Wolverine’s solo book has become a bit confusing, overlapping with several storylines from the other X-books, and carrying along with it a simmering story about Cyber that is building towards a big clash with Wolverine against Genesis aka Tyler Dayspring.  I’ve grouped these issues together because they all are part of that big arc, even if some of the issues have an “A-storyline” that has nothing to do with it and is almost a done-in-one.

So let’s just hit the important highlights and note that there’s some perfectly fine adventuring that I’m not writing about because it’s not part of the bigger narrative.  But Larry Hama is a solid Wolverine writer so if, for example, you want to watch him take some younger X-Men on a hike, you should pick up #96, which also has some flashbacks to Wolverine’s love story with Mariko.  It’s very well done.  You also get to see him briefly fight a bear.

Meanwhile, that Cyber storyline I mentioned gets resolved (at least for Cyber) when the Dark Riders feed him to flesh-eating bugbots.

They eat all his flesh, leaving only his adamantium armor behind—which is what Dayspring wanted, anyway.  Not knowing he’s dead—or even that he was kidnapped—Wolverine and Jean Grey try to track Cyber and the trail leads to the offices of Landau, Luckman & Lake, the law firm who hired Zoe Culloden and Noah DuBois to stalk Wolverine.  Logan has been picking up on their scents, and now he is starting to understand the connection.  Logan and Jean figure out that the law offices have an interdimensional gateway, enter it, and find Chimera.

She’s kind of like a BDSM interdimensional receptionist.  They fight for a bit (pointlessly), and then Zoe appears and gives Wolverine a key (literally, a little key) that she says will help him take on Genesis.  She then teleports Wolverine to Madripoor, where he promptly gets arrested and is freed from jail—and given his yellow costume—by Tyger Tiger.

Issue #98 is basically a done-in-one in Madripoor, but it does lead to the death of General Coy, Karma’s father, and he’s been a long-running character so I guess that’s kind of important.

From there, he uses the key to open a warp portal in the law firm’s Madripoor office.  Wolverine is continuing to track Genesis, while his teammates are trying to track him. 

Genesis ends up capturing Wolverine fairly easily, and in issue #100 we learn that his “evil” plan is actually to power up Wolverine. 

He wants to bond the adamantium he took from Cyber back on to Logan’s bones, giving him an adamantium exoskeleton again.  Surprisingly, though, it’s all a fakeout.  Cannonball intervenes, Wolverine rejects the adamantium, and he’s still made of bone at the end of the issue.

That’s pretty cool.  I honestly didn’t see that coming.  And in the process, all of the Dark Riders—and Tyler Dayspring—are killed.

Wolverine is now completely savage—and he declines Cannonball’s invitation to come home.

Stick and Elektra make a cameo, sensing what has occurred.

They believe Wolverine needs to be stopped, seeing how he has become a completely feral killer.  Elektra’s a killer for hire.  Wolverine was killing people who captured and experimented on him.  I’m not sure I follow this idea.  Anyhow, it’s just a way to soft-launch the 1996 Elektra solo series.

This was a GREAT ending to a story that started out jumbled and messy.  I love that they tricked me into thinking we were getting the status quo reset, with Wolverine vanquishing Genesis and getting his adamantium back, only to double-down on the feral, adamantiumless version.

Well done!