not have felt the same way. This was an enjoyable read but it might not be for everyone.

Even though there might be mixed feelings about the story, it’s hard to believe anyone didn’t like the art in Death of Wolverine. The team of Steve McNiven, Jay Leisten and Justin Ponsor brought their A-game and really went all-out for this series. Everything looked perfect and all the characters looked spot-on; it was definitely worth the wait just to look at this book. Every issue has felt very grandiose and helped enhance the significance of Wolverine’s final mission.

Overall, the Death of Wolverine mini-series did its job. It told a complete story, paid homage to the character and then delivered Wolverine’s death as promised. This will probably be one of those things that fans will debate forever. These kinds of events are usually the most polarizing but as long as people talk about them and remember them, then job well done.