As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

WOLVERINE vol 8 #5
“The Call of the Adamantine”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

This one won’t take long.

WOLVERINE

He’s able to resist the Adamantine’s attempt to take over his mind, which none of its other victims have been able to do. It’s not clear whether this is something to do with Wolverine’s own powers or strength of will, or whether it’s to do with the Wendigo interrupting the process.

Wolverine tries to get the Wendigo to abandon him and escape, rather than fight Deathstrike and the Constrictor. He seems confident that the Wendigo will lose that fight. Fortunately, Nightcrawler shows up to rescue him.

SUPPORTING CAST

Leonard the Wendigo comes to Wolverine’s aid against the Adamantine. Last issue, Wolverine told him to stay behind at the cabin and hide while he investigated an incident (which turned out to be Constrictor’s escape). Apparently the Wendigo followed him after all. Even though he can only say his own name and “Logan”, he seems fiercely protective of Wolverine, though it’s only Nightcrawler who seems to pick up on this.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #8
“Raid on Graymalkin, part four: Finale”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Javier Garrón
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

This is the final part of the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover, continuing from X-Men #9.

THE X-MEN (LOUISIANA):

Rogue argues with Cyclops mainly about his approach to Professor X, even though their decisions on everything else seem almost identical. She’s still outraged that Cyclops is willing to leave Professor X in Graymalkin, even when the Professor himself agrees. Her strength of feeling seems to be in part because she views Professor X as the “first” person who “believed in me”, something which probably wouldn’t go down well with her adoptive mother Mystique. Bizarrely, she yells at Cyclops for having Magneto on his team, even though he’s been on the X-Men’s side for years – maybe she’s just reaching for something to say.

Gambit, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Jubilee are all here but don’t do much to stand out.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

DEADPOOL / WOLVERINE #1
“The Secret Lives”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Mark Basso

Well goodness, this is just like old times, isn’t it? This is in fact the first Deadpool / Wolverine book… with that specific combination of words in the title. In the last year alone, we’ve had the miniseries Deadpool & Wolverine: WWIII, the Infinity Comic Deadpool vs Wolverine: Slash ‘Em Up and the back-up serial Weapon X-Traction. Fortunately, this issue shipped on 1 January 2025, and so we can say with confidence that it is at least the first Deadpool & Wolverine series of the year.

You’ll be pleased to hear that this is not an issue that calls for much annotation, which would, after all, rather miss the point of publishing a Deadpool / Wolverine book.

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

The book seems to be going with the established routine where Deadpool wants to be best friends and Wolverine wants the annoying guy to go away. However, as soon as he steals Sven Sunguard’s metal teeth (see below), Deadpool falls under some sort of influence, and starts acting weird – which is to say, quietly and rationally. This version of Deadpool thinks that Wolverine will be under the same influence and assumes that Wolverine already knows the mission they’re supposed to be carrying out together. This out of character behaviour is what motivates Wolverine to stick around. (A very similar plot device was used in WWIII, but ssshhhh.)

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-FORCE vol 7 #7
“The Devil in Heaven”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Jim Towe
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

X-FORCE

In the previous issue, La Diabla attacked Forge in his VR environment, and got driven out. The issue ended with Forge and Tank finding Captain Britain and Askani hovering in the air in a trance, with little symbols in front of their faces, and surrounded by some sort of energy effect.

This issue starts by jumping back a few minutes to show what was happening with Betsy and Rachel during the previous issue. Specifically, on page 1, Forge is muttering the same dialogue that he was delivering in the VR world on page 18 of the previous issue, while Rachel and Betsy are off some sort of communal mental projection as they appeared on page 13 of that issue. The end of issue #6 falls somewhere just before page 14 of this issue.

Captain Britain has created a private mindscape for her and Rachel to rest in between missions; it’s supposed to be the area around the Braddock Lighthouse, and this story follows Krakoan-era Excalibur in placing it in Cornwall. Betsy appears in this landscape wearing her purple costume from when she first joined the X-Men. When she returns to the mindscape at the end of the issue to fight La Diabla, instead of appearing as Captain Britain, she appears as Outback-era Psylocke in the armoured costume. (She also says that the Outback would have been her candidate for a happy place.)

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-FACTOR vol 5 #6
“Traitors”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan

The previous issue ended with Polaris showing up to rescue the team from Darkstar’s getaway helicopter; apparently, Polaris was willing to hand Darkstar and her X-Term men over to the authorities, or at least didn’t put up any resistance to X-Factor arresting them. So the story picks up with X-Factor back at the Nevermor military base, and X-Term as prisoners.

X-FACTOR.

Havok breaks off from the group to try and speak to Polaris and Bruin before they leave, and thank them for helping. He also wants to know how they “survive[d]” after the end of issue #2, when the X-Factor rescued him from the Mutant Underground and Polaris chose to stay – granted that she was being restrained by armed gunmen at the time, it’s not obvious that she was in any immediate danger of being killed, and Havok’s brooding in issue #3 seemed to assume that she was alive. His conversation with Polaris in this issue seems to have him wanting to break X-Factor away from the government, although matters seem to be left with X-Factor refusing an order to go hunting for McCloud and returning home.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #4
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Caranero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE MAIN CAST:

Bronze goes to Westinghouse College Prep, which is a real school. It’s not the same school as Senn College, where Melée was playing on the soccer team in issue #1. She wavers about whether to audition for the school musical (The Loveliest Sunday, which isn’t a real show), because on the one hand, she has a crush on a boy who’s going to be in it, but on the other hand, she’s afraid of turning into her metal form during the audition. Since it’s clear in this story that her powers are not generally known in the school, she evidently doesn’t have a general problem with controlling her powers; she must be worried about a stress reaction. Emma and Bobby both advise her to go ahead, and Emma encourages her to use the situation as a way of keeping her focus.

She’s distracted during training at the start of the issue, and panics. But in her first actual fight, she defeats a monster on her own, and she’s justifiably proud of this success. Still, she decide that she’s not cut out for a lead role, or maybe just that she ought to be devoting her spare time to training.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN vol 7 #9
“Raid on Graymalkin, part 3”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Pencillers: Federico Vicentini & Ryan Stegman
Inkers: Federico Vicentini & JP Mayer
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Editor: Tom Brevoort

This is part 3 of the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover, which takes place between Uncanny X-Men #7-8.

THE X-MEN (ALASKA)

Cyclops flatly refuses to co-operate in releasing Professor X, even after seeing the state of the prison. First he claims that Professor X manipulated all of mutantkind for the sake of his dream, which is a broadly standard depiction of him since X-Men: Deadly Genesis in 2006. A fair case can be made that his acceptance as a national leader in the Krakoan era was something of an anomaly given the state of his overall relations with the X-Men over that period – and even then, he had a secret plan with Magneto and Moira X. When pressed further, Cyclops points to Xavier’s murder of the crew of the Agnew in Fall of the House of X #4. That was retconned into a trick to deceive Orchis in X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #4-6, but Cyclops apparently doesn’t know that. For Cyclops, Professor X is a danger to mutantkind. It’s possible that he’s playing along with Professor X’s stated wish in X-Men vol 6 #35 to be a lightning rod for anti-mutant backlash, and figures that breaking such a controversial figure out of jail is not going to be for the good of mutantkind in the round – but that’s not how it’s played.

Psylocke postures to Nightcrawler as a killer, a pose that she doesn’t maintain quite so rigidly among the members of her own team. She tells him that he only plays with swords, which is somewhat true. She’s slower than him to pick up on Scurvy’s influence and falls victim to Professor X’s control, all broadly consistent with the idea that she’s a relatively low-power and somewhat inexperienced telepath who uses her powers to bolster the physical combat skills that she really depends on.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

HELLVERINE vol 2 #1
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Raffaele Ienco
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso

This ongoing series follows the miniseries of the same name from earlier this year, which brought Akihiro back as a Ghost Rider mash-up. This, by the way, is the problem with Marvel’s current convention of distinguishing between volumes by the year in which the first issue came out: there are two Hellverine (2024) #1s.

Fun fact! If you try to search for this issue on Amazon, it thinks it’s a typo and gives you results for Wolverine instead.

Although it’s coming from the X-office, this series seems to be basically Ghost Rider, so I probably won’t continue doing annotations for it, but hey, it’s the first issue. Chances are I’ll be dropping some other lower-tier books in the new year – otherwise we’re going to have weeks coming up with seven books requiring annotations and that’s just not realistic.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

PSYLOCKE vol 2 #2
“Ladykiller”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan

PSYLOCKE.

The previous issue ended with her bloodily defeating the villains and feeling disturbed by her lack of emotion about it. This issue picks up from that by going into a flashback to her childhood training – possibly a direct continuation of the training flashback on page 15 of issue #1, or at least another training session in the same location. In that flashback, she’s killed some low-level Hand ninja and seems quite relaxed about the whole thing until her friend Mitsuki snaps her out of it. (“Sometimes you go so far away.”) More of Mitsuki below.

As usual, Psylocke feels very strongly about anything involving the brutalisation of children and thinks that everyone involved “deserves to die”. Naturally, she refuses to hurt the kids who have been forced to fight her. She also shrugs off the shock collar that the Cleaver Club try to use to control her.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #1
“All the Places You Will Go”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

This is the first ongoing series with the title Laura Kinney: Wolverine, but Laura previously had ongoing titles under the name X-23 during 2010-12 and 2018-19, plus All-New Wolverine in 2016-18. Hence the legacy numbering of issue #69.

WOLVERINE:

Laura struggles to understand Kamala’s optimism or even Sophie’s ability to adjust to the fall of Krakoa. She refers here to “the few times I let them talk me into hanging out”. That doesn’t really fit with her arc in NYX, in which she starts hanging out with the rest of the cast in order to get allies against Mojo.

On learning that young Ivan has been abducted to Dubai, Laura’s back story naturally motivates her to address this tale of child exploitation. Much of this story involves her expecting all mutants to be on her side and humans to be against her, and being surprised when neither of those turns out to be true. Logically, the existence of mutant villains shouldn’t come as a massive surprise to her, but to be fair, Laura is still in the mutant nation mindset of Krakoa.

At least at first, Laura is deeply unimpressed by Polly; she seems to regard Polly’s decision to stay closeted during the Krakoan era as a moral failing and takes it as read that Polly will see it the same way. She also regards even willing performers at the Delta as being exploited. But by the end of the story she decides that Polly just has a more balanced view of mutants and humans.

Laura leaves it to Kamala and Sophie to arrange Ivan’s reunion with his sister, the implication being that she feels uncomfortable with handling this sort of emotional moment herself – she watches from nearby, so she clearly could have done it in person.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Kamala Khan and Sophie Cuckoo both appear at the start and end, mainly to play up the contrast with Laura. Laura is hanging out with them, but Sophie still has her telepathic powers, so we’re probably somewhere between NYX #2 and #4.

Ivan is a mutant with mood-altering sweat who’s been abducted to Dubai, and Emery is his sister, apparently a mutant but with no powers beyond an unusual appearance. Emery’s approach to getting help for Ivan, a little oddly, is to write a letter and hide it at the Treehouse, apparently in the hope that someone from the X-Men will find it. Remarkably, she turns out to be right. According to Emery’s letter, she and her brother are Moldovans; she says they were both abducted from there, but it’s not clear how she escaped (or maybe got dumped), or how she got to New York. They’re both new characters.

Polly is a Dubai-based mutant who can detect other mutants. Since she’s white and blonde, presumably she wasn’t born in Dubai. She runs Oasis, which she describes as a “safe place” for mutants, funded by a “benefactor” whom she doesn’t identify. Maybe we’ll come back to that in future issues. After the Madame is defeated, Polly invites her human trafficking victims to come to Oasis as well; she never actually said that Oasis was mutant-specific, just that it was safe for mutants.

According to Polly, she chose to live as a human and was reluctant to out herself by moving to Krakoa; consequently, she missed the whole thing. She regrets this, which motivates her to create Oasis. She’s still very uncomfortable with anything illicit and has an unnamed “cop friend” who she talks to. Much to Laura’s surprise, the cop turns out to be completely legitimate and although we never see Oasis, all signs are that Polly was telling the truth about it.

Elektra – as the second Daredevil – shows up at the end to tease issue #2.

VILLAINS:

The Madame is a mutant based in Dubai and dealing in trafficked mutants. She also has ties with the Delta Disco, which employs low-level mutants as entertainers; several characters claim that these mutants are there willingly, and even Laura seems prepared to accept that, although she still regards them as being exploited.

The Madame turns out to be Cybelle, a bit part character from Uncanny X-Men #211 who was one of the first mutants killed in the Mutant Massacre. We already knew that Cybelle had been resurrected on Krakoa; she appears in Hellions #1.

Cybelle doesn’t ascribe her motivation to the fall of Krakoa. Rather, she points out that Laura doesn’t even know her name, and says that she was “just another random mutant resurrected to fill up the island”. She claims that once she was resurrected she was determined never to be a victim again, and she sees the Massacre as having happened because “the heroes let it happen”. Basically, she doesn’t buy into mutant identity as an organising principle; all this does somewhat fit with the Morlocks being generally unhappy with Krakoa and wanting to go their own way.

An unnamed bouncer at the Delta Disco is also a mutant with size-changing and strength powers. He knows what the Madame is up to but doesn’t much care as long as he’s okay. He puts up an impressive fight against Laura, but she does attack him first, so it’s not entirely clear whether he’s actively involved in the Madame’s activities or just turning a blind eye to them.

MISCELLANEOUS:

Page 3. The narration is a straight recap of Laura’s established back story and the fall of Krakoa, at a very high level.

Page 5. The Treehouse was the X-Men’s New York headquarters during the Krakoan era. The plaque reading “Dedicated to those who paid the ultimate price to fight fascism” was added as a memorial in Invincible Iron Man #20.