Part of an ongoing series revisiting graphic novels and collected editions from days gone by....

As I noted in my review of Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure (another stand-alone book from 1990, reviewed here in 2025), "Wolverine has never been one of my favorite characters in the Marvel Comics stables -- largely because I think he's overused, and because he's always portrayed as just too good at everything he does." And yet I kind of liked that book, and I kind of like this one -- for the same reason cited then: "because it removes him from the center stage of Marvel superheroics and takes him off on his own, to an unlikely setting, with an unlikely plot."

Wolverine: Bloodlust begins with a bloody murder in the snow, and Logan sees it all, experiencing it as if it were his own memory, from a dive bar in the Yukon, where he is soon involved in an unnecessary brawl until a beautiful local girl drags him outside ... presumably because she wants to take him home and have her way with him. She probably would have gotten her wish if a gang of wendigo-like creatures hadn't suddenly attacked and stolen her away, leaving Logan and a handful of dead critters in the snow-filled street.

Feeling guilty for allowing the girl to be kidnapped, Logan strips naked and meditates for a while in the snow, as one does, before suiting up in his Wolverine outfit to pursue the wendigo gang. While he meditates, the creatures slay a young family, including two small children, in their home.

Before Logan can get far in his search, he's confronted by another band of abominable beasts ... but these snow creatures are different. They are the Neuri, a community of transcendental beings who evolved into perfect harmony with each other and nature. Over the centuries, they developed a communal mind and explored the cosmos; when their spirits returned to Earth, they discovered violence and environmental devastation, the product of human "progress." While the changes in the world caused some of them to sicken and die, others went rogue and attacked (and ate) whatever humans they could find. Their own violence drove them insane.

The Neuri want them stopped -- yes, that means killed -- before things get worse. But the Neuri say they can't use violence themselves or they, too, will become mad beasts in the snow, so they need Wolverine to do it for them.

So, he does. Because that's the sort of thing he's made for.

Bloodlust is entertaining because it features Wolverine at his feral best, out in the Canadian wilderness and fighting creatures with tooth and claw without the trappings of X-Men science and gadgetry. Alan Davis and Paul Neary, who join forces here on both story and art, have produced a compact, visually interesting episode in the Wolverine's many adventures that stands neatly on its own.

Just don't think too hard about why the creatures kidnapped the girl, rather than simply killing her like they did everyone else they encountered.