Wolverine: X-Isle concludes this week.  I've been trying to reserve judgment on this story, on the basis that you can never really evaluate these puzzle stories until you get the big reveal.  Is it clever, or is it crap?

It's crap.

In previous issues, you'll recall, Logan found himself on an island where he was plagued by a girl who obviously represented Amiko, a young boy, and a great big clawed hairy monster who symbolised his violent tendencies.  So what's the big reveal in this story?

The girl symbolises Amiko!  The boy is his inner child!  The monster represents his violent tendencies!  And why is he seeing them all?  FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER!  He's just feeling a bit guilty about accidentally killing someone in a knife-throwing accident so he's flown himself off to an island to inexplicably hallucinate about hairy monsters for two days.

For fuck's sake.  This is taking the piss.

We are dealing here with an extremely violent character with a history of mass killings.  Leaving aside the crassly obvious symbolism, are we seriously being invited to believe that just because he accidentally knifed someone, he was so grief-stricken that he had to run off to an island to hallucinate about his self-loathing?  Give me a break.  Not only does it miss the point, it's internally contradictory - the set-up of the hallucinations acknowledges that Logan has all of these tendencies, so why are we expected to believe that he would have such a ridiculous reaction to the situation? 

I was expecting at least some sort of credible explanation for all these hallucinations.  That's not to be found here.  This issue misses the lower end of my expectations by a wide margin.  Five issues, for an amateur-hour dream sequence?  Five sodding issues?  This would have been mildly embarrassing as an issue of X-Men Unlimited, but over 100-plus pages, it's ugly.  I've been giving the book the benefit of the doubt that it would have a point besides the gratingly obvious which was apparent from halfway through issue #2, but it doesn't.  Bluntly, this is bloated and pretentious. 

Writer Bruce Jones has been producing entertaining, and successful, stories on Incredible Hulk.  Granted that the drawn-out reveal of the conspiracy story is becoming a little aggravating, it's a pretty good book.  I quite liked his take on Captain America as well, in an odd sort of a way.  Even Call of Duty: The Precinct started off quite well before losing the plot badly halfway through.  But this is a just a horrible, misconceived book.

Rating: D+

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