In the world of a Wolverine/Cap team-up, nothing has to make sense, apparently. No one has to think, and nothing needs to be explained. This is the sort of story that might have made for an inconsequential but divering story in Marvel Team-Up 25 years ago, but today, it comes off as crude, even sloppy storytelling. This should be the equivalent of a buddy action movie, but the action is bland and the banter among the characters barely registers. Even younger, new readers -- for whom I recommended the first issue -- will be left wondering about the omission of plot and character information here.
Captain America and Warbird discover Wolverine in the sewers under New York City. The feral mutant is barely alive; for some reason his healing factor isn't kicking in like it should to patch up the multiple gunshot wounds he's sustained. But that's not enough to stop the stubborn Canadian hero, and he joins the two colorfully clad Avengers for his search for the members of the Contingency and the dangerous technology they've stolen. Making like the Scooby-Doo gang, they split up and meet with limited success in their critical, heroic endeavor.
Derenick's work here seems to be clearly influenced by the style of the late John Buscema, but there are inconsistencies in his depiction of the three protagonists. The lack of more traditional inking techniques here certainly seems to hold his work back. The villains are visually uninteresting, and the impact of Wolverine's critical injuries is softened by the omission of any blood-red hues when it comes to the colors. Derenick tries to bring a mature intensity to the characters by casting the heroes' faces in shadow, but those attempts fall flat.
The plot is secondary to the action here. The script itself makes little mention of the heroes' mission or why it's so important. Only Wolverine's powers are explained at all, and the villains are not defined well at all. Their leader, Rapture, is a particularly frustrating character, as her abilities are completely nebulous. The conflicts here are by the numbers, and they remind me of the sort of generic fight sequences one would expect to see in a super-hero RPG session, a fight for the sake of a fight.
Also irksome is the writer's willingness to ignore the rules of his own game. He tells us Wolverine's healing factor isn't working, yet critical wounds still show no lasting effect. The loss of his power doesn't affect the plot in the least, so I have to wonder what the point of that story development was in the first place.
