Savage Wolverine: Kill Island


By Frank Cho, coloured by Jason Keith (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-539-0

It must be summer now, since here’s a popular entertainment featuring mutants and dinosaurs all garnished with heavy helpings of aliens, explosions and hot chicks in skimpy fur bikinis…

Following all the desperate and life-altering debacles of recent years, the emergent race dubbed Homo Sapiens Superior has, after the epochal events of Avengers versus X-Men, won something of a fresh start and clean slate.

The company initiative MarvelNOW! having reshaped the entire continuity, the various factors of X-champions are generally starting life anew and this collection, gathering issues #1-5 of Savage Wolverine (spanning March-July 2013), proffers a deliciously rare and oddly appetising aspect of the feral fury.

One word seldom applied to the exploits of the Clawful Canadian is “Fun” but that’s exactly what this sharp, explosive mystery adventure offers as 21st century heroic everyman Wolverine literally falls into an exotic, frantic, deadly dangerous and darkly hilarious romp in the antediluvian wonder world known as the Savage Land.

It all began eight months ago as jungle queen Shanna, the She-Devil led a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists and cartographers on a research trip to the most desolate and unmapped section of the vast Antarctic subterranean dinosaur preserve.

The voyage ended in disaster as their aircraft was disabled by a technological damping field enveloping an enigmatic island in an inland sea. The vehicle plunged to Earth and no more was heard from the explorers…

Now, following an explosion of light that turns night to day, Wolverine groggily regains consciousness and his super-senses inform him that somehow he has been transported to the Savage Land – split seconds before a velociraptor tries to make him supper.

After dispatching the hungry beast the amazed mutant spots a native war-party carrying a wounded S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and leaps to the rescue.

Slaughtering the primitives, he learns from the dying Mike McSwiggin where the ship went down and, locating the wreckage, also finds Shanna who mistakes him for an attacking native and almost kills him…

The She-Devil tells a grim tale of slow attrition that saw her entire team, deprived of their electronic arsenal, fall one by one as they repeatedly tried to escape the monsters and savages. Mike had reasoned that the damping device was hidden within a fantastic monster-shaped mountain at the centre of the isle and built a bomb to destroy it. Now the only survivor Shanna convinces Wolverine they must carry out Mike’s plan if they have any hope of returning to civilisation…

And then a flight of pteranodons attack, coordinated as if they had human intellects…

At the caveman camp, another flash of light has resulted in the unexplained arrival of abrasive teenaged super-genius Amadeus Cho.

With his advanced personal tech and universal translator he soon has the ape-men believing that he is a god and, despite being rather distracted by some of the more nubile offerings (teenage boy, right?), quickly ascertains the true history of the Island…

Wolverine has meanwhile been rescued by Shanna, and the pair – squabbling like an old married couple – set to battling their way through a horde of natives and beasts, intent on climbing the monster-faced mountain and destroying the tech-disruption gadget.

Amadeus has found something interesting in his discussions with the village head-man. The chief speaker has an elixir which can instantaneously heal wounds and perhaps even revive the dead. The story the chief tells is incredible and terrifying…

Uncounted eons past a star crashed to earth. When the dust settled it was revealed to be a colossal giant battling a horrific alien beast. Subduing the monstrous “Dark Walker” the giant (deduced by Cho to be one of the multiverse-spanning space gods known as “Celestials”) then imprisoned the thing inside a mountain with a Great Machine to keep it dormant.

To protect the device the Celestial, with a wave of its hand, casually evolved the primitive hominids who observed the spectacle into humans to forever guard the prison and prevent tampering. He even granted them uncanny powers, which was lucky as periodically humans from elsewhere would materialise, baffled but always intent on making trouble…

The latest such interloper is having second thoughts, but when a war party tentatively offers a truce, Shanna accidentally spooks them and the result is yet another appalling bloodbath that results in her death…

Pushed off a cliff, Wolverine of course survives but determines to destroy the machine whatever it takes, unaware that Cho has convince the chief to use his life-elixir to resurrect the She-Devil. When she revives she is no longer the same person…

The fluid connects the reawakened to the island and imparts immense power and greater intelligence, as the morose mutant finds when he is attacked by the mountain’s last defenders – a pack of super gorillas…

Cho, meanwhile, has uncovered another impossible mystery, one somehow connected to a monster thought tragically unique, but has no time to ponder upon it as Shanna – now onside – reveals that Wolverine has a bomb and will be more determined than ever to blow up the machine. With the terrifying realisation that it is the only thing containing a creature even Celestials could not kill, the assembled heroes and jungle guardians rush to the mountain just in time to meet the latest outsider teleported in… the rampaging, incredible Hulk…

And in the resulting chaotic melee the ancient alien sleeper awakes…

Blisteringly bombastic, lavishly beautiful and staggeringly visceral, this blockbuster book is enthralling and utterly compelling, with portents and warning of even greater epics to come, but nevertheless reserves plenty of room for humour and even baldly slapstick comedy – another perfect jumping-on point for new and retired fans alike…

Kill Island also includes a beautiful cover-and-variants gallery by Cho, Joe Quesada, J. Scott Campbell, Gabrielle Dell’ Otto, Skott Young, Milo Manara, Leinil Francis Yu, Adi Granov & David Johnson, and comes with the now-standard added extras provided by of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the code – for free – from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.