Posted in: Comics | Tagged: hunt for wolverine, hunt for wolverine: mystery in madripoor, marvel, mystery in madripoor, wolverine, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

X-ual Healing: The Real Mystery in Madripoor (#3) is Why Anyone is Hunting for Wolverine When He's Not Coming Back During This Event

Published Sun, 29 Jul 2018 15:00:31 -0500

by Jude Terror

Comments

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but with a corporate merger on the way, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in all of comics.

Each week, armed with the joy, heartbreak, and frustration of 30+ years of reading X-Men comics, we crankily read every new X-book that comes out, recap the events, react to them, maybe provide some links to Marvel Unlimited for further reference. No smart, fancy words about the creative process. Go read a review for that, you… intellXual!

It's the way X-Men comics were meant to be read! It's the column that can only be known as…

For more about the column, check out the reboot issue here.

HUNT FOR WOLVERINE: MYSTERY IN MADRIPOOR #3 (of 4)
JIM ZUB (W) • THONY SILAS (A)
COVER BY GIUSEPPE CAMUNCOLI
VARIANT COVER BY CHRIS BACHALO
MADRIPOOR'S SECRETS ARE WORTH KILLING FOR…
• …and if KITTY PRYDE fails to uncover them, another X-MAN will die! Has DOMINO'S luck finally run out?
• And what is the SOTEIRA PROJECT?
32 PGS./Parental Advisory …$3.99

What the Hell Happened?!

Here in the third issue of the best of the four pointless Hunt for Wolverine minis, preceded by a pointless Hunt for Wolverine one-shot and ahead of a pointless Hunt for Wolverine closing one-shot that is literally called Dead Ends, Domino, Kitty Pryde, and Jubilee infiltrate Viper's base in Madripoor, led by their hostage, former Viper employee Stenya. Domino and Stenya split off to stop a rocket launch while Kitty and Jubilee go to take down the Femme Fatales and rescue the captured X-Men. Also, Domino has a sex flashback about Wolverine.

Meanwhile, in Viper's boss at the mysterious Soteira organization wants to know what's taking Viper so long in deploying the rockets or whatever the as-yet-vague evil plot is, but Viper says it's the rainy season. In their dialog, Viper refers to the person pulling the strings as "she," for what it's worth. That conversation is interrupted by Sapphire, who is seeing a psychic projection or hallucination of Patch, Wolverine's old Madripoor alter ego. Sapphire takes out Snakewhip before Viper calls all hands on deck to deal with the problem, but along the way, Mindblast and Knockout are ambushed by Jubilee and Kitty.

Elsewhere, Domino finds Rogue and Storm imprisoned inside one of the rockets, but before she can free them, she's ambushed by Bloodlust, who kills Stenya. Meanwhile, while Kitty disables Mindblast's cybernetic enhancements, Magneto bursts free from his prison and he's pretty mad, especially because he had an appearance to make in X-Men Blue this week and this is really taxing his schedule.

Elsewhere again, Snakewhip wakes up and she can see Patch now too, though Viper still can't. With chaos breaking out, Viper orders the launch to start now. Then, Psylocke appears, apparently not dead, and also very angry about being included in a crossover about the return of Wolverine that won't even actually feature the return of Wolverine, since that is reserved for the following Return of Wolverine event. The issue ends there.

The Bottom Line

Marvel is really dragging this out. If they wanted to publish an X-Ladies Go to Madripoor comic, we'd read that without any attachment to a Wolverine return at all. We'd read it as an ongoing series, in fact. In fact, Marvel should do more stories exactly like this, so this is not a beef with the creative team or this comic which we are in fact enjoying. But for chrissakes, Wolverine was "back" in the Marvel Legacy one-shot. How the hell much longer is this going to go on for? What are the odds on the Return of Wolverine mini-series pulling a bait and switch to lead into Wolverine Reborn: We Really Mean It This Time?