The Incomplete Wolverine, Part 8
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
Well, we’ve reached the big one. It’s just one story… but a lot has been nailed on to it.
When Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X” first came out, I found it vaguely annoying. It’s thirteen parts long, and it doesn’t really answer any of the mysteries about how Logan got his adamantium skeleton. It just depicts what had always been fairly obvious – that he was given it against his will by villains. What it doesn’t do is identify those villains. It personifies the organisation through the characters of the Professor, Cornelius and Hines, but it makes very clear that the Professor answers to somebody else, and never explains who that is. So the big mystery about Wolverine’s adamantium remained unresolved – and on top of that, the main character spends most of the story either comatose or zoned out.
But read with the knowledge that it doesn’t actually explain anything, it’s much more enjoyable. For our purposes it’s worth bearing in mind that there’s some heavy unreliable-narrator material, especially towards the end of the story. Even so, the general thrust of “Weapon X” has been confirmed in plenty of other stories, so it seems that most of it happened more or less as depicted.
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS vol 1 #72
“Weapon X, part 1” by Barry Windsor-Smith
Early March 1991
Logan’s performance as an agent has been deteriorating due to alcohol abuse and an increasing obsession with the mutant issue (something that broadly tallies with the First X-Men miniseries and the Shadow Society one-shot, both covered in the previous chapter). Fired from his job, he’s living at the Prophecy, a home for “fallen Christians” – he’s an atheist, but he says he lied about his religion in order to get in. Logan is planning to catch a train to the Yukon, as he said he would at the end of Logan: Shadow Society. In the meantime, he’s plagued by dreams of his claws, which at this point in time he doesn’t know about.
(more…)Charts – 25 September 2020
Time for a new number one!
1 24KGoldn featuring Iann Dior – “Mood”
This has climbed 11-5-2-2-1 to get to the top, and it’s the first number one for either artist. 24KGolden has other hits to his name, including a guest appearance on the current Clean Bandit single, but Iann Dior goes on the one-hit wonder list (for now). It’s basically a pop crossover take on 2020 rap, but it pulls it off. “Mood” is an international hit – top 10 in the US, number 1 in several other UK countries, including Germany and Sweden. It has a comfortable lead over the number 2 record, “WAP”, which is in decline now anyway.
(more…)Juggernaut #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
JUGGERNAUT #1
“Picking Up the Pieces”
by Fabian Nicieza, Ron Garney & Matt Milla
Juggernaut. The Juggernaut is Cain Marko, Professor X’s evil stepbrother, who became “unstoppable” after getting powers from a magical crystal. “Unstoppable”, in practice, tends to mean “gets zapped by a telepath” or “gets buried under concrete”, or “falls down a well” or some such thing – but he does always come back in the end. He debuted in X-Men vol 1 #12 way back in 1965, and this is his first miniseries, though he has had some one-shots over the years.
Although the book was included on the X-books’ reading list and it does come from the X-office, it doesn’t have the normal Krakoa-era branding.
(more…)X of Swords: Creation #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X OF SWORDS: CREATION
“X of Swords, Chapter 01”
by Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard, Pepe Larraz & Marte Gracia
X OF SWORDS. Welcome to the big crossover event of 2020. It runs through every X-book for the next couple of months (aside from the Juggernaut miniseries), and this is one of several one-shots dotted along the way – the next one will be X of Swords: Stasis, due out at the end of October.
As with Powers of X, the title is a Roman numeral, and you’re meant to call it “Ten of Swords”. It’s a tarot reference, but we’ll get to that.
(more…)X-Men: Marvels Snapshots #1
“And the Rest Will Follow”
by Jay Edidin, Tom Reilly & Chris O’Halloran
The Kurt Busiek-curated Marvels line is difficult to keep track of, not least because so many of the books have such similar titles. As you might expect, much of it consists of well-handled character pieces written in the margins of past history; the original Marvels series was largely about revisiting the history of the Marvel Universe from a different perspective, after all.
This book – the cover says Marvel’s Snapshots X-Men, the digital copy says X-Men: Marvels Snapshots, and does this stuff really have to be so confusing? – takes a rather different approach. It’s an origin story for Cyclops.
Hold on a minute, you may be saying. Cyclops has got an origin story already. He’s had one since the sixties. And of course Jay Edidin knows that very well – he’s been podcasting on X-Men history for years. The thing about Cyclops’ back story, though, is that it’s not so much an origin story as a big pile of baggage that Scott is expected to lug around with him.
(more…)X-Men #12 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 5 #12
“Amenth”
by Jonathan Hickman, Leinil Francis Yu & Sunny Gho
COVER / PAGE 1. Summoner with (presumably) some of the monsters that he’s summoned up. He seems to be crying black tears. Curiously, this issue doesn’t carry a “Path to X of Swords” logo.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. The recap is describing the events of X-Men #2. The title, “Amenth”, isn’t a word, and doesn’t seem to refer to anything pre-established. We’ll see later that it’s the name of the wasteland dimension in which Arakko was banished.
(more…)Giant-Size X-Men: Storm #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
GIANT-SIZE X-MEN: STORM #1
“Disintegration”
by Jonathan Hickman, Russell Dauterman & Matthew Wilson
COVER / PAGE 1: Just a picture of Storm.
PAGES 2-4. Jean and Emma talk to Storm about her condition.
This flashback is picking up from Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey & Emma Frost #1, which came out way back in February (although that gap would have been shorter without the pandemic). That issue established that Storm had been infected with a techno-organic virus by the Children of the Vault, which was going to kill her. This obviously ties in to the recurring theme in Hickman’s early issues about the dangers (to mutants) of technology and the accompanying need for Krakoa to be free of conventional technology.
(more…)Charts – 18 September 2020
Very, very quiet…
1. Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion – “WAP”
Three weeks, though it was fairly close this time around. The top four is static, and there’s not much going on at the top end of the chart aside from a bunch of minor climbers. “Looking for Me” by Paul Woolford & Diplo featuring Kareen Lomax climbs 8-5. “Take You Dancing” by Jason Derulo climbs 11-9, giving him consecutive top ten hits for the first time since 2016. “Tick Tock” by Clean Bandit & Mabel featuring 24KGolden climbs 14-12.
14. S1mba featuring KSI – “Loose”
(more…)Excalibur #12 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCALIBUR vol 4 #12
“Verse XII: The Beginning”
by Tini Howard, Marcus To & Erick Arciniega
COVER / PAGE 1. Saturnyne plays chess with Excalibur as the pieces (a common motif with Otherworld rulers); she doesn’t realise she’s a piece in Apocalypse’s game in her turn. If you really want to nitpick, the chess board ought to have a white square in the bottom right corner.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits.
PAGES 4-6. Apocalypse addresses the High Lords.
“The Eternal Caldera, Krakoa.” A caldera is a cauldron-like cavity on an extinct volcano. The location, then, is presumably the extinct volcano on the Arak Coral from X-Men #2, which contained a closed portal to Krakoa’s sister island of Arakko.
(more…)Hellions #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLIONS #4
“Love Bleeds”
by Zeb Wells, Stephen Segovia & David Curiel
COVER / PAGE 1. Havok lashes out, with the Hellions lying defeated around him. Not exactly a scene which takes place during the issue. It seems to be a homage to the cover of Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #270 (the first part of the X-Tinction Agenda crossover), in which Havok was a brainwashed Genoshan magistrate.
PAGE 2. Once again, an epigraph from Nightcrawler. He seems to be addressing somebody (most likely the Quiet Council) and making an argument for the need to come to terms with past trauma.
(more…)