Hunt for Wolverine: Claws of a Killer
Three down, one to go. And if you’re going to do four parallel lead-in stories, each drawing on a different aspect of Wolverine, then somewhere along the line you’re going to need a story about beclawed people doing violent things. Of course, even if you can’t use Wolverine himself, the Marvel Universe has no shortage of other characters who are, shall we say, Wolverine-adjacent.
Mariko Tamaki and Butch Guice are the creative team tackling this remit in Claws of a Killer. Lady Deathstrike has found out about Wolverine’s return through her contacts with the Reavers, and enlists Sabretooth and Daken to look into it. The idea seems to be that all three were meant to have devoted their lives to getting revenge on Wolverine, and his death screwed that up. So they need to get their chance now, before anyone else does.
By “using the data from military satellites”, Lady Deathstrike has tracked an “adamantium signature similar to Logan’s” – and, hold on, sorry, but what? Since when can you do that? I’ve never really liked the idea that you can track mutants by some sort of bio signature, but that’s mainly because it has to be ignored in order for so many plots to work. At least it feels like something that makes a vague sort of pseudo-sense. But an “adamantium signature”? It’s a lump of metal. What the hell is it giving off that you could possibly track from space? And comes to think of it, if Logan does have an “adamantium signature” and you can search for it from space, how come it’s such a hassle to find him?
Yeah, that one really doesn’t work at all.
But never mind. By using the data from military satellites to find out where the plot needs her to be, Lady Deathstrike leads Sabretooth and Daken to the small town of Maybelle, Arizona. A few days earlier, Soteira – the company that also showed up at the end of Charles Soule’s miniseries – did an experiment here that killed all the locals and turned them into zombies. They also have a “kill team” of soldiers still wandering around the place, and a big mysterious thingummy that’s green and glowing.
So it’s a zombie story. And where atmosphere is concerned, it all goes well enough. Tamaki gives her three characters distinct voices (I’ll come back to how well they tally with other versions of the characters, but they’re distinct). Guice has always been a great artist, and this place certainly feels like a modern ghost town. There’s some grit and credibility to a story that could easily have felt silly. The book commits to playing it straight instead of going tongue in cheek, and it pulls that off. That side of things is all fine.
On the other hand, all three leads are played as straight villains; Daken’s perhaps marginally more equivocal than the others but he’s clearly a bad guy nonetheless. Mind you, Daken’s been written inconsistently across a number of titles of late – reconcile his depictions in Iceman and All-New Wolverine and win a prize – so you’ve kind of got to pick one and run with it. But Sabretooth and Deathstrike are currently on a team with a version of Logan who they didn’t feel the urge to kill at all costs, and that feels just weird. This all plays like a parallel universe where Weapon X isn’t happening. I’m not sure I buy semi-inverted Sabretooth wanting to hunt down and kill Logan at all, though I maybe buy that he thinks he wants to. I really don’t believe that Deathstrike could feel this strongly about him, yet be able to work with Old Man Logan.
Mainly, though, the book runs into the problem that there’s nobody here to root for. It’s a story about three awful people stumbling upon other awful people, and frankly, who cares about any of them? You could have brought in Laura, or even played Daken differently, for a bit of light and shade here. I get, tonally, why you wouldn’t want to do that. Regardless, the result is something that might work as a sub-plot in a “Hunt for Wolverine” storyline, but drags when presented as a four-issue mini. At this length, the book’s best quality, its strong sense of tone, starts to become a liability: four issues, one note.
There are some slightly silly plot twists in the final act, as it turns out that the blank-acting Soteira killteam randomly include revived versions of Lady Deathstrike’s father and Sabretooth’s son. (Yes, Graydon Creed is back.) None of this gets explained, or even close, so it’s best seen as a teaser for the main event; and on those terms it sells it quite well. The end of the final issue is, um, enigmatic, as it builds to a giant explosion from which everyone inexplicably seems to escape just fine. It’s obviously a choice, and I guess it contributes to a sense of unease, but it does nothing to make the series satisfying as a mini in its own right.
This would have made a strong two-parter, presented mainly as a lead-in rather than a story in its own right. At four issues it struggles to convert that into a satisfying mini, and ultimately doesn’t succeed.
. . .
How even are Deathstrike’s father and Graydon Creed even back?
Graydon Creed was disintegrated way back in the day, so it already didn’t make sense when he was brought back in X-Force only to be killed again not soon after and… oh fuck this. 🙁 You ask me, the ability to bring people back from the dead with the techno-organic virus is a plot point that never should have been allowed to get this far.
As for Lord Dark Wind…
Sigh.
The only one of these minis I am curious about is the Madripoor one so of course you saved that one for last. #FirstWorldProblemsAreFirstWorldy
The Madripoor one hasn’t finished yet. The fourth issue is still to come out, but will be available this week.
That’s the only one which I was really interested also.
Now I’m paranoid about being satellite traced by my dental fillings signature.
Moo has adamantium dental fillings?
Wait…has Marvel done that story yet? That seems like something that should at least have shown up in a gag strip by now…
It should definietly utilise doctor Doom, the dentist.
(The wiki says he used mind-controlling dental implants… no mention on whether they were adamantium-laced).
Ultimate Sabretooth had adamantium teeth. It’s just up to you whether or not you view the early arcs of ultimate x-men grim dark parody or playing it straight, I guess.
I kind of think that assuming that Millar is doing a parody usually means giving him too much credit…
Doesn’t Tiger Shark have adamantium teeth? I don’t know where he would have got them, since he got his powers from some kind of blood transfusion from Namor and a shark, but I’m pretty sure adamantium teeth are one of his things.
“Well, kids, when a Namor and a shark love each other very much…”
I still can’t see the phrase Claws of a Killer without getting the tune to Arms of an Angel stuck in my head and my nerd brain trying to write new lyrics about a feminist Wolverine.
Everyone has adamantium now. Even early on, besides Bullseye there were Punisher’s foe The Russian and Spider-Man traditional foe Hammerhead.
It is more fashionable than linen, and may well overrun cotton in the next decade if current trends continue.
The NRA are complaining of unfair competition, I hear.
Come to think of it, who among the Mob of Wolverine Lookalikes has Adamantium claws themselves? Laura and Old Man, certainly. Does Daken? Honey Badger? Ultimate Universe “Jimmy Hudson”? I assume that Wolfsbane and Warpath do not. Nor Darkhawk, who at one point was saddled with the claws himself.
Adamantium cheat sheet:
Wolverine: yes. Now with additional heat action, apparently!
Old Man Logan: yes, but after having his hand cut off he has one set of bone claws. The other still has adamantium claws.
Laura: yes, but only claws. No adamantium skeleton.
Daken: no. His claws used to be covered in metal from the Muramasa Blade, but Logan ripped those out or something.
Honey Badger: no.
Jimmy Hudson: no. Covering his bones in metal (or at least his claws) is part of his mutant powers. I mean, he did it once and has had metal claws ever since. I don’t think he ever did anything else with the ‘metal powers’.
(Can you believe he’s a Jeph Loeb creation?) Anyway, even if it’s supposed to be adamantium, it’s organic adamantium at best.
Wolfsbane: no.
Warpath: no. I think he has knives made out of adamantium? Or had at one point?
Sabretooth: no.
Lady Deathstrike: yes, I think? She definitely has some adamantium somewhere on her…
And, last and very much least…
Romulus: yes. Four adamantium claws on each hand. I think one of them was an opposable claw, because that makes sense?
(Can you believe HE’S a Jeph Loeb… nevermind.)
“Covering his bones in metal (or at least his claws) is part of his mutant powers.”
Huh?
“Warpath: no. I think he has knives made out of adamantium? Or had at one point?”
Vibranium, actually.
Whenever Wolverine loses his healing, his adamantium starts to poison him pretty much instantly. But all those others are fine …
I believe Nuke has adamantium implants (originally some kind of semi-realistic ballistic plastic but that wasn’t badass enough), Cyber has/had adamantium … skin … , and of course Ultron, for whom the concept of adamantium was originally introduced, is often made of the stuff.
Captain America’s shield is an adamantium-vibranium allow.
@Taibak: I have read as much, but that is probably not quite true. Otherwise, seeing how often we bump into both metals, someone would have managed to duplicate the shield already.
IIRC, leaving aside a couple of borderline miraculous destructions and reconstructions (Secret Wars I and Mark Waid’s second run), the shield’s metal is actually an alloy of steel and vibranium, made by Myron McLain with some unknown factor mixed in. Adamantium is a side finding from the attempts to reproduce its metal.
For some more on that, I recommend http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/captain_america_302-303.shtml
As for Lady Deathstrike, she was modified by Spiral (Mojo’s lackey) in her very first X-Men appearance (#205 of Uncanny) and the dialogue implied that she got Adamantium claws at that time. And a skeleton as well, I think?
Boy, that was a weird story. Very, very dark and very light on plot. I don’t think the blatant hints of consequences between Lady Deathstrike and Spiral were ever followed, either. It felt like filler that we were meant to treat as non-filler.
That was actually a pretty good issue.
Uncanny 205 is a classic, though mostly because of Barry Windsor Smith’s moody atmospheric art. When I was collecting back issues in the later ‘80’s early 90’s, this was one of the last ones I bought because it was the priciest issue after the Dark Phoenix Saga.
Claremont really never came up with a good plan for Spiral and the Body Shoppe. He used the plot three times by my count (Deathstrike, Rachel Grey, and Psylocke), but he never circled around to add it all up to anything. I suspect he really liked the idea, and kept dropping it in, in the hopes that he’d come up with a story to tie it all together someday. That day didn’t come before he was off Uncanny in 1991.
TBH, I’m OK with that. Mojo, Spiral and all that never really interested me. They seemed ill-suited to the X-Men soap opera, and for the X-Men as social allegory for civil rights. I always thought the TV culture parody was better suited for other characters and titles. I would have preferred it omitted from Uncanny & X-Factor altogether, and left for Excalibur or something non-mutant altogether.
The best use of Mojo and Spiral in the X-books was probably the New Mutants annual that restored Psylocke’s sight. Remember that one? Where the students were watching TV and then Spiral transformed them into grown-up versions of themselves with snazzy costumes designed by Alan Davis? If I recall correctly, Spiral didn’t use the Body Shoppe for that, which is odd.
Overall, that story justified the use of TV-themed villains pretty well. And introduced us to a proto-Jubilee character. Claremont really packed a lot into that 48 pages, including a creepy Psylocke/Cypher romance.
Alternatively, Claremont could have just wanted the Body Shoppe on hand as a plot device. Not everything has to have a story behind it and, in small doses, Spiral and the Shoppe could have been a good starting point for other stories.
Mojworld got shoehorned in to the X-Men due to Longshot ending up a team member, and Anne Nocenti was the editor of the X-line.
Regardless of how well they fit, Claremont still managed to give us one of the best uses of Mojo in that Uncanny X-Men Annual which was a satire of the mass-marketing of comic book properties. I love that story.
@Taibak
Cap’s shield isn’t adamantium-vibranium. There’s vibranium present, but not adamantium.
Regarding Rachel/Phoenix and Spiral, didn’t a badly injured Rachel go off with Spiral through a portal or something? As I vaguely recall, a Phoenix miniseries was advertised but never materialized that would have told us what went on between them. I don’t recall if that story ever showed up anywhere else.
Hey, what do you know – here’s all the details about that Phoenix mini.
http://marvel1980s.blogspot.com/2009/12/1986-whatever-happened-to-phoenix.html
Oh, it’s weird that it was meant to have Rick Leonardi on art, just like X-Men: True Friends.
I always knew that the mini-series never appeared, but didn’t realize Leonardi was meant to be on art with that too.
Rachel just suddenly appeared in Excalibur without any mention of her last appearance.
I wonder if when Claremont and Leonardi scrapped the original Phoenix mini, they then came up with the True Friends idea, which also almost never saw publication.
Sometime back in the 80s I dreamed that #1 of the Phoenix mini had come out — perhaps not that odd, as it would have been my most-desired mini-series for a couple of years. As I recall, the first couple of pages had gorgeous John Byrne art and were set in the Savage Land, and I woke up before I could read the rest.
So this mini…
Just blah.