3 out of 5

Lead characters decked in all leather-black?  Check.  An industrial wasteland?  Check.  A tech-fueled, Giger-esque league of mutating baddies?  Check.  Written and drawn by Tsutomo Nihei?  Sure.

Nihei has been evolving the same template across his own manga series (Blame!, Knights of Sidonia) for years; we let him get away with the repetition because he generally does some killer world-building along the way, and then the added Easter eggs of connections between his creations.  …Which might exist in Snikt!, which was Nihei’s opportunity to take on Wolverine (or perhaps Wolvie’s opportunity to plan in a Nihei-world) and I just wasn’t savvy enough to notice, but regardless, this really amounts to the same level of quality as Tsutomu’s Halo offering: it’s interesting but barebones in terms of plot development.  Nihei seems to work best molding his ideas as he goes, and with only five issues to work with, there ain’t much molding room.  So Wolvie is transported to the near future, tasked with destroying the techno-organic virulent beasties which have destroyed most of mankind because, wouldn’t ya know, their only weakness is adamantium.  Why?  Sorry – too busy drawing cool panels of Wolverine slicing bad guys to say.

But that’s really all Nihei is aiming for, here: an excuse to depict what’s likely a favorite character of his doing things he enjoys drawing, and the story perfectly serves that need.  Knowing Nihei, it’s exactly what I’d expect.  The addition of color (Guru eFX) is nice, and appropriately moody.  Cory Petit messes up a word bubble and his sound effects stick out against Tsutomu’s sketchiness, but the dialogue / sounds are minimal anyway, so we’ll allow it.

If you don’t know Nihei but love Wolvie, this is a fun take.  And if you’re not a fan of either… ask your LCS for a recommendation, dude.  I can’t keep solving all your problems.