The Death of Wolverine sees Marvel's favorite X-Men capped, again.
Marvel's Death of Wolverine series wraps up in the Canadian X-Men's demise, receiving mixed reviews from fans and comic book critics.
Comic book deaths have become novelties ever since the breakthrough event of Death of Superman, and as many critics assert, the first reaction fans nowadays have with news of another capping is "When will the character come back?"
Comic book icons suffered serious tragedies in the past, with Superman's demise at the hands of Doomsday setting the precedent on the proper way to lop off an iconic character. The series was highly successful, and Superman's resurrection was also warmly welcomed.
Since then, DC and Marvel's list of characters killed have extended, some stayed dead while others resurrected and rebooted. Spiderman, Batman, Professor X, and Captain America all died or were seriously debilitated at some point, only revived in a reboot series of sorts.
Reviews of the Death of Wolverine series were largely lukewarm, with great ink work and writing considered.
Reviewers posed the dilemma DC and Marvel face in current issues: "How does one go about killing an iconic character? It used to be such a difficult, almost profane question to ask. But over the past decade or so, Marvel and DC have made that question about as difficult as asking who they should cut from their fantasy football team. The death of iconic characters used to be a rare event that needed to be handled with the utmost care." (popmatters.com)
Another reviewers puts it bluntly, feeling shortchanged with the Death of Wolverine denouement: "The problem I had with this story is that none of it's anything we haven't seen before. Taking down faceless henchman is Wolverine's bread and butter. Likewise, fighting Sabertooth is something he can't seem to go more than a week without doing. In fact, Wolverine's solo-book literally just wrapped up another Sabertooth-centric conflict in the run up to Death. These battles could have been made a bit more interesting by Wolverine's new mortality, but the story does almost next to nothing with it up until its final moments." (escapistmagazine.com)
The Death of Wolverine is a Marvel four-part, contained series.
