Before a vigilante stops pontificating long enough to be a hero, he’s decapitated. A couple on their first date is shot with extreme impunity and a maternity ward is the scene of a bloody massacre. These actions are a result of the Deathloks and they’ve come to this time stream to eradicate threats to the future. Whose future is uncertain, but in this present Captain America is the next target.
It’s a homecoming, a welcome back from the dead party that only Wolverine could throw. Steve Rogers once again is resurrected and after the events of the civil war and Norman Osborn’s reign of destruction it’s time to let off some steam. That leaves Bucky Barnes vulnerable since he replaced Cap. Being next on the Deathloks’ hit list raises a multitude of questions. And this fast-paced, surgically precise “Wolverine Weapon X: Tomorrow Dies Today†deals with more than your favorite claw-popping mutant. This motion comic based on the last volume of the limited series deals with “the nature of self-sacrifice†and why some events are fixed and can never be changed.
In films and television there has always been the question of how come someone can’t go back in time and kill Hitler or save Abraham Lincoln? There are various reasons, when things like this happen people tend to become the worst of themselves. Whether they are selfish and try to take over the world or be the richest person alive, they change the way things should go. The next thing you know Hitler becomes the president of the world or Lincoln capitulates to avoid a civil war, only to have the United States be a fractured nation. Evil men cause destruction and sometimes good men die too soon, but what happens when you see events unfolding and you decide not to change your own past?
“Tomorrow Dies Today†is short, however it leaves you with important questions of who really are the heroes and are you brave enough to change your own future by leaving a horrendous past intact? Surprisingly none of the major heroes like Captain America are struggling with these issues. What you do get to see from the likes of Spiderman, Luke Cage, and Spider Woman is a glimpse into the Marvel Knights world. Their existence is riddled with complexity and grey areas. In the middle of a battle Spider-Woman gets into Wolverine’s grill about a woman he’s seeing. There’s no philosophical conversation about the meaning of life and death, instead it becomes about a woman who didn’t know she was replaced. We tend to see the Marvel universe as always dealing with monumental life issues, but what happens when you’re on a team with an old lover and you have to watch his back in the middle of battle? You ask a question that rattles him enough to make him think about you after the fight is over. In the next instant you have to intervene between a Death lok and his quarry. For these Knights the larger aspects of the world come into play while being interspersed with the mundane of everyday life.
Jason Aaron’s writing brings life to what he did on the page. Spider-Man’s witticisms and the animosity between Barnes and Logan is a great fit for the screen. And Ron Garney’s artwork complements the action of this series. There are no jerky movements of the characters. The static, robotic-type behavior of characters in other motion comics are replaced with fluid movements and consistent sequences.
For the most part “Wolverine Weapon X: Tomorrow Dies Today†makes you anticipate the next script to DVD work that will be coming from Marvel next.
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