The Wolverine/Punisher miniseries wraps up, and on re-reading the whole thing, it's gone up a bit in my estimation.  Not enormously, mind you, but it all flows a lot better when you read it in a single sitting.

Even so, it's a mixed advertisement for Peter Milligan's upcoming run on X-Men.  Milligan's always had a range of styles - he can do relatively conservative superheroes if you want, but he's at his best when he's allowed to cut loose and produce something bizarre and quirky like X-Statix, Human Target or Shade.  This is a series that falls between two stools.  Some of the time it seems to be playing a straight bat, sometimes it seems to be doing self-parody, and sometimes (as with the Irish Republican hitman who lost faith one day after seeing a dirty plate, or the crimelord who insists on dressing as Napoleon) it's off with the fairies. 

Personally, the weird bits are the bits I enjoy most, but it doesn't alter the fact that this is a series of strangely inconsistent tone.  Artist Lee Weeks doesn't seem to know quite what to make of it and settles for playing it absolutely straight.  I can't quite make up my mind whether he's deadpanning it, or just utterly baffled by the whole thing and going for his default style anyway.

Oddly enough, in amongst everything, Milligan does show a pretty good grasp on Wolverine and the Punisher as characters, and I appreciate the fact that he skips doing the big pay-off fight between the two.  There's plenty of tension between the two, not least because in this company, Wolverine inevitably ends up playing the role of the liberal pleading for justice. 

I find myself liking the series in retrospect, if only because it did try to do something a little different with a Wolverine and Punisher team-up.  But I know I'm doing so against my better judgement.  It's an odd blend of different styles that never quite comes together into a coherent whole.

Rating: B

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