Scenario: Your friend of many years, someone who you have shared many laughs and hard times with, possibly even been intimate with, dies. A few years later, you find that someone has exhumed your friend’s body and later find that this person is actually alive after all, though you aren’t entirely sure how. How would you react when coming face to face with that person? Bursting with joy? Overcome by sadness? Generally overflowing with questions?

Well, if you’re a member of the X-Men, you’ve definitely had this experience…. Probably a few times. I mean, the X-Men have a tendency to just up and die only to be back later like “what’s for lunch, guys?” It’s understandable that after a few times losing teammates to hell or giant space bullets, you’d probably get a little desensitized at some point. Case point:

Wolverine is back! His friends have finally found him! And, well….. they kind of look like they just got jury duty.

I mean, to be fair, everyone pictured above has seriously been through some crazy stuff. Space bullets and Death Seeds and actual Hell.

Seriously, that is a serious track record. Maybe that explains the faces. They’re looking at Wolverine like “oh cool, you get two miniseries around your resurrection. That’s cool. Jean got one, you get two. I don’t recall a ‘Hunt for Nightcrawler’ or ‘Nightcrawler: Resurrection’ series, but that’s fine.”

I like that this cover realistically grasps how you’d start to feel if your friends were fairly regularly suffering severe trauma only to be fine a few months or years later. Like, at what point do you stop having funerals? that’s why they always do the memorials at the mansion. If they had to find a funeral home every time, they’d need some serious GoFundMe campaigns.

I also enjoy that this cover perfectly represents how many people are feeling about Wolverine coming back: “Oh wow, he’s back. Totally didn’t see that coming when they originally killed him off. Super, glad that he’s back. Oh, he has hot claws? oh wow.”

Well, welcome back Wolverine. Hope your time as a sales-hiking mini-series-based gimmick does ya good.

~C