This is another seemingly random one-shot, this time from Marc Guggenheim and Dave Wilkins. And while the last two I reviewed turned out to be heading somewhere, this is… just pointless, really? Completism alone dictates that it gets a short post, but it doesn’t merit anything more than that.

It is, you will be amazed to hear, a story in which two heroes are both drawn into an affair involving the same villain, and have a misunderstanding which leads them to fight, before they team up to take on the bad guy. There’s nothing wrong with that formula as such – the clichés became clichés because they worked – but it’s not something you can hang a story on. There has to be something more.

This book opens with an action flashback of Wolverine and Blade teaming up to destroy a vampire cult called the Creed, before jumping forward a few months to show both heroes discovering that the Creed are still around, and are taking an interest in mutants. The big idea is that the Creed believe in a messiah-vampire called Varkis, and they think that he’s going to be a mutant. Since that messiah has inconveniently and frustratingly failed to show up, they have been trying to hurry matters alone by vamping a few mutants to see what happens. Naturally, all this is heading to a misunderstanding where each hero thinks that the other must be Varkis, but it turns out to be neither of them. There’s a mildly creative idea about where Varkis actually does come from, and after that, the heroes join forces and win.

And as far as the story goes, that’s pretty much it. This thing is 40 pages long, but there’s really nothing about the story that merits any particular comment. It is noteworthy only in its lack of noteworthiness.

Let’s be fair, though – the book isn’t particularly concerned about its plot either. It’s basically a vehicle for Dave Wilkins to draw some hack-and-slash action sequences, the kind where blood flows freely thanks to Logan’s ability to regrow stuff and his willingness to dice the undead. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the style of the Kyle & Yost X-Force, with the art being a more surface-polished version of Clayton Crain’s shiny-but-dark veneer. Which never had much appeal to be first time round.

But for those who like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing that they like. It’s not something that the X-books have done much of lately, so maybe there really is an un-met demand.  Even if there is, though, it can surely be tied to a more interesting story than this.  Without being especially enthralled by the book’s violence rating, I found it a tedious slog – one of those comics that required a real effort of will to keep paying attention to the end.  Eminently missable, or perhaps dodge-able.