The Incomplete Wolverine – 2004
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
We’re in the Greg Rucka run, which so far has been a detour from regular superheroics into something more down to earth. Meanwhile, Grant Morrison has just left the X-Men. We left off with Rucka’s “Coyote Crossing” arc, which ran through to February 2004, and so we pick up with…
WOLVERINE vol 3 #12
“Dreams”
by Greg Rucka, Darick Robertson & Studio F
March 2004
After eleven comparatively low-key, real-world issues, this is a drastic departure – a surrealist stream-of-conscious issue depicting one of Logan’s nightmares. Recurring themes include an animalistic version of himself hiding in the closet and a bright red bird who symbolises Jean, but it defies summary. Darick Robertson’s slight edge of cartooning is perfect for it. In the morning, Cassie Lathrop asks Logan if he had dreams, and he just answers “no.” They’re a couple at this point, by the way, but nothing will come of it.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #13-19
“Return of the Native”
by Greg Rucka, Darick Robertson, Tom Palmer & Studio F
April to September 2004Sabretooth is hired by Mr Willoughby and his aide Mr Murray – both connected with the Weapon X Project – to find and capture the Native. Rather than do it himself, Sabretooth gives the Native’s file to Logan and lets him do the hunting. Ostensibly it’s the easiest way of doing the job, but mainly Sabretooth just wants to screw with Logan.
Logan duly tracks down the Native, a feral woman living in the wilderness, who turns out to be another survivor of the Weapon X Project. She clearly remembers him, but he doesn’t remember him at all. Her attitude to him swings wildly from violence to sex. Logan tries to help her escape and they wind up in a cabin that they vaguely recognises; she tells him in broken English that it is “home”. Eventually, Willoughby and Murray manage to capture the Native; their plan is to harvest her eggs to create new super-soldiers. Having fallen out with his employers, Sabretooth switches sides and offers to help Logan rescue Native, mainly just to annoy everyone. Logan plays along until he gets the chance to run Sabretooth over and claw him in the head. Meanwhile, Weapon X’s Dr Vapor discovers that Native is pregnant (apparently with Logan’s child). Logan kills Vapor and rescues Native. He tries to persuade her to come back to the X-Men with him, but she says she can’t. (“Don’t belong, Logan.”) Sabretooth attacks Logan again, claiming that they both know Native needs to be put out of her misery, and that only he has the strength to do it. Sabretooth wins the fight and kills Native before Wolverine can recover, leaving a note reading “I did you a favour, runt – you can thank me later.”
This seven-parter is the end of the Greg Rucka run, and his only arc that really engages with wider continuity. Surprisingly, Native never appears again – yes, she dies at the end, but when did that ever stop anyone? She’s an interesting character, in that she’s an “animal” in a different sense from the usual Wolverine stories – she’s too animalistic even for Logan to interact with meaningfully, and in some ways the character is limited by design. There’s a definite hint that Creed is sincere in his view that she is better off dead.
Charts – 2 September 2022
Well, this is the busiest singles chart we’ve had in months.
1. Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal – “B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)”
LF System finally reach their limit after eight weeks at number 1, and drop 2. Replacing it is another debut dance hit, which means this might turn out to be two back-to-back one-hit wonders (though I expect they’ll both get off the list quickly enough). “B.O.T.A.” entered at number 10 three weeks ago and it’s spent the last two weeks at number 2, so it was obviously in line to be the next number one.
Knights of X #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.
KNIGHTS OF X #5
“Fort Krakoa”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Maher
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Captain Britain on the throne, flanked by Merlyn and Saturnyne.
PAGE 2. Merlyn is angry.
This is basically a recap page.
“On the way to his last stand, Omniversal Majestor Merlyn has been betrayed.” This is the final issue of Knights of X and it really feels like it’s rushing to a conclusion that it was meant to get to at much greater length. The narrator is having to spell out beats. Merlyn was indeed pursuing Roma and Saturnyne into Mercator at the end of the last issue but there wasn’t anything about it being a last stand. (To be fair, the narrator doesn’t say that Merlyn knew he was on his way to a last stand.) The “betrayal”, I assume, is the letter from King Arthur that appeared as a data page last issue, in which he told Merlyn that he was going his own way to confront Mordred and somehow address his kingdom’s future.
All the stuff about Merlyn’s “ragged army” seems to suggest that Merlyn has been suffering a longer series of reverses rather than just losing the one battle in the Crooked Market. There’s a whole load of missing set up to get to this point, but then that’ll happen when a book gets cancelled with issue #5.
X-Force #31 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #31
“The Hunt for X, part 2: Anatomy of a Killer”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colourist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: Kraven, wearing Beast’s fur and with Deadpool’s head on a spear.
PAGES 2-4. Kraven confronts the Progenitor.
As I covered last time, this Kraven is a clone of the original who debuted in 2019. Since he has the original’s personality, and his obsession with nature red in tooth and claw and so forth, he dislikes not having a proper birth; presumably it serves as a symbol of his own artificiality. He seems to hope that a confrontation with teh Celestial will give him some sort of symbolic rebirth.
The first chapter of this arc was billed as an A.X.E. crossover despite having no actual crossover content, but the arc as a whole clearly is a tie-in.
X-Men #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #14
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: C F Villa
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: A hooded Cyclops in shackles. This is probably a hangover from an abandoned earlier idea, since it bears no resemblance to the story, and nor does the solicitation copy: “WAS CYCLOPS RIGHT? – AN A.X.E. TIE-IN! Are ANY of the X-Men right? Only one can judge them and the Day of Judgment is here, for good or ill, and the newest team of X-Men must face the truth about themselves and what they have done.”
This is X-Men‘s second and final tie-in to A.X.E..
Wolverine: Patch
WOLVERINE: PATCH #1-5
Writer: Larry Hama
Penciler: Andrea Di Vito
Inker: Le Beau Underwood
Colourist: Sebastian Cheng
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Mark Basso
When you stop to think about it, this is a slightly odd book. The X-office seems to have rediscovered the joy of setting stories in past continuity – aside from X-Men Legends, we’ve got a Gambit series just kicking off, and now this. Fair enough. The Krakoa era isn’t for everyone and besides, if economic considerations dictate that there shall be more X-books, it avoids trying to tie everything in to the current status quo, and lets you do something else instead.
But when you think about a Patch miniseries, that’s the set-up from the first few years of Wolverine’s solo book, where they were doing noir stories in Madripoor. And here to write the reprise is Larry Hama, who didn’t really do that set-up. His first arc was set in Madripoor, but he closed the door on the place and moved the action on pretty sharpish. That’s probably why this miniseries takes place between Wolverine vol 2 #30-31 – immediately before Hama’s run began, in the last break in the action where Madripoor was still a thing.
Charts – 26 August 2022
Well, it’s another week where we’re relying on the album chart for activity. But first…
1. LF System – “Afraid to Feel”
That’s eight weeks. Still not the longest run of the year – Harry Styles’ “As It Was” stayed at number 1 for ten weeks. It’s holding off “B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)” by Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal, which spends a second week at number 2, and “Green Green Grass” by George Ezra, which has been hovering in the top five for ten weeks now, and gets its fourth (non-consecutive) week at number 3.
6. Aitch & Ed Sheeran – “My G”
And the prospect of a top 40 with no Ed Sheeran songs in it recedes just a little further. This is the release-week single from Aitch’s debut album “Close To Home”, which enters at number 2. That’s the sort of very technical “debut album” that follows two mixtapes that both made the top 10 in 2019 and 2020… but okay.
Marauders #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS vol 2 #5
“Hell Can Wait”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Andrea Broccardo
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Bishop fights Nemesis – I guess? I mean, in terms of the layout, it looks more like they’re fighting side by side, but that doesn’t make sense.
PAGE 2. Xandra is resurrected.
Xandra was assassinated by the Kin Crimson in issue #3. We already learned in X-Men Red #4 that Xandra survived her assassin by psychically transmitting her memory and her genetic code to Cerebro (don’t ask how she’s able to sequence her own DNA), and that explanation gets repeated in this issue.
PAGE 3. Aurora and Daken fight Chronicle and the Kin Crimson.
PAGE 4. In the past, the Acolytes react to the fight with Nemesis.
A footnote confirms that this scene takes place during X-Men #42 (1995). So, here’s how the story played out the first time round:
A.X.E.: Judgment Day #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
A.X.E.: JUDGMENT DAY #3
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Valerio Schiti
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER / PAGE 1: Makkari, Jean Grey and Iron Man, presumably inside the Progenitor.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits.
PAGES 4-5. The Progenitor judges Captain America.
The Progenitor is still going by the name he had in the Avengers arc that introduced him, despite his resurrection with an apparently altered personality. You have to wonder what the connection is between this guy and the very Celestial-like, though somewhat lower powered, Progenitors from various Al Ewing stories, most recently X-Men Red #2. But that’s probably a story for another time.
Ajak initially tries to rationalise away what she’s done. She’s apparently programmed to worship the Celestials as a religion, and so much of what she’s doing involves trying to explain or reinterpret that religion to get to a place she can live with.
Charts – 20 August 2022
After a lengthy summer logjam, we’re starting to see some turnover in the top half of the singles chart. But only starting.
1. LF System – “Afraid to Feel”
That’s seven weeks. It does have a serious challenge this time, with “B.O.T.A. (Baddest of them All)” by Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal climbing from 10 to 2, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this turns out to be it.
15. Nicki Minaj – “Super Freaky Girl”
This is the lead single from her 15th album, and counting guest appearances, it’s her 40th top 40 hit. And yes, it’s come to this, someone else has decided that enough time has passed to get away with sampling “Super Freak” by Rick James, the track that formed the basis for “U Can’t Touch This”. It’s… Nicki Minaj doing the cartoon version of Nicki Minaj, I guess? And that’s maybe what people want from Nicki Minaj at this point in her career, since she hasn’t placed a solo single this high since “Anaconda” back in 2014.
