Comic Retro Review: Weapon X First Class

I have the Marvel Unlimited app on my phone to catch up on the comic’s I’ve missed. Somehow I came across 2008’s Weapon X: First Class and realized I’d never read it; you see, that was in the time frame where I was reading everything with Wolverine and Deadpool.

The 3 issue mini-series is set during the Giant Sized X-Men days and deals with the Professor attempting to help Logan regain his memories. Each of the 3 issues has a guest – Sabertooth, Deadpool, and Gambit – which is featured in a second story that ties into Wolverine’s and Weapon X’s history.

The story from Mark Robinson is pretty much a rehash of the Weapon X story by Barry Windsor-Smith in Marvel Comics Presents with a few twists. Wolverine and the Professor (for part of it) are watching some of the events unfold. They also battle parts of Wolverine’s psyche, which takes the form of Sabertooth. The issue with the story is Wolverine has already regained his memory in current time (2005 – House of M) and, as readers, we’ve already gotten better tidbits of his past.

The backup stories are fun, especially the Gambit one. It’s retconning how Gambit and Sinister first meet and has Gambit breaking into the Weapon X facility while they are making the Wolverine.

The art from Robert Campanella is very much fitting for the story. The characters are recognizable, but also take an almost abstract form when they are astral projections in Wolverine’s mind. They remind me of many of the late ’90s/early 2000s X-Men books.

I give these a C; they are fun reads, but pretty much a rehash of what we knew already about the characters. You won’t missing anything if you skip them though.

I think part of the reason the series was made was to get Wolverine and Weapon X back in a book together before the 2009 Wolverine: Weapon X series by Jason Aaron was released.