The culling continues.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jim Zub, Ray Fawkes
Art: Carlos Nieto, Victor Nava
Colors: Matt Milla
Letterer: Cory Petit
What They Say:
Wolverine is “the best he is at what he does,” and what he does is hunt victims in Murderworld! Our contestants are about to feel the SNIKT! Will anyone survive Arcade’s deadliest game? Arcade and his schemes have been a punchline in the past, but this game is no joke. Each issue ups the ante and will keep readers guessing right up until the end. Don’t miss it!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Murderworld was something I found fascinating when I first started reading Marvel’s books back in the early 80s. I had gotten exposed to it through X-Men during an appearance there and it was just a couple of years after I first started collecting at that time. Originally appearing in 1978, Arcade and his Murderworld have shown up many times and we’ve seen a few variations on it. It’s part of a series of singles that are interconnected with this storyline and, unknowingly, had picked up this one as I was curious by all the Wolverine characters on the cover since I’m decades out of date on him. I’ve enjoyed a lot of Jim Zub’s works over the years and very much Ray Fawkes, so that made it an easy try. And both Carlos Nietos and Victor Nava deliver something that feels very Murderworld-y here, especially with the always strong Matt Milla doing the color work for it.
So, there’s always going to be some disappointment in something like this because I’m coming in during the middle, again unknowingly, and that we’re also not getting any of these Wolverine characters actually involved. With it being Murderworld, the focus is on a group of “contestants” that Arcade has sent in to go through his latest maze of chaos and death and during one part early on a group makes it out of the initial cave only to face off against all the automatons of the various Wolverine types there. They’re able to survive through sheer luck more than anything else and that lets them keep moving. The whole point of Murderworld is to put on a show so the odds are always bad for the players but those watching from home and the ad revenue is good for them. The downside is that what we get here are a cast of characters that are generally nameless unknowns. And that can be decent enough for a little self-insert time but it mostly just keeps you from connecting with events.
We get a nod to a bit more of what’s going on with a look at Black Widow elsewhere talking with someone to get a handle on where this event is taking place. While they’re not able to reveal much, they do know that someone named Maria Komarova was sent in intentionally for this and we see how the contestants come across her. She’s not got a lot to say but with a skintight outfit and a medical kit, there’s a sense she’s far more than the rest of these plucky contestants. With nods to what’s going on with Arcade in the booth and the staff that really dislike working for him, we see them pushed further as he winnows out the field where the cruelty is the point. But we also see how things really turn along the way as the guy we’re following seems to be more aware – even just lightly- of what’s going on and that’s what starts to things off in a bad way for Arcade. It’s never good when the mice get in the walls and all the defenses that keep you hidden keep them hidden too.
In Summary:
It looks like the next issue focuses on Moon Knight but again, it’s not really Moon Knight so there’s not too much of a draw there because of that. If we were following “name” characters facing off against other versions of heroes it’d be one thing, but here we get mostly nobodies from what we can tell at this point, though the few nods to their past highlight how some villains view the various heroes that they face in interesting ways. The book flows well and hits its stride pretty quickly even without having anyone to really connect with as it leans into a standard survival horror kind of approach. It looks great and has a solid script but it just lacks that connection for me. It may work better if I’d known that there were two issues before this but it still works well enough, as long as you realize it’s not a Wolverine story.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: January 25th, 2023
MSRP: $3.99
