Wolverine: Weapon X - Gallery Edition by Barry Windsor-SmithMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wolverine: Weapon X - Gallery Edition is an oversized hardcover collecting material from Marvel Comics Presents #72-84, Wolverine #166, and Uncanny X-Men #205.
Welcome to the Barry Windsor-Smith Wolverine show! I've long heard people hype the Weapon X storyline in Marvel Comics Presents but only managed to read one installment when it was coming out. When I saw this solicited, I decided to take the plunge.
Except for an unused Weapon X cover by Sam Kieth, Barry Windsor-Smith draws everything in this. On Weapon X, he even does the coloring and some of the lettering as well. Frank Tieri wrote the Wolverine #166 story and Chris Claremont did the Uncanny X-Men story.
Now that the credits are over, boy howdy this was a spectacle. In Weapon X, Barry Windsor-Smith tells a dark story from Wolverine's origins, his creation in the Weapon X program. It's story of torture and bloodshed and it's drawn in exquisite detail. BWS draws every hair, every medical device, every catheter, every wire. I cannot fathom the amount of time poured into these pages. I just read Monsters a few weeks ago and this still impresses the shit out of me. There was a part near the end I wasn't exactly clear on but the rest was dynamite.
The other stories are good too. One is a flashback to the Weapon X days and the other is an X-Men story that gives us a taste of what BWS will later do in Weapon X. Both feature BWS pulling out all the stops. My hands want to claw up just thinking about doing hours of linework on the pages.
The oversized format of this edition shows all the painstaking details in full glory. I'm not even really a Wolverine fan but I loved this. It makes me want to dig out the handful of Larry Hama-Marc Silverstri Wolverines I have in one of my totes in the basement.
Wolverine: Weapon X - Gallery Edition is a great edition of a masterfully illustrated work. Five out of five stars.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment