Wolverine Legends 2: Meltdown

Comic Info

Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #1

Reprints Havok & Wolverine:  Meltdown #1-4 (March 1989-October 1989).  Dr. Neutron and General Meltdown are playing a dangerous game.  They want to harness the power of a nuclear meltdown like Chernobyl and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.  With their eyes on Havok of the X-Men, the two must first find a way to get rid of Wolverine who could create a foil to their plans.  With a girl named Scarlett at their bidding, Meltdown and Neutron are about to take on two of the X-Men’s most dangerous members…and they must be ready!

Written by Walt Simonson and Louise Simonson, Wolverine Legends 2:  Meltdown collects the 1989 Marvel/Epic four issue limited series originally called Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown.  The comic was a bookshelf style comic and illustrated by Jon J. Muth and Kent Williams.

Epic was an interesting comic line.  The idea behind it was often to take a more adult approach…kind of like DC’s Vertigo today.  The comics presented by Epic were often unrelated to the Marvel Universe, but occasionally comics like this and the Silver Surfer would rise within Epic.

I don’t really know if this comic is in the X-Men’s true canon.  Both Meltdown and Neutron were created for this series.  Meltdown was killed but Neutron’s “game of chess” was still going on at the end of series with other chess pieces like Spider-Man and the Punisher being seen…yet Neutron has yet to appear again.

Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #2

The story is an interesting team-up of two characters that didn’t usually seem to interact.  Wolverine has always been so antagonistic that a team-up with Scott Summers’ brother seems a bit odd (especially since Scott always took the wrath of Wolverine).  Havok at this point didn’t usually get much attention, so it is nice to see him taking a lead role in a comic and it almost makes me wish that he’d get the shot at some more solo action (besides the bad Mutant X).

The art for this comic is also quite good.  It has a very surreal look from the painted art.  It appears that Muth focused on Havok while Williams focused on Wolverine.  The art of both works well together and if it didn’t say this on the title pages, I wouldn’t know it was more than one artist.

I like Havok & Wolverine:  Meltdown and if you can find it or Wolverine Legends 2:  Meltdown, you should pick it up.  It falls into that “dark” period of comics before the big bold and bombastic art of the ’90s which was brighter but often lacked substance.  I kind of wish that Marvel would somehow revisit this series and give Havok & Wolverine another go.