The story line that the latest ‘Wolverine’ series has been selling us so far has been pretty weak at best. However, with only “Three Months to Die” kicking in, Cornell is finally starting to show us that there is potential here. While not perfectly executed, we see Wolverine on his ten millionth journey towards finding himself. While it is an overdone story arc for Logan, it actually felt slightly fitting for a change.

In this issue, we continue where the previous one left off as Logan has met with Death herself on a journey of his own self discovery. Not only do we have a story that fits the character but Anka’s art fits the story as well. After a rather overly muscled and nearly neanderthal Wolverine from the first set of issues, we finally have a character who resembles the one we can see in every single other book on the market.

Thank you Kris Anka for drawing these characters how they were meant to be drawn! Honestly if it wasn’t for the look of the introduction to the comic, I think I would have been able to tolerate the sub par story line to get us where we are today. In fact, it really points out that while great art can keep you flying through a story, bad art is just painful and takes you out of it.

While I don’t like the way they fully portrayed Death in this issue (she was acting a little too much like Deadpool instead of her usual stoic self) they still were able to make it work. I will admit that the Thanos being a stalker did bring a smile to my face but the rest of it felt unnecessary. She brought in two other characters from Wolverine’s past (both recent and a bit longer), who were able to express more on Wolverine’s choice of tattoos and let Logan come to terms with what had happened to his life now that his healing factor is gone.

Oh yes, and the “See you soon” she uttered as Wolverine was leaving Death’s temple was completely not needed and really helped push that Deadpool vibe that I constantly felt throughout the issue.

So aside from all of that happening, we also saw a giant group of the Hand ninjas being sent back to Sabertooth in pieces with a message that his time was coming. Of course, now that his weapon is in hand, he has his own plans and is about to enter New York where he feels that he’ll be crowned as a God.

While still not at the level of Wolverine in say the last run of ‘Wolverine and the X-Men,’ the series has noticeably gotten better starting with the last issue. I really hope they are able to keep up the quality from here on out. With Wolverine so close to dying I can’t exactly let myself skip picking up an issue now, no matter how much I wanted to over the first 7 issues in this series.

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WOLVERINE #9
Writer: Paul Cornell
Artist: Kris Anka