OK, here's the good news... penciller Bart Sears seems to have abandoned the McFarlane-esque pinup approach to comic art that got in the way of the storytelling of the opening arc of Captain America & the Falcon. He goes for a more straightforward here. Way's script, on the other hand, is all about misdirection, about establishing a sense of menace by not showing the threat itself. It's somewhat effective, but ultimately, it's rather obvious that the title character isn't the villain of this piece, as we're led to believe. Of course, the fact that it's his name on the cover sort of gave that away ahead of time.
In the dead of winter, a U.S. Coast Guard ship in the middle of Lake Superior picks up a desperate call for help from a small island refuleing depot. Paying no heed to a warning scrawled on one of the few buildings to be seen, a rescue/search party is dispatched, and they make a grisly discovery. Nothing can be done for the men who were living on the island, but the women and children are still missing. Little does the search party know that also making his way through the island snow is a certain feral mutant with no qualms about bloody murder.
No full-page poses block the reader's view of the actual story and action here, thankfully; that was the problem with Sears's work on Cap & the Falcon. Sears's style suits the towering, bulky nature of the superhuman characters here, and the storytelling is clear... for the most part. There's a scene that's meant to be shocking, meant to drive home the horrific nature of the crimes that have befallen the residents of the frozen island. Unfortunately, what's meant to look like a mess of body parts strewn about the place instead looks like a bunch of guys half-buried in the snow. I would expect, though, that this isn't Sears's fault, that the visuals were purposefully toned down so as not to offend a potential readership of younger folks.
The reader is so clearly meant to believe that Sabretooth is the bad guy here that the twist that will be revealed later on, likely next issue, isn't much of a twist at all. The story is as transparent as Saran Wrap. That being said, the additional character introduced into the story on the final page was one I was not expecting to see, and I look forward to the dynamic that he will bring to the plot.
The greatest strength of this issue is the strong characterization Way injects into the first two characters we meet: Captain Mitchell and his friend and mate, Hamilton. The opening scene rings true, and it has the added bonus of offering an entertaining story within a story. Hamilton's fear shines through in this issue, and Mitchell's devotion to duty does as well. 5/10
