In a similar vein, I don't propose to spend much time on Wolverine: X-Isle.  It finishes next week anyway, and for the third straight issue we're in puzzlebook territory as cryptic things happen.

You know, my head tells me I should be interested in this book.  It's by Bruce Jones, and he's good on Hulk.  It's got decent art.  It keeps dropping hints and literary references which I'm obviously supposed to sit down and diligently decode.  It's clearly been quite carefully thought out.

But I just don't care.  I think the problem is that it doesn't work as a story.  It comes across as just a huge cryptic puzzle, with shaky characterisation on the lead and everyone else reduced to puppets mouthing clues.  The events on the island are too obviously artificial to let us care whether the creature gets killed or not.  It's a codebook rather than a story; it doesn't work on the surface level, and that reduces it to a hollow-feeling exercise in symbolism.

It's going to take something pretty impressive to win back my attention in the last issue, I think.

Rating: C+

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