Continuing the theme, Wolverine also has a disappointing second half to a fill-in storyline.

Part one of "Good Cop / Bad Cop" was notable for its strikingly low Wolverine content, taking to extremes the old formula of structuring fill-in stories around all-new characters who can be safely disposed of without affecting the status quo.  The second half does more with him, but it's still not really a Wolverine story.  It's a crime story into which Wolverine's been inserted on the general assumption that as a hero, he'd probably do something about it if he stumbled upon the events in question.

Of course, everyone knows that you can't write stories where the hero is interchangeable, and Daniel Way is well aware of that.  So the idea is to make this story specific to Wolverine by having the plot hinge on him doing a trick with his healing powers.  After that, he can bugger off back to the mansion and let the other characters get on with it.

Well... hmm.

It's a nice idea in theory, this story, but there are two gaping plot holes which stop it working.  The big central set piece goes like this.  Wolverine wants to expose McLawry as a murderer.  So he sets himself up as a witness who knows about McLawry's crimes and then plays along as McLawry kills him too and then disposes of his body.  Of course, since he's got healing powers, Wolverine's fine, so he rises from the grave, and brings McLawry down by tipping off the honest police officer, Brown, about where the bodies are hidden.  Not a bad idea on paper.

Here are the two problems.

One, the story hinges on the fact that Wolverine can be shot pointblank in the face, three times, and live.  Why can he live?  Because he's got a metal skull, and he heals over the flesh damage.  Is Way seriously inviting me to conclude that McLawry shot Wolverine three times in the face, saw the limited amount of damage that would cause - surface damage and exposed metal bone - and went ahead to bury him anyway?  Is McLawry blind?  It doesn't make sense for McLawry to fail to notice the very thing which is then used as a central plot point two pages later.

Of course, if McLawry had poisoned Wolverine, that might have worked.  But he didn't, and the plot pretty much precludes him doing that because his track record is shooting people.  So he should have immediately exposed Wolverine.  But he didn't.  Big, huge, glaring plot problem.

Two, what exactly is Brown supposed to do with the map?  We're invited to believe that he'll use it to bring down McLawry.  But how is he going to do that?  Where was Wolverine buried?  Next to the other bodies of McLawry's victims?  But we were told his other victims were drug dealers for whom he claimed self-defence.  So their bodies can't be missing.  There's the two witnesses from the previous issue whom he killed to protect himself, of course.  They're missing.  Perhaps McLawry is so cripplingly stupid that he buried all the bodies right next to one another, and so Wolverine was able to give Brown that information.  Except Brown was under suspicion for those murders himself.

I suppose the idea is that Brown gets the bodies exhumed and then uses forensics to link them with McLawry.  But Brown has been shown in the story so far as a useless alcoholic with no credibility in the department who can never get his investigations underway because they keep being cancelled from under him.  So why should we believe he's going to get anywhere thanks to this new evidence?  He's a crap policeman.  The evidence isn't conclusive enough to provide closure and allow us to believe that Brown will win.

I like the general approach that Way and Johnson are taking here.  I think Wolverine in crime stories is a good idea.  There's a decent story in here, just waiting for a rewrite to solve the plot problems and bring it out.  But as it stands, the plot holes are too big to be bridged.

Rating: B-

back | continue