X-Men Unlimited comes to a close with issue #50.  It's scheduled to be replaced by a title called Unlimited X-Men which is exactly the same only featuring cheaper... sorry, new and upcoming creators.  This might explain why nobody really seems to care all that much.

Well, that and the fact that it's hard to get worked up about X-Men Unlimited, a title which has managed to spend 50 issues thoroughly failing to justify its own existence.  True enough, it has contained some decent-to-good stories scattered along the way.  But it's contained an awful lot more which the world could happily have done without, and for most of its existence, the book has achieved little more than to bloat the line.  The prospect of reinventing it as an Epic-ised version of Marvel Comics Presents is not exactly my idea of a good time either.  No doubt it'll continue to throw up the occasional winner, but the book desperately needs to sort out its lamentable strike rate before it can truly claim to have proved there's a need for it.

It does, at least, mean that the "new creators" remit for the replacement title guarantees an end to using this book as a duplicate for Uncanny X-Men.  There's something to welcome.

Anyway, issue #50 is a Wolverine story - the fourth in five issues.  The selling point here is that it's written by Kazuo Koike, the legendary Japanese writer who created Lone Wolf & Cub.  More accurately, it's co-written by Koike and one Kengo Kaji, whom I don't know much about.  (He does have a web page, but it's in Japanese.)  The result, in any event, is another of those stories where Wolverine goes to Japan, meets up with traditional martial arts types, and ends up proving his honour.

Wolverine stumbles across Renge, a woman who's been on the run for years from the evil Azuma.  Azuma wants a magic sword, Mikage, which has been passed down Renge's family for generations.  She's trying to keep it away from him.  Allegedly the sword is very powerful indeed and so must be kept away from villains such as Azuma at all costs.  You know the routine.  Wolverine finds out that the sword is actually powered by the souls of the people it's killed, and gives the sword to Azuma who is - in the way villains tend to be - ironically overpowered by the very object he was questing for.  File under okay but nothing new, basically.

The story does benefit from nicely paced storytelling, and some excellent art from Paul Smith, who adopts a rather less restrained style than I'm used to seeing from him.  It's eminently readable and perfectly enjoyable as far as it goes.  But if you're looking for something spectacular from a legendary creator, then you'll probably be disappointed.

A glaring plot problem does drag the book down.  Having got rid of Azuma, Renge gives the sword to Wolverine for destruction.  Wolverine then has the thing melted down.  Now, Renge was never given any particular motivation other than to keep the sword out of Azuma's hands.  There's nothing to suggest that she had her own plans for the sword or that it had to be kept around for any purpose in particular.  And since she uses the sword herself - as we see in the opening scene - you'd think she'd have found out about the inhabiting spirits long ago.  That's how Wolverine and Azuma both find out.  So why didn't she just destroy the sword herself?  She's been on the run for years; wouldn't this rather obvious idea have occurred to her at some point?  If she just wasn't prepared to destroy a priceless artefact, I could buy that, but then why does she give it to Wolverine for destruction at the end?  If only it wasn't for that coda scene...

This is a problem, but not such a huge one as to wreck what's gone before.  The result is alright; if you want to read another Wolverine story about Japanese sword-fighting (or if you're a fan of Paul Smith's art), then this is perfectly okay.  If you've seen that done once too often before, by all means move on.

Rating: B

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