Wolverine: Madripoor Knights #2

[Wolverine12]

I didn't see a review thread for this so I figured I'd give a recap and opinion.

We start off with almost the same monologue as issue 1 describing Hightown and Lowtown but this time the setting is a place in between. We are at a place called Capristi's, its just like the Princess bar as far as it is "off limits" for fighting but just as with the Princess bar that is not the case. Logan, Steve and Natasha arrive at Capristi's looking for a place to lay low for a bit but find a women getting attacked by hand ninja's. Wolverine notices the ninja's aren't as skilled as the ones they fought previously and decides to investigate the mystery woman while Cap and Widow handle the bad guys. Cap talks about Avengers not killing during the fight and Widow reminds him that these aren't people so she starts blasting them. Wolverine goes to help the mystery woman that was being attacked, when he does this one of the ninja's grabs a gun and shoots at the women, Wolverine shields her with his body and comments that his healing factor is maxed and these bullets might kill him. Cap and Widow take out the gun man and discover that the ninja's were weaker because they were actually humans and not the creatures the hand uses, also they have all been poisoned. Wolverine is on the ground and looks injured, Cap helps him up and then he seems like he has healed as soon as he is standing(what??). We then learn the that the mystery woman is Tyger Tiger. She informs our heroes that the reason she was attacked is because she stole an artifact from a local crime general named Ngyuen Ngoc Coy. She also said she contacted the Avenger's to use them as protection against Coy's retaliation. Tyger says she used to run Lowtown but has has been dishonored and Coy is trying to take over her territory and this is the only way to get her power back.

During the exposition dump Logan guides everyone through a secret tunnel that leads out of Capristi's and to a local village that appears to be undergroud. As everyone regroups at a bar, Tyger explains she stole the artifact from Coy because if Coy lost it, it would be a shame he would never recover from. Natasha calls Tyger's bluff and says the object is a Macguffin and this is all about revenge, she knows how these things work from her time as a Red Room operative. During the conversation the bar explodes, Logan goes flying, Cap and Widow both land on their feet and Tyger appears to be crushed by a huge mound of rocks (it should be noted that earlier Tyger tells everyone she is wearing an armored body suit so I'm assuming that saves her).

As Logan begins to recover from the explosion, Bloodscream grabs him from behind and begins to drain his life force. Widow see's this and kicks him off of Logan making sure she isn't touched by his life drain. Cap is dealing with Roughouse, Cap tries to fight back but Roughouse literally picks up Cap and throws him. As Cap is flying through the air Bloodscream catches him by his head and then whips him around knocking out Widow. Wolverine see's his friends in trouble, he slashes Bloodscream in the back grabs an unconscious Cap and Widow and drags them to a near by river so the current can carry them to safety. Bloodscream and Roughouse let them go as they were after Tyger the whole time and she is still under the pile of rubble.

Down the river, Widow has regained consciousness, and pulls a now unconscious Wolverine and still unconscious cap out of the water, when she knows they are both safe she passes out from exhaustion. Widow wakes up to Wolverine cooking something from a nearby city dump (they are speaking in Russian for some reason) despite it being from a dump it smells delicious and apparently tastes delicious, Natasha notices that Logan's wounds aren't healing and he tells her that is what Bloodscreams attacks do. Around this time, Cap wakes up (everyone goes back to speaking English) and remarks about how weak Bloodscreams attack left him as well, both him and Logan are drawn super frail and their uniforms are way too big. Cap then drops his shield into the fire Logan was using to cook and says "sorry for ruining dinner". Logan asks Cap if he's giving up, Cap says no, he has a plan but he needs a top notch spy, luckily Black Widow is healthy and ready to fight.

[Wolverine12]

Sorry, that recap was pretty long and honestly hard to type out because of how the issue unfolded. As I was reading it the first time I must say I enjoyed it but going back to look it over for the re cap I noticed a lot of disjointedness and lazy story telling. The "safe house" Capristi's looks like a grocery store, I thought that seemed like an odd place to summon Logan, Cap and Tasha. Then Cap specifically talks about not killing, Widow thinks the hand ninja's aren't human so she seems to be killing them with her widow's bite. Cap is upset when he finds out they were human and died, Logan says he and Tyger will make sure their families are taken care of. Tyger remarks that the REAL hand ninja will deal with the people who set up the imposters, Cap says "that's not justice", then Logan tells him that Madripoor has it's own rules, and Tasha tells Steve that he is missing the point. Steve asks Tasha what she means and she says she will tell him later, which she doesn't in this issue. I wish she would have because I also missed the point lol.

During the scene at the bar in the local village everyone is talking at the bar and the explosion comes out of nowhere. We don't know how Bloodscream and Roughouse found them it just sort of happens, maybe later we will learn Tyger set them up or something but it was weird. I mentioned in the review that Tyger was crushed by rubble, well the rubble looked like a stalagmite fell on her, not the remains of the building they were in and then the stalagmite broke into a bunch of pieces?? I know the village was underground but it was a distracting enough transition that it took me out of the story. Watching Cap get swung around by his head and used to knock out Tasha was actually kind of funny on the re-read but it is also a big distraction from the overall story. My last complaint is the ending is super flat, Cap has a plan and he needs a spy but we don't know what his plan is at all or why it requires a spy, I guess we will find out next month.

Overall I am enjoying the plot, this issue suffered from poor transitions and it feels like Claremont is setting up all the players in a rush so he can have them in place for the rest of the story, and because of that the dialogue suffers. From all my complaints above you would think the art was really bad, it's not terrible, the main characters are drawn well but the background ranges from bland to "how did everyone end up here?". I don't like how Tyger is drawn, but I think it's more the costume design than anything else. I'm hoping next issue is more stable now that we have the players on the board.

[Keno]

CC still building through the depths of Madripoor.