Posted in: Comics | Tagged: all-new wolverine, cory petit, juann cabal, nolan woodard, Tom Taylor, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

X-Men: Bland Design – That's One Way to Smuggle a Cell Phone in All-New Wolverine #29

Welcome to Week 2 of our new ongoing column answering the question "What if Ed Piskor had no art skills, a juvenile sense of humor, and less classic material to work with?" That's right, it's, X-Men: Bland Design! This week there are five X-Books on the stands, which will cost you a total of $20 to read, but deliver about the same story content as a single issue did for 25 cents forty years ago.

Here's the plan: Just as Ed Piskor is condensing decades of X-Men history into a few issues in X-Men: Grand Design, we're condensing a week's worth of X-Men comics into several clickbait articles, in which we'll likely make the same repetitive complaints about how comics have changed for the worse while getting more expensive. This week, we've got X-Men: Gold #20, Weapon X #13, All-New Wolverine #29, Generation X #86, and Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan #4. You can see read every X-Men: Bland Design column going back to the very beginning (which was last week) at this link.

Next up is All-New Wolverine #29…

All-New Wolverine #29
Writer: Tom Taylor
Artist: Juann Cabal
Colorist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Cory Petit
Damage: $3.99

This is Part 5 of the Orphans of X storyline, so here's what you need to know. A group of people whose loved ones have been killed by Wolverines is out for revenge. They've melted down the Muramasa blade, a weapon infused with part of a Wolverine soul, and made it into bullets. They've killed Old Man Logan, Sabertooth, and Lady Deathstrike (but don't tell the creative team of Weapon X). All-New Wolverine, meanwhile, traveled to Japan with Gabby and Daken to get the dude who made the Muramasa blade, legendary swordsmith Akira Yoshida, to make armor that can stop the bullets.

The issues opens with Orphans of X leaders Henry and Amber making out over the corpse of Old Man Logan. Hawt! Back in Japan, Akira Yoshida extracts some soul juice from the Wolverines to make the armor. As they're recovering, the Hand attacks, giving us an opportunity for some guilt-free violence. But it's just a distraction, as the Orphans shoot Gabby in the leg with a Muramasa bullet from a helicopter.

Daken takes Gabby to safety, but they're ambushed by the Orphans. Just before a bullet strikes Daken, All-New Wolverine shows up with the armor to block it. Amber tells Laura that the Orphans have killed some Wolverines already, which pisses Laura off. Daken sacrifices himself, getting captured, presumably so the Wolverine's can track his soon-to-be-dead body back to their base and (hopefully) revive him.

Gorgon, who Yoshida called earlier for help, shows up and Henry pays the ultimate price for misuse of the Hand's resources in the worst fallout from a financial disaster since Jon Berg got fired for Justice League. Gorgon agrees to pay for a Lyft for the Wolverines to make up for all the killing. Megan Kinney reveals that before he got captured, Daken cut himself open to put his phone inside himself, which we wish we had thought of before the last time we tried to smuggle some reefer on an airplane. You don't want to know what the alternative was.

Tracking the phone, Laura and Gabby invade the Orphan's headquarters (which we'll assume is called The Orphanage), where they find Daken, dead like the other murdered Wolverines with a Muramasa bullet in his head. Laura prepares to cut the bullet out as the issue ends. Looks like this will be a 6-parter.

All-New Wolverine has been a consistently good X-book since it started, so it's a shame it's probably going to be canceled (or changed to a different Wolverine book) to make way for X-Men: Red, as its writer and cast will be on that book. But we don't need to mourn it yet, as there's still issues solicited through March and we'll have to wait and see for April. Next month, we'll wrap up the Orphans of X storyline, though the solicit for issue #32 reveals that they'll be back again.

Next…

Note: An earlier version of this article erroneously said that All-New Wolverine would definitely be canceled to make way for X-Men Red, and has been amended to say it probably will.

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