Issue(s): Wolverine #47
Cover Date: Oct 91
Title: "Dog day"
Credits:
Larry Hama - Writer
Jerry DeCaire - Penciler
Don Hudson - Inker
Suzanne Gaffney - Assistant Editor
Bob Harras - Editor

Review/plot:
Marc Silvestri needed regular breaks when he was penciling X-Men, and we're just coming off Wolverine's bi-weekly period, so most likely this was a planned art fill-in. It's an isloated standalone and inconsequential story, although it does start with Wolverine picking up his bike from where he left it during the Elsie Dee storyline, and we see that SHIELD gives Wolverine a little special treatment.

But the rest of the issue is about an absolute psycho that kills his mom...

...robs a convenience store and kills the store clerk and his assistant...

...and nearly runs down a kid.

Wolverine confronts him (and note his completely bloodless wounds!).

But the story is paralleled with a flashback where Wolverine's pet wolf got rabies, and Silverfox told Wolverine that he had to shoot him.

In the flashback, Wolverine is unable to kill the wolf, so Silverfox had to. And in the present, Wolverine is unable to bring himself to kill the psycho, so a policewoman (and mother of the kid that almost got run down) has to.

It's not much of a story. And Gerald DeCaire's art is, well, fill-in art. But it's interesting to see Hama creating such a heinous bad guy but still having Wolverine not able to "put him down". Compare/contrast to Tom DeFalco's Bloody Choices. Was Hama deliberately trying to dial back the use of Wolverine as a Punisher-type killer?

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Wolverine parked his bike at the World Trade Center in Wolverine #40.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A