The Marvel Knights books aren't involved in Reload, so at least to two of this week's X-books can happily ignore the whole thing.

Wolverine/Punisher is one of Peter Milligan's ironic distance numbers.  But it's also played relatively straight, placing it closer to the deadpan contrivances of Human Target than the insanity of X-Statix.  The plot makes perfectly reasonable sense in its own right, but when Milligan has the villains standing around recounting their origin stories, there's something deliberately stagey about the whole thing.

Whether this is necessarily what people are looking for in a Wolverine and Punisher team-up miniseries is debatable.  I've always liked this style, though - Milligan seems to work on the basis that when there are inherently silly things in the genre, it's better to work with that than try to smooth it over.  So the Atheist gets a bizarre origin which kind of fits the format of a Silver Age origin flashback, but actually boils down to "I used to be a killer, and then I couldn't be bothered any more."  The Demon killed his family and hopes one day to work out why. 

These are weirdly oddball characters, but by playing the whole thing slightly to the left of reality, Milligan manages to get them past the suspension of disbelief.  Assuming that you're prepared to buy into the idea of the whole thing being weirdly contrived to start with, anyway.  I usually am - it tends to be worth it.

Rating: B+

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