Wolverine #9
Wolverine infiltrates Legacy House in Wolverine #9, by writer Benjamin Percy, artist Adam Kubert, colorist Frank Martin, and letterer Cory Petit. Percy and company give Wolverine fans another great issue as he does everything he can to get his friend Maverick out of the wrong hands.
Wolverine reminisces on the past and how he and Maverick were able to get through their time in Team X without losing themselves like Sabretooth did. Dressed as Patch, he gets patted down at Legacy House entrance and goes inside, witnessing a veritable who’s who of bad guys milling about. As the auction starts, he’s surprised to see his severed hand on the auction block, but the real thing that piques his interest is the last item up for bids- a mindwiped Maverick. Unfortunately, he gets identified and starts to fight his way to the stage before he’s ensnared by magnetic gloves and brought on stage as another item to bid on. However, he starts repeating a mantra to Maverick that they both came up with to beat the Team X mindwipes. Maverick snaps out of it, and the two get ready to fight their way out of Legacy House.
Once again, Percy shows just how good of a Wolverine writer he is. From the opening pages showing Wolverine and Maverick together to the way Wolverine reacts when he sees his friend again, Percy keeps finding ways to let readers know just how much Maverick means to Wolverine and the bond they have. It especially helps because Maverick had a very short time in the ‘90s when he was almost popular. For fans who weren’t around for his heyday, the relationship between him and Wolverine needs to be illustrated. Percy is able to expertly build up this relationship for those who wouldn’t have otherwise been familiar with it.
Pretty much everything about the issue’s writing is impeccable, with the only problem being it reads rather quickly. That’s pretty much the only problem- the comic is over too fast. This has a lot to do with the way the pages are composed because Percy lets Kubert have ample room to show why he’s the best Wolverine artist ever.
Kubert uses two double splash pages to set the mood for the auction, with some nice Easter eggs for sharp-eyed readers thrown in there. The flashback pages are also very well done- they’re multi-panel grids, with most of the pages taken up a larger background image of the chaos caused by a Team X mission. Overlaid in red, with a few panels per page focusing on Wolverine and Maverick’s reaction to what they’ve just done or what’s been done to them. Percy and Kubert work amazingly together, Percy’s scripting and Kubert’s pencils working to make the other look amazing.
Wolverine #9 yet another banger from Percy and Kubert. The two of them are proving to be an amazing team on Wolverine and have made the book into one of the best X-men books of them all. The stakes aren’t super high; it’s just Wolverine trying to save his friend, but the creativity makes it work and feel amazing. As intimated above, the only problem this issue has is that it ends too quickly.
