Weapon X: The Return Omnibus by Frank Tieri, et al.

They’ll let anyone into this club

Weapon X: The Return Omnibus is a mammoth hardcover tome compiling about 50 issues worth of Marvel Comics. This includes the entire 28-issue Weapon X series that began in 2002, as well as several related issues of Marvel’s Wolverine and Deadpool titles. Most of these issues were written by Frank Tieri; the artists vary. In the Marvel Universe, Weapon X is the name of a Canadian government program that experiments on mutants to transform them into ultimate killing machines. This is how Wolverine got the adamantium grafted onto his skeleton. In Weapon X: The Return, that clandestine project resurges under a new director who enlists many mutants into the program by offering them enhanced powers. Wolverine, however, wants no part of the new Weapon X and works to shut it down.

The original Weapon X story appeared in 1991 issues of Marvel Comics Presents. This Wolverine origin story, written and drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, is one of Marvel’s masterpieces. As a sequel to that saga, Weapon X: The Return doesn’t measure up to the classic upon which it is built. At first, Wolverine was the only Weapon X experiment that we knew about. Over time, however, it was revealed that Sabretooth and several others were also products of the Weapon X program, and with Wolverine they comprised a CIA covert ops team. That made for a pretty good storyline also. Over time, however, Marvel writers couldn’t resist adding more heroes and villains to the Weapon X fold. In doing so, Weapon X devolved from an exclusive team of elite killers to a club that will pretty much let anyone in, no matter how obscure of a superhero they may be. Here in Weapon X: The Return, for instance, three of the main characters are Marrow, Chamber, and Aurora, who I’m not sure even qualify as C-team Marvel heroes. As a result, the name Weapon X doesn’t mean what it used to. It’s now just another alternative SHIELD for antiheroes, like so many others that Marvel has introduced in the last few decades.

The story is rather repetitive. It seems like everyone’s always hunting Sabretooth. Then he shows up, kills somebody, and disappears, so everyone’s hunting him again. The director of Weapon X and his second-in-command continually wrestle for control of the program, and it bounces back and forth between them like a tennis ball. The last five issues of the book are from a miniseries called Weapon X: Days of Future Now, which is one of those possible future stories that turns into a What If alternate reality where you have the pleasure of seeing many hallowed Marvel heroes get killed. As a time travel story, however, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and it’s a rather inconclusive way of ending this 50-odd issue story arc.

The art is a mix of good and bad. No creator credits appear amid the comics themselves, only a one page list of artists at the front of the book, so it’s hard to even recall who drew what. Personally, I’m not a big fan of Marvel’s twenty-first century style. I think the influence of manga, along with digital coloring, has resulted in a lot of stylized figures that look like plastic dolls. No matter how gory or risqué the story, more often than not the art just looks like a children’s book. I remember when Neal Adams drew Sauron back in X-Men #60, he looked like a horrifying creature. In these newer comics, however, Sauron looks like a Saturday morning cartoon designed for a toy tie-in. In terms of both story and art, Weapon X: The Return Omnibus is a big book loaded with mediocre work. You can almost hear Barry Windsor-Smith rolling his eyes in disgust.
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