Wolverine: Snikt! is an interesting side dish that manages to wow visually while being mostly rote in every other respect.

Wolverine: Snikt! – or simply Snikt! from here forward – was part of Marvel's rather short-lived Tsunami imprint and was originally published in 2003. This title was helmed by Tsutomu Nihei of Blame! fame (among others), who was both writer and artist on this project. In a certain sense, having an established mangaka come in and work with a pre-existing and long-standing character like Wolverine is a novel treat. Then again, in practice, it's not substantially different from how cape comics will often have different creators behind the wheel, providing their unique spin on a character. Because of Snikt!'s publication specifics with Tsutomu Nihei creating the project, it feels akin to a solid creator-led side story in a four-to-six-issue miniseries.

The actual results of this collaborative effort are… mixed.

First, the good. Snikt! is, at the very least, visually impactful when it gets going. There are striking panels involving the Mandate creatures forming in truly grotesque ways. The strange landscapes are empty and haunting in their vastness, and Wolverine feels as isolated visually as he does narratively. When Wolverine is in motion, his whole body radiates big expressive lines, almost like looking at a sound signature for a particularly aggressive song. The supporting characters all have these slightly off-title stances, which combine with their spindly frames to make them appear near death, barely able to stand and beg Wolverine for his help in fighting the Mandate.

Wolverine's look in Snikt! is very much of the era. He sports a leather jacket and a scowl but no blue and gold spandex – in keeping with other contemporary depictions like his look in Ultimate X-Men and New X-Men at the time. It's all leather and serious business, blood, and grim tidings. Though it fails to stand out from the pack, it fits the story being told. I certainly enjoy plenty of comics from this era (I have a great nostalgia for the work from Morrison and Quitely on New X-Men in particular); I enjoyed them despite the costume designs and always felt too much was lost in the transition away from multi-colored spandex to leather and gunmetal. Whether that's a hangup for you on Snikt! will vary.

Snikt!'s problem – or its most significant problem – is how mundane it feels. Everything about the setup is very ho-hum, and the execution is often mediocre, save for a few splashy pages of violence.

The premise is not that exciting. Wolverine gets transported alone to a desolate future where he has to save the day – okay, fine. Averting a future apocalypse before it can pass is totally within the X-Men oeuvre. The premise of the Mandate creatures being a viral threat gone wrong also works, a sort of monstrous mirror of mutation to play off. It's fine, but not much beyond that. X-Men stories often do these things, so playing with these tropes is totally within bounds. But there's not much to hook the reader in and make this story feel all that unique.

In fact, for a title called Wolverine: Snikt! there is very little of Wolverine's character in it and not much violent Snikting. Wolverine is separated from the rest of the X-Men cast and has no other big personalities to bounce off of, while the wasteland survivors are largely dull exposition delivery mechanisms. Wolverine has little to no dialogue and no internal monologue, while the paneling and composition of the scenes only do a little beyond showing who is standing in a room. The only real emotional beat of the entire work is when Wolverine sees the room full of headstones – a striking visual and a poignant moment when he truly reacts to what is happening on some level.

The rather generic enemies and landscapes don't do much to inspire, either. While the setting does look good on a technical level, it isn't presented in a way that excites in any novel sense. If you've read any post-apocalyptic story in the past forty years, you've seen this before. And the Mandate are rather uninteresting villains whose premise is their entire characterization. They have one theoretically interesting weakness—adamantium—but that only serves as the hook to get Wolverine to this time in the first place. When you compound that with the fact that the audience only sees two characters fight – a robot protector warrior with adamantium rounds and Wolverine with his adamantium claws—and they both can harm the Mandate… well, it's a non-issue. They are generic robot monsters who never speak or emote and have no purpose beyond killing all humans. Wolverine fights them in the most direct way possible, and they are defeated.

It's pretty light on the ground, all things considered.

Wolverine: Snikt! is simply too bland and forgettable to recommend. It is nice to have a rerelease of the work, and I am always excited to see these collaborative projects. But the final product here does not offer much that hasn't been done a hundred times before, often with more energy and novelty. It was by no means a poor effort, yet at the same time, it feels rather dull and generic by almost every metric. There are a few amazing panels that I thought showed Tsutomu Nihei's particular skills—I'm just not sure that's enough to make me feel it's worth recommending without caveats. Wolverine: Snikt! is a perfectly serviceable work that shines brightly in a few areas while being rather by the numbers in others. There are no real mistakes to be found besides not differentiating itself much from similar cape comics or manga that play in the same tropes. It feels like a fun historical anecdote more than required reading, but it is still fun enough.