X Lives of Wolverine #5 annotations
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:
Charts – 11 March 2022
Behold the changing of the guard.
1. Dave – “Starlight”
Surprise release of (presumably) the lead single from his new album. It’s his second number one, the first being 2018’s “Funky Driday”, but he’s had another nine top ten hits in the interim. So hardly a surprise that he gets there in the end.
Somehow or other, Dave has managed to get himself a sole writer credit on this, despite the entire backing track being based on the Macaron Project’s cover of “Fly Me To The Moon”.
Sabretooth #2 annotations
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.
X Deaths of Wolverine #4 annotations
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.
X Lives of Wolverine #4 annotations
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.
The Incomplete Wolverine – 1998
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
We left off with Wolverine between regular writers. Warren Ellis’s “Not Dead Yet” filler arc had already taken us through to March 1998, and so we pick up this instalment with…
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #353-354
“Blackbirds” / “Prehistory”
by Steve Seagle, Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend & Steve Buccellato
March & April 1998
Rogue has a recurring nightmare in which she first absorbs Wolverine’s powers and memory without his consent, then begs him to kill her for her lack of control. Rogue and Storm won’t tell him why she’s so jumpy, and he’s also generally annoyed about losing his temper with Marrow in X-Men #72, so Logan is generally annoyed.
At this point, Board of Education inspector Margaret Stone shows up, demanding to carry out a surprise inspection, since apparently Professor X hasn’t filed the necessary paperwork for over two years. She’s predictably horrified and quickly leaves, announcing that a full inspection will follow. In a depressing sign of things to come, this plotline simply vanishes into the ether without any resolution, after getting one further passing mention in issue #355. At any rate, Logan is having a very bad day, which only gets worse when he gets knocked out from behind by Sauron. He spends most of issue #354 unconscious, and finally wakes up in time to defeat Sauron. (Sauron is just hunting down mutant energy in this arc, and has no particular plan.)
Charts – 4 March 2022
Well, at least nothing’s happening on the chart.
That’s seven weeks at number one. All three Encanto songs are still in the top 10, with “Surface Pressure” at 5 and “The Family Madrigal” at 10 – the other two do seem to have peaked, though. And our highest new entry is…
25. Central Cee – “Straight Back To It”
Ah, filming your video at Chelsea’s stadium. Good week for that. Anyway, this is the last in a veritable barrage of singles that Central Cee has released in support of his album “23”, which enters at number 1 – his debut last year, “Wild West”, was a number 2 album. Central Cee has really churned out the supporting singles for this album, which is an interesting technique – “Straight Back To It” is his fifth top 40 hit of the year. One was the “Daily Duppy” freestyle (number 35), but the four proper singles all landed between 21 and 25. No guest stars on any of them, either – Central Cee has appeared as a guest on the D-Block Europe song “Overseas” (currently at 9), but he’s unusually un-keen on having other people on his own records.
Inferno
INFERNO vol 2 #1-4
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Valerio Schiti & Stefano Caselli
Colourist: David Curiel
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Jordan White
Inferno is a strange book with a strange role. With Jonathan Hickman departing the X-books, it completes his run, but without resolving what he set up. The X-office has decided to stick with the Krakoan set-up for a little while yet, instead of moving on to the next phase of the originally planned storyline. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen at some point, of course – the nature of comics is that everything tends to revert to its traditional status quo in the end. But for now, we’re sticking with Krakoa.
So, if that’s direction, how do you go for finality? Well, by paying off a few prominent storylines and moving those characters on to their next phases, which seems fair enough. Quite why any of this is called Inferno, mind you, is less than obvious. Yes, it’s a trademark, but they already did a series under that name in 2015. This has nothing to do with any previous Inferno story, and nothing to do with Madelyne Pryor, who was being set up for something over in Hellions. (Her story continues in New Mutants, to be fair.) It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that it’s called Inferno mainly because they’d already started foreshadowing something called Inferno.
X-Men #9 annotations
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.
Charts – 25 February 2022
We talk about him incessantly, I think you’ll find.
That’s six weeks. As for the other Encanto songs, “Surface Pressure” returns to 3 this week – it’s spent six weeks now hovering between 3 and 5 – while “The Family Madrigal” is still at 8.
6. Mimi Webb – “House On Fire”
Presumably the first single from her next album. This becomes her highest placing single, beating last year’s “Good Without” (which got to number 8). The singles from the last album were mostly mid paced ballads, so this is a bit of a shift, positioning her more as an 80s pop act. It’s not subtle, but I like the hook.
