X-Men Blue #30 // Review
It’s the son of Wolverine vs the son of Wolverine as The Search for Jimmy Hudson concludes!
Cullen Bunn and the art crew of Nathan Stockman and Matt Milla put out another issue of X-Men Blue, dealing with the fallout from the Venomized crossover. Together, they try to bring the answers to an important question: what’s the deal with Jimmy Hudson now?
Daken, fresh from his run as an X-man last storyline, has come to end the threat of the Poisons once and for all. This also means ending Jimmy Hudson’s life, or at least what’s left of him. As you might guess, the rest of the original X-men Blue team don’t like this idea, and a 6 on 1 battle ensues while Jimmy tries to find out what he really is.
Bunn does a solid job trying to reconcile the various takes Jimmy Hudson has had as a character in his history in the Marvel and Ultimate universes, making some sense out of his new direction. There’s some enjoyable self-doubt and pathos there that seems to be mainly found in an X-book. However, a sticking point is Daken. After tending to act more heroically (for lack of a better term) during the Cry Havok storyline, he’s back to being sadistic and trying to actively kill people with swords and claws. Had these two stories been written by different writers, it would have been much more understandable. Instead, it leaves the reader cold, wondering if Bunn forgot his own attempt at character development only a month or two prior.
The art is fantastic in most places, making liberal use of double page layouts to suggest speed and distance in the fight. Characters are incredibly expressive, to where even the inhuman Poison has facial expressions. There is really but one small problem, and it’s with Jimmy Hudson’s Poison form. Stockman obviously was trying to combine the mask of Wolverine with the organic tangle that is a symbiote, but the end result looks like the Poison has long, lustrous eyebrows. This alone can take some of the seriousness out of the fight.
While it’s not the ending some readers were hoping for, it’s certainly an interesting look at two of the children of Wolverine, and the only book dealing with any potential fallout from Venomized. Check it out if you’re looking for either.
