Wolverine: Hunting Season

By Paul Cornell, Alan Davis, Mirco Pierfederici, Mark Farmer, Zach Fischer, Karl Kesel & Tom Palmer (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-541-3

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 for most mutants, especially the perennially punching-above-his-weight feral fury Wolverine.

The company initiative MarvelNOW!, having reinvigorated the entire continuity, the various flavours of X-champion are generally starting life anew and this collection, gathering issues #1-6 of Wolverine volume 5 (cover-dated May-September 2013), proffers a compellingly attractive and decidedly different side of the Canadian Crusader which – like companion series Savage Wolverine – explores the man beyond the blood-blind berserker of yesteryearâ€¦

Scripted by Paul Cornell and illustrated initially by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer and then Mirco Pierfederici, Zach Fischer, Karl Kesel & Tom Palmer, the all-out action and sinister subversion begins with the eponymous 4-part ‘Hunting Season’ right in the middle of the mayhem as our horrified hero desperately tries to talk down a spree-killer in the midst of a body-strewn hostage situation in a Mall. Partially disintegrated, Wolverine can only attempt to reason with the man until his arms and legs grow backâ€¦

Mild-mannered Robert Gregson is acting really weird and has an impossibly powerful supergun. He’s calm, rational and displays diffident concern to his young son Alex as he systematically vaporises all the shoppers in the arcade. By the time he turns the raygun on the boy, Wolverine is just healed enough to stop the complacent killer. Amidst charred bones and human ashes the cops burst in and Logan sees old friend and NYPD Detective Chieko Tomomatsu in the lead.

In the blistered aftermath nobody realises that the odd odour which permeated Gregson now emanates from Alex, until the kid attacks them all and flees with the gun. As he utilises the hand cannon to ravage the city, Wolverine is in close pursuit. Refusing to eviscerate a 10-year old, he tries to Alex keeps talking but the boy sounds like a dispassionate boffin absentmindedly taking notesâ€¦

Across town a trio of cops intercepts a gang of drug-dealers and they too suddenly acquire a strange smell and completely detached attitude. In unison, they turn on and dispatch the guy who turned up lateâ€¦

Repeatedly dodging instant incineration, the Clawful Canuck corners Alex high up on a construction site and confirms that something has possessed the lad. Desperately trying to establish contact with the controlling force â€“ which refers to itself in the plural – Wolverine is horrified as the kid jumps to his doom and the gun finds another triggerman before the slaughter continuesâ€¦

When the new Nick Fury (long story short: the son of the original and looks like the African American S.H.I.E.L.D. Director from the assorted movies â€“ see Battle Scars for further details) arrives and downs the shooter, the gun flies off before anyone can stop itâ€¦

As Wolverine brings the superspy up to speed, he has a bizarre vision and the cosmic observer known as The Watcher appears – only to the mutant’s enhanced senses – thus indicating that whatever is going on it’s a danger to the entire universeâ€¦

Oddly enough, the first stop in sorting the problem is a bar. Guernica on West Fourth is a superhero hostelry and a very unique think-tank meets there. As well as a comicbook writer, there’s an odds-maker on superhero battles, a professional powers cataloguer and the current CEO of repair conglomerate Damage Control, but what the fast-healing hero needs is the services of talented and unflappable surgeon Victoria Frankenstein (she pronounces it â€œFronken-schteenâ€), possibly the only sawbones capable of removing the smart-bullet Alex embedded in the mutant’s shoulder.

The last in line of such a fateful dynasty is necessary since Logan’s flesh knits back together faster than most scalpels can cleave it. The brainstorming/field surgery session also leads to one inescapable conclusion: whoever or whatever is possessing people acts like an airborne virusâ€¦

The gun meanwhile has found those co-opted cops and robbers. Fury and Wolverine are right behind them and subsequently uncover a plot to explode a bomb full of those pesky microbe invaders over Yankee Stadium during the biggest game of the seasonâ€¦

Logan of course spectacularly foils the plot but since he can still see The Watcher, the confused champion knows things aren’t quite over yetâ€¦

‘Drowning Logan’, illustrated by Mirco Pierfederici, Mark Farmer, Zach Fischer, Karl Kesel & Tom Palmer, takes up the story as the insidious organisms, now evolved to deceive Wolverine’s sense of smell, possess an entire S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier crew â€“ Fury Jr. included – and then capture the one being able to resist their mind-bending infection.

Trapped with a trio of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents also (temporarily) immune to the takeover terrors and a fading phone-link to the Guernica group, the Feral Fury must defeat an army of friends and colleagues housing an unstoppable invasion force before it’s judgement day for our universe. Thankfully a clue to the microbial possessors’ incredible origins lead to a fantastic counter-attack and their eventual repulsion – but not without shocking personal cost to the formerly fast-healing heroâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Hunting Season also includes a beautiful gallery of 16 covers and variants by Davis & Farmer, Jason Keith, Olivier Coipel, Salvador Larroca, Skottie Young, Humberto Ramos, Mike Deodato Jr., Ed McGuiness & Pascal Campion, 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 â€“ for free â€“ from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

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