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

X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #5
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colourist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine fights Omega Red, with a Russian skyline and Omega Wolverine in the background. Needless to say, this is a companion to the cover of X Deaths of Wolverine #5, which will have the other half of the image (Wolverine fighting Omega Wolverine, with present-day Wolverine and a Krakoan skyline in the background).

PAGE 2. Omega Red possesses Wolverine and attacks Professor X.

Picking up directly from the end of issue #4. The background is a montage of images of Wolverine (or Logan) at various points in his life, mostly fairly generic. To the extent that they’re recognisable, starting top left on the first full row:

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

SABRETOOTH vol 4 #2
Writer: Victor LaValle
Artist: Leonard Kirk
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. Angry Sabretooth in jail.

PAGE 2. Opening quote. This is a quote often attributed to the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass (1817/8-1895). It’s been circulating in his name for decades but those online sources that actually check these things seem to agree that it’s apocryphal.

PAGES 3-5. Sabretooth’s fellow prisoners are banished to the Pit.

This is a flashback which leads in to the end of the previous issue. It doesn’t really fit with any of the other times that we’ve seen people sent to the Pit, in which the whole Quiet Council was present. The previous examples are Sabretooth in House of X #6, Toad in X-Men: Trial of Magneto #5, Orphan-Maker and Nanny in Hellions #18 and X-Men Green in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #12. Krakoa let them go, but it’s not obvious what happened to Toad – given that he was being set up by Magneto and Scarlet Witch, maybe he was quietly smuggled out too.

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

X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #4
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Dijjo Lima
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1: Omega Wolverine going through a Krakoan gate.

PAGES 2-4. Flashback: the fall of Krakoa in Omega Wolverine’s timeline.

Although the caption calls this the “near future”, the grey hairs on Forge suggest that we’re a good few years into the future. Wolverine is also shown with some grey hairs, though not as many. Despite the suggestion in X Lives that Wolverine is basically immortal, that’s not really true; we’ve seen in Old Man Logan that his natural lifespan is still something under 200 years.

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

X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #4
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artists: Joshua Cassara and Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1: Team X Wolverine, possessed by Omega Red.

PAGES 2-4. Omega Red possesses Dr Cornelius during Weapon X.

The Weapon X Facility, as you surely know, is the place which gave Wolverine his adamantium skeleton against his will as part of a scheme to turn him into a soldier. This sequence takes place between the flashback and the main story in part 2 of Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X” story, from Marvel Comics Presents vol 1 #73. The images of Wolverine covered in cables are clearly meant to evoke “Weapon X”, which had a lot of that sort of thing.

Abraham Cornelius was one of the three main scientists seen in that story; generally speaking he tends to be presented as having at least some pangs of conscience about what he’s doing, and it’s the Professor who tends to be presented as outright evil, but this is right at the start of the arc from his point of view.

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

X-MEN vol 6 #9
“The Rule of Three”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: C F Villa
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. Orchis members sitting behind a bloodstained desk, after a bunch of shootings. That’s Killian Devo and Alia Gregor setting at the desk, with Dr Stasis, Nimrod and Omega Sentinel behind them, alongside a bunch of Orchis footsoldiers. The desk has obvious parallels to the Quiet Council desks, and this whole issue picks up the theme from Jonathan Hickman’s stories about clear parallels between the Krakoans and Orchis. I’m not sure who the guy lying on the floor is – it might be Feilong, but that doesn’t really make sense, and if it’s him his costume is miscoloured. On the other hand, Alia doesn’t actually appear in the story. Also lying on the floor in the foregrounds are a mixture of bullets and Orchis’s signature petals.

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

X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #3
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Dijjo Lima
Letterer: Cory Petit

COVER / PAGE 1: Daken, Scout and Wolverine (Laura) pose for action in front of Omega Wolverine.

PAGES 2-4. Professor X asks Wolverine (Laura) to go after Omega Wolverine.

Wolverine and Scout. Laura, the other Wolverine, is a regular character in X-Men. She’s effectively Logan’s genetic daughter. Scout is basically a younger clone of Laura, who Laura treats as a kid sister.

“[T]his whole Children of the Vault thing.” This is an X-Men storyline from both the Hickman and Duggan runs. Laura was locked in the time-distorted vault belonging to the Children of the Vault, centuries passed from her perspective, but she died immediately after escaping and before she could be backed up, so she doesn’t remember any of it.

“[S]houldn’t you be … hanging out at the Wild Hunt?” The training area for younger mutants from New Mutants, where Scout is a regular character.

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

X-MEN vol 6 #8
“The Buffet is Undefeated”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Javier Pina
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles

COVER / PAGE 1: M.O.D.O.K. holding Jean Grey’s mask.

PAGE 2. Data page. A quote from Nick Fury, telling us that we should take M.O.D.O.K. seriously despite his appearance.

M.O.D.O.K. – the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing – debuted in the Captain America story in Tales of Suspense #94, back in 1967. Basically, George Tarleton is an A.I.M. technician who was turned into a human supercomputer to help with their investigations into the Cosmic Cube, only for him to overthrow them and seize control of A.I.M. The original M.O.D.O.K. was turned back to human form in Incredible Hulk #610 – the M.O.D.O.K. in this issue (and most stories in the last decade or so) is a clone who debuted in Hulk vol 2 #29.

Originally presented as a grotesque but basically serious villain, over the years he’s become mostly a comedy figure. Even though he isn’t played entirely straight in this issue, it’s actually a pretty credible outing for him by modern standards.

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

X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #3
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colourist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. In the foreground, western hero Wolverine stands over the defeated bone coils of an Omega Red that he’s evidently defeated. In the background, Department H-era Wolverine (recognisable by his mask) faces off against the real Omega Red.

PAGE 2. Professor X and Marvel Girl continue to monitor Wolverine.

Wolverine’s opening narration continues the theme of time. He casts his long lifespan as more of a curse. Bear in mind that one of the signature achievements of Krakoa is supposedly to enable all mutants to live forever; Wolverine apparently sees that as a bad thing that makes life less meaningful.

PAGE 3. Wolverine experiences flashbacks to various parts of his life.

Apparently, just like us, present-day Wolverine is in some sense experiencing all these events together. From left to right, the four recognisable flashbacks show:

• Top left, Logan in World War I, probably as a member of the Devil’s Brigade, fighting a German soldier possessed by Omega Red. We haven’t seen this segment in the main story yet.
• In the main panel (X shaped to mirror the Cerebro helmet), old west Logan fights an Omega Red gunslinger. We haven’t seen this in the main story yet either, and with only two issues to go, you have to wonder if we’re actually going to.
• At the top, Logan as a member of Team X, in a plot thread we’ve already been following.
• Department H Wolverine fighting what seems to be some sort of north African merchant possessed by Omega Red (bearing no resemblance to the fight seen on the cover).

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

X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #2
by Benjamin Percy, Federico Vicentini & Dijjo Lima

COVER / PAGE 1. Moira caught between the techno-organic Wolverine and Mystique. In the solicitations, Moira was shown as a blanked-out silhouette, to avoid spoiling the plot. Ironically, in the final version, she’s still got brown hair (which she dyed blonde last issue) in order to make her more recognisable.

PAGES 2-4. Moira robs a convenience store and calls Jane Foster.

Presumably Moira is picking up the things she needs for her home surgery later in the issue. (But if she’s relying on theft for everything, how did she get to America?)

Moira has special Krakoan cancer, interwoven with “floronic matter”. “Floronic” isn’t actually a real word – the DC villain Floronic Man was named after his home dimension – but apparently it means something to people in the Marvel Universe. Let’s assume it’s come to be understood as the sort of stuff Krakoan technology uses.

“The No-Place biome.” Moira concludes that she picked up the cancer from the hidden biome within Krakoa, where she was living throughout the Hickman era, and that “[t]hey” did this on purpose. This begs questions. Moira presumably isn’t suggesting that Xavier and Magneto were trying to poison her all along. Mystique and Destiny can’t have used the biome to do this. Is she suggesting that Cypher and Krakoa were always planning this, at least once they found out what she was up to? That doesn’t really make sense either, given that Cypher let her escape. But the idea that Krakoa was doing it makes a bit more sense.

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

SABRETOOTH vol 4 #1
“The Adversary”
by Victor LaValle, Leonard Kirk & Rain Beredo

SABRETOOTH. If you’re wondering, volume 1 was the 1993 miniseries, vol 2 was a 1998 one-shot, and vol 3 was a 2004 miniseries. This is another five-issue miniseries.

COVER / PAGE 1. A grinning Sabretooth in hell, with Krakoa visible behind him.

PAGES 2-5. Sabretooth is consigned to the Pit.

This is a reprise of Sabretooth’s “trial” and banishment at the hands of the Quiet Council in House of X #6. Sabretooth’s narration is new and replaces most of the spoken dialogue. But what remains is taken directly from that issue, except for Sabretooth’s final line: “No prison can hold me. I’ll be free before you even notice.” In fact, that issue came out in October 2019 and we haven’t seen him since.

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