July 4, 2018- WEAPON LOST #3

The holiday week saw only one book out from me - the third installment of my part of the Hunt for Wolverine... Weapon Lost #3!

Art by Matteo Buffagni, colors by Jim Charalampidis, and letters from Vc Joe Sabino. The cover's by Giuseppe Camuncoli, inked by Roberto Poggi, and colored by Dean White.

This issue was an exercise in giving the readers what they want, while not giving them what they want, and (hopefully) not boring them while they’re getting what you give them instead of what they think they want.

Hmm. I think I might have lost control over that sentence, but you get the idea. Weapon Lost has always been structured as a detective story with noir influences, primarily achieved here through Daredevil’s running voiceover, his “case notes” and of course, the killer art and colors from Matteo and Jim. But hardbitten prose and lots of shadows will only take you so far. Detective stories have plenty of other common elements, and here we get a big one - the “red herring.”

Red herrings are so named because they stand out when laid next to a bunch of normal herrings (which are not red.) They catch the eye, gather attention, and distract from whatever else one should be paying attention to. That was Albert’s role here. Daredevil and his team went looking for a Wolverine, so they found one. Fortunately, the Marvel Universe has a surplus of clawed folks, and Albert fit the bill for what I was looking for. He has such a weird backstory, too, which you can read about here. (Fun thing about that link, too - they must have just updated Albert’s page with Matteo’s version of him from this issue - pretty neat.)

Another big trope in detective stories is the idea that the investigators run across the clue they need early on, but don’t recognize it for what it is until later on - often not until it’s too late. That happened here, of course, but to see how it all plays out, you’ll need to check out the final installment next month in Weapon Lost #4.

Next week, two massive issue: Daredevil #605 and Darth Vader #18. See you then!