Finally for this week, Wolverine: Snikt! #4, slumping out a little over two months after issue #3.

Looking back, I see that I gave the last issue a B+ rating.  Time and distance have given me a somewhat more downbeat view of the series.  We're up to the penultimate issue now, and there is no sign of this turning into a Wolverine story.  It looks distinctly like Tsutomu Nihei wanted to do a generic sci-fi story and has plugged Wolverine into the slot because that's the character Marvel approached him to write.

As I mentioned, this series is running badly late.  In this connection, I note with interest that the story as published has very noticeable differences from what was originally promoted.  The solicitation for issue #1 read like this: "From Tsutomu (BLAME!) Nihei comes a new, fast-paced, high-octane limited series.  Alone in a barren wasteland inhabited by robotic, parasitic organisms, the X-Men's most lethal member devolves further and further into his true, savage, berserker state with each battle. The key to Logan maintaining a link to his humanity may lie with a mysterious young girl!"

Now, we're four issues through, and that is not on any view the story which has been published.  The "barren wasteland inhabited by robotic, parasitic organisms" is there, but none of the rest.  Which is a shame, because at least the promoted version had something to do with Wolverine's berserker rage routine. 

It's trite criticism to say that if the lead character in a story is interchangeable, it's probably a bad story.  The published story tries to satisfy that requirement through an old cheap trick: "The world is overrun by villains, and only your adamantium can save us."  This is cheating.  It is cheating because the lead character is still interchangeable.  All you do is swap the powers when you swap the character.  The world is overrun, and only your optic beams can save us, Cyclops.  Only your webbing can save us, Spider-Man.  Et cetera, et cetera.  It's got nothing to do with the character.

Mind you, the only real selling point of this comic was the art, and if you want to see Tsutomu Nihei drawing a dystopian sci-fi action story, then by all means buy it.  He does do it quite well.  But this is not likely to win over any new fans, because simply, it's not a good piece of writing.  It's a very weak story.

Rating: C

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