You didn't think Marvel would let a silly thing like Wolverine being dead prevent them from publishing more Wolverine-branded comics, did you? The Ol' Canucklehead left behind a wealth of allies and enemies, and they're all teaming up for an extended adventure in the fallout of his death. Whether that adventure will be worth following is still up in the air after this first issue.

There's a lot to be said for the weekly format when it's executed properly. Marvel could just as easily have launched new solo titles for Daken, Sabretooth, X-23, et al with different creative teams and left it at that. But a weekly series helmed by Charles Soule and Ray Fawkes means that the overarching story will remain focused and purposeful even as individual arcs move in their own directions. Frankly, the larger X-Men franchise could benefit from a similar treatment.So the general premise of this series is sound. Unfortunately, it doesn't come together all that well in issue #1. More than anything, the problem stems from Soule's efforts to juggle too many characters at once. This isn't a particularly clean start for the new series. Wolverines is already building directly from both Death of Wolverine: The Logan Legacy and Death of Wolverine: The Weapon X Project. This issue includes the full casts from both. By the time Soule is through introducing the entire gang and setting up their first big fight scene, there's little room for anything else. Compare it to a similar project like Batman Eternal. That series started small and built towards larger conflicts. It didn't throw Red Robin, Bluebird, Selina Kyle, Spoiler, and the rest of Batman's allies at readers in the first issue. Hopefully once the Wolverines cast is broken up a bit and subsequent arcs focus on specific characters, the series as a whole will improve.It remains to be seen if the character dynamics can keep readers coming back, as well. Soule showed a strong, very minimalist take on writing Wolverine in the original Death of Wolverine mini-series. Unfortunately, that deft hand hasn't been as apparent in these fallout projects. There's an excess of dialogue in this issue, as characters are prone to stating their feelings, rehashing old relationships, and generally providing an unnecessary level of exposition. There's some interesting stuff in this first issue, most notably Sabretooth's radically altered, post-AXIS personality change. But there are also weird moments, like the oddly chummy relationship between X-23 and Daken. Soule's general handling of Daken as a more sympathetic figure generally torn up by his father's death rings a bit false. On the other hand, it's not as if there's been a great deal of consistency in Daken's portrayal over the years.It can be tough to treat all the Death of Wolverine books as one continuous story given the stylistic differences between each book. That disjointed trend continues as Nick Bradshaw steps in to illustrate this first arc. Bradshaw is no stranger to Wolverine's realm given his work on Wolverine and the X-Men. Unfortunately, his style doesn't suit the tone of this book as well as it did Jason Aaron's zany storytelling on WatX. The cast is comprised of grim killers, anti-heroes, and outright villains. Yet the book is drawn like a bright, cheery superhero romp. This tonal disconnect becomes especially noticeable in the final pages as the plot takes a darker turn. The fact that fill-in artist Allison Borges steps in to handle two pages here winds up helping the book, as Borges' darker style is more in line with the writing.FCO Plascencia's colors don't really help in this regard. We've seen that Plascencia is more than capable of tackling darker material. Just look at his work on Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman. But here, his colors only give a flat, lifeless quality to Bradshaw's characters.