Wolverine: Weapon X

by Jim Rugg

192 pages, Paperback

Expected publication June 11, 2026

About the author

Jim Rugg is an Eisner and Ignatz Award-winning cartoonist based in Pittsburgh. His books include STREET ANGEL, The PLAIN Janes, The Guild, Afrodisiac, and Notebook Drawings. Awards and recognition from the Society of Illustrators, AIGA, Communication Arts, Print magazine, American Illustration, SPX, and Creative Quarterly adorn his mantle.

His studio is pencils, paper, ballpoint pens, ink, Photoshop, cats, and comics.

Reviews

[Alex Sarll]

As with Born Again in the opening wave, this is where the Marvel Age imprint hews closest to 33 1/3, addressing a single discrete storyline available in one manageable volume, rather than an era. And, which makes particular sense at this early stage, an acknowledged classic of the form. It makes sense too with these modern monographs that, occasional exceptions granted (Carl Wilson on Celine Dion), the writer will generally be pretty enthusiastic about their topic, and I prefer them to own that than coyly take refuge behind a veil of pseudo-academia; all the same, Rugg can come across particularly fannish here, not least in his free deployment of exclamation marks. Still, he's a name cartoonist in his own right, albeit one I've never particularly followed myself, and his voice is part of the selling point, as also his hands-on expertise; some of the best chapters cover the practicalities and implications of Barry Windsor-Smith working as essentially a solo auteur within a Marvel system more used to assembly line methods, and in particular the specifics of the lettering and colouring in Weapon X, and how the latter hasn't always been well served by the various reprints over the years. The one curious omission I noticed is that, while Rugg discusses BWS' six-month incapacitation by a car accident as it affected the production schedule, he never mentions how it might have inspired or added heft to a story that's so much about horrified fascination with malign medicalisation, the protagonist pulled back from action (anti)hero to immobilised, rebuilt test subject, a helpless, suffering project for sadistic professionals. Which, even if you know on some level is not how doctors are treating you, does sometimes feel that way when you're stuck in their clutches. It's a strange gap when he's otherwise so astute on the way the story's creative choices echo the horror of Wolverine's creation, the non-linear nature of trauma. An experience which, it must be admitted, this book occasionally feels like it's trying to emulate, getting method with its own flashbacks and repetitions, at least in my Netgalley ARC; perhaps one last editorial pass before the presses roll will tidy up the multiple overlapping explanations of things like BWS' early Marvel career, or his subsequent grand project Monsters. Despite which, it still moves along at a decent clip, and you can't argue with most of Rugg's insights, or his arresting pitch: "An important element of the super hero genre is costuming. In Weapon X, Wolverine's costume is no clothes. You know what is more terrifying than a killer with giant claws? A NAKED killer with giant claws!"

[Jada Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should’ve known this wasn’t a comic lmfao. That’s totally my fault, but—

This was a cool inside look into everything Wolverine. Very educational if you want to see the history of everything!! I grew up watching X-Men, so this definitely added on to what I already knew, but I think as someone who isn’t really immersed in the MCU would still benefit from reading this!!
A lot of it is really well explained.

You even get the illustrators insight on things, which is super neat to enter to mind of the ones behind such a popular character.