I mostly know Nixon's name from some terrible Wolverine issues, but I can't hold that against him, because it's been a long time since I've read any good Wolverine issues. His take on Weapon X is no worse than Scalera's offering this week, taking a lackluster concept and doing the best he can with it, although Nixon's characterization and plot have some flaws to them as well. Like the other Weapon X one-shot this week, the big draw is the artwork, and Van Sciver does a very nice job on the even more inhuman and monstrous Wild Child, as well as the sexy counterpart of Aurora. There's actually something of a fun (if cliched) story here, but the trappings of Weapon X and some pacing irregularities make it fall flat for me.
I have to give Nixon credit for establishing Wildchild as a character in this issue. His completely different appearance, his inability to speak and his generally freakish outlook on life are communicated through narrative captions and a flashback sequence. Since he is a silent character, a fair bit of the characterization falls to Van Sciver, and I was impressed that the artist conveyed the monstrous nature of the character while still giving him some human emotions that makes the main story resonate.
In fact, the central story isn't too bad. The beauty and the beast story has been done to death, but the history that Wildchild and Aurora share gives it a little bit of a twist, and Nixon serves up a tasty little bit of evil in the ending to cap it off. The story is made weak largely through Nixon's choice to flashback in the middle of the story, rather than the beginning, which results in a shaky transition into a story set in Japan when Sabretooth and Wildchild attempted to recruit Sunfire, and Wildchild got one of his latest mutations as a result.
The story pages in Japan are pretty bad, featuring one of the most cliched and poorly-dialogued Sunfires I've seen (and I've seen him done plenty badly) and a Sabretooth whose bravado and bloodlust is so over-the-top as to be laughable. Basically, everyone in the scene is trying to play the hardass, and the result is something closer to funny than impressive and dark. There are flaws in the main story as well, not so much in the dialogue (which there's little of, really) but in the pacing, which sees the wrap-up of the Aurora/Wildchild "relationship" develop way too fast and come to an abrupt ending. All in all, I was left wondering if the book would have been better for leaving out the Sunfire pages entirely.
Basically, this is a good establishing one-shot for a character that I couldn't give a damn about. If you're a Wildchild fan (what are the odds?) or someone curious about Weapon X (again, odds aren't so good), however, this is not a bad introduction to one of the characters.
