Welcome to the First Issue Bin, where I — Ethan Kaye — randomly grab one of this week's comics that’s just starting up and give you the details on whether it should get added to your collection … or remain on the comic shop shelf.
Ultimate Wolverine #1
Writer: Chris Condon
Artist: Alessandro Cappuccio
Colorist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: VC's Cory Petit
Editor: Wil Moss
With every issue of Marvel's "Ultimate" line, we see new puzzle pieces added that help to complete a fuller picture of this dark dystopian Marvel Universe. Ultimate Wolverine #1 shows us something we'd thought we'd seen before: Ultimate mutants.
Peach Momoko's Ultimate X-Men has focused on young mutants in Japan, her gorgeous watercolors making those stories feel like they exist apart from the rest of the Ultimate world. As far as we've been shown, Japan could be the only place mutants live. With Ultimate Wolverine #1, we see the titular antihero, of course, but also established adult mutants from Germany: Nightcrawler and Mystique. So the world grows even larger.
We got a preview of this version of Wolverine in 2024's Ultimate Universe - One Year In #1, a way for Marvel to sum up the year's Ultimate efforts while teasing future plans. Wolverine, a violent weapon controlled by the evil Eurasian Republic, isn't even the gruff-but-lovable curmudgeon we've come to expect from the X-books: he's the Winter Soldier. That's his name, and that's whose role he takes, former hero Bucky Barnes turned brainwashed assassin.
The story bounces back and forth between present day, where he's sent to kill former friends Nightcrawler and Mystique, and his creation in the Eurasian Republic, where he's captured, contained, mind-wiped, and pumped full of adamantium. It's intriguing and effective. The action captures the full brutal potential of writer Chris Condon's take on Wolverine, while the dialogue in the past and present fill in some of the mysteries. Nightcrawler and the Winter Soldier were friends, and Nightcrawler was trying to rescue him. The powers behind the Eurasian Republic (the Rasputins and Omega Red) also have a telepath weapon available, should the Winter Soldier fail to deliver.
Ultimately (ha ha), this issue succeeds on two fronts, on the macro and micro levels. Big picture: we're treated to more evidence of how this awful Marvel Universe seems so monolithic that any kind of revolution or change would be impossible. But on the smaller level, we see humanity coming through the Winter Soldier's actions. Resistance in some places, recognition in others.
This line of Marvel's isn't afraid to make major moves either: the deaths here are serious and take familiar players off the board for good. With this coming in as only the fifth ongoing Ultimate title so far (Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Ultimates, and X-Men being the others), it functions as a way to raise the stakes in the other books. Spider-Man has mostly been about gang crimes so far, Black Panther stays local, and X-Men is much more focused on character than world-building. I feel like The Ultimates and Ultimate Wolverine will be where the larger story of control of the Ultimate Universe will play out.
The art by Alessandro Cappuccio continues great work from Cappuccio's Moon Knight run, with the Winter Soldier here combining the best of the 616 Universe's Wolverine and Winter Soldier designs. The costume says sleek and agile, but the movement shown is all about hitting hard and fast. It's not strategic, it's confrontational. This isn't an assassin that hides in the shadows, he's a bomb that's dropped and only destruction follows. There's no need for stealth when you eliminate all witnesses.
I think we were all wondering how the Ultimate Universe was going to introduce this much-beloved character, and wow, this one came at it from an unexpected angle.
Art: 4/5
Story: 4/5
Claws: 6/6
Dead Mutants Per Issue: 2/3
Number of Times Wolverine Says "Bub": 0/2 (he only has 2 speech bubbles)
Verdict: You should be picking up Marvel's Ultimate books already, there hasn't been a dud yet, and this issue makes the bad guys look more unstoppable and the good guys more determined to stop them.
