Wolverine #19

Wolverine #19

Wolverine goes fishing, but it's a trip he may not return from in Wolverine #19, by writer Benjamin Percy, artist Javi Fernandez, colorist Matthew Wilson, and letterer Cory Petit. Percy proves once again why this book is consistently one of the best X-books with a great one-and-done story.

This issue sees Wolverine hunt down the giant whale that was mutated by Krakoan biotech that he didn't get to take out in X-Force. Using Sevyr Blackmore's ship, he goes out to sea and tries to catch the beast, but the whole thing takes a terrible turn. Wolverine is able to finally take care of the beast, once again protecting his fellow mutants.

The art of the one-and-done story has seemingly been lost to comics. Everything is written for the trade, so single-issue stories are very few and far between. Percy has embraced shorter form storytelling with Wolverine and X-Force, taking a more classic approach to things, ones that are reminiscent of X-Men books from the mid-'80s to early-'90s. This issue is another fine example of that and shows why he's so good at it.

This is a one-and-done, but it builds off a plot introduced in X-Force. However, much like those older comics, Percy makes sure to explain everything readers need to know in this issue. This is as much a character piece as anything else, with Percy using it to tell a story about who Wolverine is and how he feels about life on Krakoa. There's action, it's well-paced, and all in all, it's a satisfying story. Percy does an amazing job of capturing Wolverine in these pages. He's a man who has lived in conflict all of his life, so the promise of Krakoa is both a relief and completely BS to him. Percy has played with this in the book before, and it works wonderfully in this story, as Wolverine faces something that could actually kill him. He captures the desolation and danger of the sea perfectly, something that he's used very well in regards to Wolverine throughout this book and X-Force.

Fernandez and Wilson make a potent art team for this book. This comic goes through a lot of fill-in artists, and Fernandez is easily the best. His art has a Ron Garney quality to it but is still unique. There are so many great pages throughout this book, with the best being a double-page spread of the whale breaking through the water, dwarfing the boat, and really giving readers the scale of what Wolverine is dealing with. Wilson's colors are the icing on the cake, enhancing the pencils and using each scene's lighting to better set the mood.

Wolverine #19 is a perfect one-and-done story. Sure, it serves to close down one of Percy's plot threads, but it's also just a great Wolverine character piece and well worth the price of admission. Fernandez and Wilson are the perfect art team for it. They bring the script to life in a way the best art teams do and together create some stunning visuals. Not enough can be said about how great this issue is.

Grade: A+

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