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Jan 12

Wolverine #8-13 – “Killable”

Posted on Sunday, January 12, 2014 by Paul in x-axis

Much like the North Korean military, Marvel believes that if you keep relaunching long enough, eventually the damn thing will stay up.  Hence the upcoming yet-another-revamp of the Ultimate books, and the likes of Fantastic FourX-ForceOther X-Force, Hulk and Wolverine all being slated for fresh issue #1s only a year or so after the last one.

In fact, I don’t have a particular problem with starting from #1 when you have a genuinely fresh start on the book.  At least that’s drawing attention to the first issue of a story.  Other books like Daredevil and Hulk are keeping the writer but changing the set-up, which is a bit tenuous, but it’s something.  And then we have Wolverine, which is rebooting its numbering in the middle of a storyline.

“Killable” is, in reality, act two of a much longer plot that is nowhere near finished.  Passing off these thirteen issues as any sort of “complete” era of the book is absurd.  We have now officially reached the stage of applying the “issue #1” tag to turning points.  With the best will in the world, this can’t help but look a bit desperate.

It’s a pretty good arc, though, at least when read as a whole.  It felt a bit wonky as a serial, but by the end, its main apparent problem feels like a deliberate choice after all.

In the opening seven issues, a mind-controlling virus from the Microverse turned up on Earth and had a big fight with Wolverine, which led to the virus shutting down his healing factor.  You might expect, then, that this arc would be about defeating the virus and Wolverine trying to get his powers back – and in the first issue that seems to be where it’s going.  But, almost immediately, Wolverine gets completely sidetracked by going after Sabretooth and Mystique, who have stolen his sword.  Wolverine and Kitty (who tags along after him) spend the rest of the arc being pinned down and hunted by Sabretooth and his crew, while SHIELD simply get on with the job of defeating the virus without them.

Yes, in the final issue Wolverine does refuse to let them take refuge in his body, even though they offer to restore his healing factor if he agrees.  That’s his token moment of heroism in the final issue.  But he doesn’t actually beat them.  The world-threatening ubervillain from the previous arc is simply shunted into a subplot, and beaten there.

This seems weird at first, but eventually it’s clear that Paul Cornell is making a point.  The sword Wolverine is chasing after has no real intrinsic worth; it’s simply something he associates with his attempts to be an honourable warrior, and by stealing it, Sabretooth and Mystique are prodding at his sense of identity, already a little rattled by the loss of his signature power.  Sabretooth’s entire purpose here is to break Wolverine’s spirit by luring him completely off the track of the villain he ought to be fighting, and manipulating him into endangering innocents, all for the sake of hunting down an empty metaphor.  Having thoroughly made his point, Sabretooth gives back the sword and leaves.

As a direction for Sabretooth, I think it works.  His status as Wolverine’s arch-enemy has been rather undermined over the years, as Wolverine himself has been powered up to the point where Sabretooth no longer poses a credible threat to him.  Depowering Wolverine goes some way to solving that problem, as does having Sabretooth return to a focus on the mental torment, but the story is also working hard to re-establish Sabretooth as Wolverine’s opposite number, a character with the same impulses but without the self-control.  But since that self-control is itself something of a charade in this story, Sabretooth ends up able to claim with some credibility that he’s simply the Wolverine who’s true to himself.  It all loops back to re-establishing some of the key elements of their relationship that have been muddied over the years.

Alan Davis’ artwork remains as beautifully clean as ever; his style isn’t the most obvious choice for a Wolverine comic, but he can tell a story and sell expression like few people out there.  You could make a case for the story being a bit overlong – there’s a lot of running around with Sabretooth’s henchmen – but on balance I think the build is needed, and some of the details do play into his point.

Perhaps a bigger problem is that the final chapter is rather on the nose; it features an extended speech in which Sabretooth explains his point for some seven pages, before Kitty’s narration chips in to say “he’s got a point, you know”.  I get what the story is going for, and yes, it’s essential not just that the reader gets the point but that Wolverine does too, but I do wonder whether this veers a little too close to just spelling things out.  Still, the point itself is a promising enough direction for the character, and ties together enough of the otherwise curious elements of the “Killable” arc, to make it work for me.

Bring on the comments

  1. kelvingreen says:

    They’ll reboot a series halfway through an issue by 2020.

  2. ASV says:

    The even weirder thing to me is that some series are not getting renumbered… but are getting a big “#1” on the cover to indicate it’s the first part of a new arc. Why not just do another Avengers #1 at that point? If you’ve got Iron Man and Captain America having an Important Conversation over their fantasy roster, surely that indicates a bold, new direction in the offing.

  3. Max says:

    Ultimate FF looks like a rather odd little book off in the corner that might be fun if it can hang in there.

  4. Joe S. Walker says:

    Those new Ultimate books look pretty much like a Hail Mary pass to me.

  5. halapeno says:

    You guys should relaunch the podcasts with a new #1.

  6. Mo Walker says:

    @halapeno – All New House to Astonish kicks off 2014 with a new batch of episodes. This is the jumping on point for new and old listeners. Listeners will want to pre-order episode 12, because Al and Paul will crack the internet-in -half by summer!

  7. Paul G. says:

    I found this whole arc incredibly thin. Who on earth has Alan Davis on art and then spends four and half issues inside a mall? Seems like a bad mismatch. Davis’s image of an emotionally and physically broken Logan carried a lot of the weight of the story in the final issue. It’s no surprise they’re relaunching it, as Cornell lost a lot of momentum with his stately pace.

  8. Jamie says:

    The new Wolverine #1 will feature a bold new erection!

  9. halapeno says:

    Or an episode #0 of the podcast featuring the thrilling origin story of the podcast where Al and Paul spend the entire podcast discussing the possibility of doing podcasts together.

    Also, Wolverine guest-stars.

  10. Dave says:

    Is there the slightest chance that this arc, and its continuation, fits anywhere alongside other recent/current X-books? I (think I) know his loss of healing factor’s not happening anywhere else, but there’s also the fact that Kitty’s left the school now, and there’s Sabretooth and Mystique also being the villains in Japan’s Most Wanted and All-New/Uncanny, and Wolverine & the X-Men.

  11. Uncanny Michael says:

    Dave: I don’t see why this whole story (#1-13) can’t be placed right before Battle of the Atom.

  12. Michael P says:

    The loss of his healing factor has been brought up in other books.

  13. The original Matt says:

    As best I can tell, this arc all happens before battle of the atom. And battle of the atom happens right before Infinity. Wolverine had lost his healing power in battle of the atom, and it’s not present in the current arc of WatXM. Scott even comments on it.

    Wolverine was dropped from the cast for infinity to side step the powers issue, and was dropped from the avengers roster after infinity by Cap on the basis of losing his healing power.

    And then turned up ON roster in avengers world.

    So maybe no one really is paying attention.

    But having not read this far into the Wolverine run, is the healing factor back now?

  14. Paul says:

    Since Kitty’s in it, I think we’re driven to conclude that “Killable” takes place before “Battle of the Atom”, even though that doesn’t sit very comfortably with Wolverine’s depiction in BotA. We’ll see how it plays out, though.

  15. Jason says:

    why should Wolverine be fighting the mind controlling virus if Shield doesn’t need him to help? If he has his own issues then it’s his right to deal with them. In fact, if you have a duty to deal with every threat you ever come in contact with then Sabretooth and Mystique should easily come at the top of Wolverine’s list

    And the whole Sabretooth is Wolverine who’s true to himself is weak, considering his mind should be just as much himself as his instincts

  16. Neil Kapit says:

    I think it’s less that they have to communicate Sabretooth’s point, but that they have to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that Wolverine is broken. By the end of the story, Logan learns that A.) he’s not so different from Sabretooth, since he was willing to abandon the Microverse mission, put innocents in danger, and fight dishonorably just to get what he wanted, and B.) not only is he not so different from Sabretooth, but he’s less than Sabretooth because he doesn’t have the healing crutch anymore. This is Logan’s lowest point, where he’s lost his self-image. At this point it’s a fate worse than death for Logan, who would’ve much rather died fighting than live with his newly discovered weaknesses.

    I wrote about it more here;

    http://nitzthebloody.blogspot.com/2013/12/wolverine-by-paul-cornell-and-alan.html

  17. Jason says:

    again, why does he need to be on that mission? He didn’t put innocents in danger the bad guys did.

    This is a rehash of various 90’s stories and not a good one I think

  18. House to Astonish podcast #-1

    In this podcast, little Paul discovers comics. Meanwhile Al’s mom announces to Al’s dad that she’s pregnant. Flashforward to a computer engineer who wants to compress his music files and gets his idea for MP3 from watching Star Trek TNG.

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