WOLVERINE #117 – October 1997

A Divine Image
Credits: Larry Hama (writer), Lenil Francis Yu (penciler), Edgar Tadeo (inker), Comicraft (lettering), Joe Rosas & Chris Sotomayor (colors)

Summary: Mustang unwittingly reveals the X-Men to his friends, who suddenly morph into Prime Sentinels. After the X-Men defeat the cyborgs, the remaining human members of the camp debate their next move. Meanwhile, Bastion, who senses that SHIELD is moving against him, calls Dr. Prospero’s clinic and orders the launch of the “Final Directive”. In the desert, Jubilee flees from her captors. Five miles away, Wolverine catches a whiff of her scent and tracks her down. After defeating a Prime Sentinel, the duo is reunited with the X-Men. The team investigates Dr. Prospero’s clinic, which is now abandoned. Bastion receives word that the clinic has been breached, and deduces that it must be the X-Men. The other Prime Sentinels are gone, so Bastion orders the remaining one become active, even though his vision has yet to be upgraded. Inside the clinic, Mustang morphs into a Prime Sentinel and targets the X-Men.

Continuity Note: It’s revealed that Dr. Prospero is actually Bastion’s seldom-seen shapeshifting agent, Harper.

Review: While X-Force was able to continue its own storylines and use the OZT crossover in an entertaining way, this title is increasingly buried under the weight of the crossover. It is fun to see Wolverine and Jubilee reunited, but no other aspect of this issue is even about the characters. It’s the team fighting Prime Sentinels again, setting up the next issue where they’ll fight another one. Very little of this issue actually reads like Hama’s work (the scene that has Jubilee mistakenly attacking a cactus is probably his, but the rest of this is very generic), so it doesn’t even feel like the Wolverine that’s existed since 1990. Most of the dialogue is clunky, almost every page is crammed with dull captions, and it’s just not fun to read. Yu’s art is still mostly impressive, but a few of the pages look stiff. Without all of the gritty detail lines, some of the figures just look half-finished.