And finally for this week, Wolverine. 

I've said this before, but Mark Millar never quite seems to have got the memo that less is more.  In his Wolverine run, that hasn't really been a concern, because the fact that it's so ridiculously over the top is a big part of the fun.  But, y'know, there's a limit.

In this issue, Wolverine storms the Hand's base, having found out where it was through adventures deemed too boring to actually show.  It turns out that the Hand have made Elektra their leader, despite the fact that she's also meant to be their slave.  But wait!  She's faking.  Wolverine and Elektra then proceed to slaughter hundreds of Hand ninjas all on their own.

Now, what we're meant to think here is "Wow.  Wolverine and Elektra are really badass."  And if they'd simply overcome overwhelming odds, we might well think that.  Instead, Millar has them overcoming stupidly ridiculous odds.  That just makes us think "Wow.  The Hand are fucking useless.  Beating them doesn't mean a thing."

It's got to look like a challenge if it's going to mean anything!  Come on, Mark, this stuff is elementary.  Wolverine can torch them, blow them up, trick them into ritual suicide, whatever.  But if he's beating 500 guys in hand-to-hand combat simultaneously, you've crossed the line into Just Plain Silly, and it doesn't work any more.  John Romita Jr comes very close to pulling it off.  It's a fabulously laid out comic, and the visuals almost justify the sheer nonsense of the story.  The art goes a long way to raise the book's mark.

But at the end of the day the plot - such as it is - is being pushed to the margins here in favour of a big moment that just doesn't work because it's simply too ridiculous.  Even the most nonsensical action stories need to keep at least a tangential relationship with reality, and this is just flying off into a world of its own now.

Rating: B

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