Wolverine #49 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #49
“Berserker”
Writers: Victor LaValle & Benjamin Percy
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine leaping into battle in his adamantium armour.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Sabretooth is caught by Cypher’s seed.
This is a recap of issue #47. We saw Sabretooth emerging from the seed cocoon on page 23 of issue #48, so this issue is going back to fill in what happened in the meantime.
PAGE 3. Recap and credits.
PAGES 4-5. Sabretooth meets therapist Cypher.
This is a callback to scenes from the first Sabretooth miniseries, where Cypher similarly inserted himself into Sabretooth’s experiences in the Pit, in an attempt to reason with him. (This Cypher is also accompanied by a Warlock, taking the form of his pad.) This isn’t the real Cypher, but a persona programmed into the seed by Cypher before he gave it to Nekra in Sabretooth #5. He does, however, claim that the Cypher we saw in Sabretooth was the real one.
“Cypher” claims to have the real Doug’s “most vital qualities… His belief in fairness and his deep reserves of hope.” As we’ll see, the real Cypher believed that he was programming the seed in a way that would shock Sabretooth into empathising with his victims, albeit in an unavoidably traumatic way. He said in Sabretooth #5 that the seed wouldn’t kill him, but “he’ll wish that’s all it did.” This is him giving Sabretooth one last chance.
PAGES 6-9. Sabretooth relives the murder of Silver Fox.
Again, this is a callback to the simulated worlds that Sabretooth was shown experiencing at the start of the Sabretooth miniseries. The twist is that Cypher is forcing Sabretooth to relive his killings from the perspective of the victims. This is the murder of Wolverine’s partner Silver Fox, originally shown in flashback in Wolverine vol 2 #10. Numerous versions of this story have been told over the years, which don’t all fit together terribly well. This issue is going broadly with the original version, in which Sabretooth at least claims to be killing Silver Fox after she rejects his advances.
PAGES 10-14. Bad Seed and Camo Sabretooth fight the Stark Sentinels.
We saw Bad Seed approaching Krakoa and attacking the Stark Sentinels last issue; he seemed to make light work of them thanks to the extradimensional tech that he had brought back to Earth with him earlier in the series.
Camo Sabretooth correctly identifies that Sabretooth Prime is obsessed with Wolverine, and that Bad Seed is equally obsessed with Sabretooth (who he was trying to hunt down and murder in all timelines in Sabretooth & The Exiles). All of which rather begs the question of why Camo Sabretooth brought the guy back in the first place, since his role in this issue is reduced to lecturing Bad Seed and then getting killed. The original idea, in issue #45, was that the “Savage” and “Camo” Sabretooths brought Bad Seed back in the hope that he would defeat Sabretooth Prime, who they regarded as a dangerously erratic leader. But he’s already been defeated by the time they arrived, making Bad Seed an outright liability and obviating the need for any alliance they might have hammered together. It’s not really clear what the point of this subplot is, since Camo would have been better off just dumping the Creeds altogether and going his own way; he does seem to be Sabretooth without the obsession, but that leaves him rather bland. Still, it’s possible that the idea is to leave a back door for him to return in future.
PAGE 15. X-Force arrive.
Laura hailed X-Force last issue before escaping from the Sabretooth Army’s flying base.
PAGES 16-17. Sabretooth relives an attack on Birdy.
Birdy was Sabretooth’s assistant in early 1990s stories by Larry Hama. Broadly as described here, she was a telepath who he coerced into calming him down with a psychic “glow”. She was also basically a punching bag. She was actually killed by Graydon Creed rather than by Sabretooth, but that’s consistent with the memories shown here.
PAGE 18. Sabretooth relives a montage of other attacks
Some of these flashbacks are generic. The other ones are:
- Sabretooth corners Power Pack in Power Pack #27 (which was a Mutant Massacre tie-in).
- Sabretooth kills Feral in Wolverine vol 3 #54, part of the “Evolution” arc – that’s Wolverine just coming into panel and discovering the scene.
- Sabretooth throws Rogue into a rock in Uncanny X-Men #213.
- Sabretooth attacks black costume Spider-Man – the only story I can think of where they meet in those costumes in the continuity implant X-Men / Spider-Man #2.
PAGE 19. “Cypher” tries to talk sense into Sabretooth.
Consistent with his programmed liberal values, “Cypher” makes the traditional argument that since these are plainly not happy memories, Sabretooth must surely hold on to them out of guilt – thus, he hopes to shock Sabretooth into a state of empathy that will bring out his better side. Sabretooth (and to an extent the story) sees this as pathetically naive.
Doug’s slightly better point is that Sabretooth was indeed good for a while, but that was in the aftermath of the Axis event which left several characters “morally inverted” for a while. It’s hardly strong evidence of an inherent heroic quality, but if you were feeling charitable you could read the story as bringing out suppressed sides of the affected characters’ personalities. (A better point would have been the Age of Apocalypse Sabretooth, who genuinely was a hero – but this story doesn’t actually want Cypher’s point to be good.)
PAGES 20-21. Wolverine arrives on Krakoa.
Again, by the time they arrive, the story is basically over, except for Bad Seed standing around on the beach (whom Wolverine mistakes for a last remaining Sabretooth). Since he no longer needs the weight of numbers, he sends the Exiles away, and endorses them as representing the true spirit of Krakoa. Presumably, these characters will still be out there after the end of the Krakoan era.
PAGES 22-24. Sabretooth emerges.
According to Sabretooth, he feels no empathy for his victims and regards his experiences in the seed as a greatest hits reel to remind him of how awesome he is and send him into a berserker rage. Given the apparent total failure of Cypher’s plan, and the reaction of his avatar, we’re apparently to take this at face value.
The narrator gives us a quote about berserker rage, which is indeed from the Icelandic historian/poet Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241) – specifically, it’s from the Ynglinga Saga.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads COUP DE GRACE
“Presumably, these characters will still be out there after the end of the Krakoan era.”
Well, Idie (with the new codename Temper) will be in the Cyclops team in the adjectiveless X-Men.
Sabretooth popped up a couple times in Spectacular Spider-Man when Peter was sporting the black costume – #116 and #119. Peter David seemed like he was setting him up as a Black Cat villain.
Superhero comics really don’t treat therapists well. Excepting Doc Samson, they’re always either deluded weaklings who are beaten by the sheer manliness of crazy, or they’re wicked manipulators. Or possibly in the case of Harley Quinn, both.
But then, maybe it’s just that Cypher is wildly unqualified.
@Si: yeah, therapists are usually ineffective in super-hero comics. To be fair, they are an awkward fit in a genre predicated on physical conflict and featuring villains who return for multiple stories. I’m 100% on board with there being more effective therapists in comics, though.
As far as I know, Cypher isn’t a therapist or mental health worker of any sort. His armchair psychiatrist routine backfired big time here, as it should. Maybe LaValle & Percy are making the point that people shouldn’t assume they know what’s best based on a shallow analysis. Or that some people are beyond help. Either way, I knew the trap would be ineffective, or else we wouldn’t get to see adamantium-armored Wolverine vs. Sabretooth in the concluding issue.
I think the fundamental question of Sabertooth at this point is…
A) That he’s a man capable of choice between giving into his violent impulses or not. A shadow version of Wolverine.
B) Or he’s a real world psychopath with no empathy or capacity to control his actions.
A is perhaps more interesting, but also much more old fashioned and unrealistic.
He’s a torturing serial killer cannibal rapist at this point, I’m not sure “he’s just cranky Logan” really works for modern sensibilities.
Btw the unidentified woman in the flashback last issue who was tragically killed by a remorseful Sabretooth last issue is his canonical albeit obscure OTP in Earth-616 , Holly Bright aka Holo , from the almost-forgotten The First XMen mini-series by Neal Adams himself , a “Hidden Years” -style MS that tried to capitalize on the synergy with the FOX-Men : First Class of Bryan Singer by revealing that it was Wolverine AND Sabretooth together who personally organized and led the first XMen style team of x-gene mutants in 616 which directly inspired Charles Xavier . In relation to this Sabretooth War , TFXM showed arguably the last time 616-ST was still actually capable of a legitimate redemption arc as he was not yet an absolutely iredeemable sociopath* , being of an identical moral alignment there as his counterpart AoA Sabretooth in XMen Chronicles 1 , indeed you could place TFXM also happening in the AoA , thats how far back in time it was , as Charles Xavier was still a fresh private in the USA Military who hadnt been crippled into a paraplegic yet and Magneto was still personally hunting Nazis in Latin America.
* its shown in the finale that ST killed his gf HB against his will because of telepathic possession in the course of their final battle against the prototype of Operation Zero Tolerance and he blamed Wolverine for his “failed crusade” , which also apparently killed the rest of their students , which would later be ST’d Freudian Excuse for killing all of Wolverine’s gf’s , and indeed , Wolverine would feel so guilty about this , that he would willingly albeit unknowingly agree to participate in the Weapon X program
It also would have been one of those “very special episodes” of old sitcoms featuring a wildly misunderstood grasp of the nature of therapy for Doug’s attempt at therapy to work. Like when a character would suddenly develop an eating disorder so they’d go to therapy for one session, the therapist would talk it out, and the person with the eating disorder would proclaim, “Yes. I understand that it is harmful. I will change my ways and recover now.” Then, you would never hear of this debilitating disorder again. When it is realistic to expect it to require years of therapy to see those types of insights and results.
Sabretooth is most likely too damaged to expect him to be able to significantly change, but regardless him having a major breakthrough after this one misguided attempt would be as insulting to the reader as a “very special episode”.
It is pretty disappointing that this seed had over one year of buildup around Doug’s disturbing warning only for the payoff to be a misunderstanding of Sabretooth.
So, this adamantium armour remind anyone else of the silver spider armour from Web of Spider-Man #100.
@Rob London- specifically, the scene where Sabretooth slices Peter seems to be from Spectacular Spider-Man 116.
Doug is an Idiot.
And this isn’t the only example of Doug’s “merciful solutions” backfiring. He decided to let Moira go without keeping an eye on her. and she wound up hooking up with AIs that want to destroy the world. He decided to let Nature Girl and Curse go and they wound up causing more death and destruction and the X-Men wound up having to stop them. I’m not sure what writers are going to do with Doug in the future, since the Krakoan Era has created the impression of him as a well- meaning idiot.
Doug was one of the best characters from the Hickman era. Things were going so well for him until the end of “Inferno”. It was also Doug who knew not to trust Xavier, planting Warlock to merge with Krakoa so that they could keep watch on what the rulers of Krakoa were plotting. It would have been interesting to see what Hickman would have taken the character. I am still convinced Hickman had a greater purpose behind Doug’s decision to allow Moira to simply escape (especially knowing she had the intention to pursue her cure, at least up to that point), seeing as how Doug’s action led to the fall of Krakoa, relating to his own reveal of the “Trickster Titan” identity. Not returning to this decision or ignoring Doug’s role wouldn’t fit with Doug being the most heroic mutant character under Hickman.
I quite like the idea of Cypher and the people around him thinking he’s a genius, when really he’s just an average IQ, or even kind of dumb, guy who has a power that lets him do things without trying that usually takes enormous brain power. Like if Cyclops thought he was physically strong because his eye beams can blast through rock.
That said, we don’t know if the therapy session was the beginning and the end of it. There’s a small chance that it will be revealed next episode that Cypher took away his killing edge or something, and he just doesn’t know it yet.
By the way, I would not like to be inside a suit of adamantium armour that is completely enclosed but has a huge hole right in the face. An explosive gets in there, Wolverine’s body is going to come out the face hole like elephant’s toothpaste.
Incoming novel:
@Si and Mike Loughlin: I’ve quite liked Dr. Andrea Sterman’s turn as Moon Knight’s psychiatrist and recurring supporting character in Jed MacKay’s current run. She (and MacKay) navigate Marc Spector’s bipolar and dissociative identity disorders with a lot of care and put in a lot of work to make sure that no false equivalence exists between being a victim of these mental illnesses with being violent.
@Uncanny X-Ben: I vote Option C: Sabretooth is a real world psychopath incapable of empathy, but with full awareness and autonomy of his actions. There hasn’t been anything in LaValle’s take on the character that indicates any sort of internal or moral conflict with his decision-making process. Creed consistently measures opportunities to 1) threaten and inflict casual violence on others, and 2) extract maximum value for his selfish, personal gain, especially at the expense of others. He’s disturbingly cunning and calculating.
@Chris V: I don’t think every mystery should have to bear the burden of (quite often unreasonably) high expectations–certainly not for something that, for me, was an afterthought like this Death Seed.
That said, the Death Seed worked for me. In fact, when it was revealed that the Death Seed would force Creed to experience Silver Fox’s rape, torture, and subsequent murder *as Silver Fox*, I was floored. I feel like we’ve seen villains demonstrate pangs of remorse and empathy after experiencing their pain and suffering, but to steer Creed toward Silver Fox’s rape, one of the most heinous acts of sexual violence he’s ever committed…that was bold for me.
(I used to volunteer as a hotline and in-hospital advocate at a rape crisis agency, helping victims–mainly women–navigate their immediate crisis and/or the byzantine process of the sexual assault nurse exam in the hospital, and most men would not believe some of the acts of evil and savagery people do simply to exert power over their victims. The fact that LaValle/Percy even flirted with the perspective of a sexual assault victim was quite powerful for me.)
And yet! Creed still reacted with a twisted, menacing, almost sexual glee when he could finally feel exactly what kind trauma he was causing. The sexual subtext behind Creed’s psychology throughout this arc (from his erotic attraction to Logan to him literally getting off on his own handiwork of rape and murder) is arguably the most interesting, expansive work anyone has done with the character, precisely because it mirrors the psychology and MOs of real life serial rapists and murderers.
And since the perspective of sexual assault victims is almost never a perspective considered in comics, I genuinely was curious to see if that would somehow move the needle here.
@Michael: I don’t think Doug is an idiot at all. As the paraphrased saying goes, we can only do the best we can with the information we have in front of us, and there was nothing that indicated Moira was going to have the wildest, dumbest human supremacist heel turn ever. And I agree with Chris V that the vast improvements to his character is one of the great success stories to come out of the Krakoa era.
A coda: The other reason I bought into the “Death Seed” swerve as a plot device to generate empathy is because Doug has consistently demonstrated his aversion to any form of incarceration, which is why he liberated everyone from the Pit in the first place. And many studies have shown that rehabilitation programs have a bigger effect on lowering recidivism–the rate at which previously incarcerated offenders return to prison–than punishment-based consequences that are rampant in the US (~70% of offenders are re-imprisoned within 1-2 years of release in the US vs ~20% in, for example, Norway). So it’s morally and logically consistent that Doug would pursue this with one of the most morally reprehensible characters ever.
The problem here, though, is that I wouldn’t consider any part of this rehabilitation (just like I wouldn’t consider Jean livestreaming people’s feelings into Cassandra Nova’s brain “rehab”), because true rehab is a protracted process that requires the help of trained professionals to help change undesirable behavior over a long period of time.
Not in the case of Moira, but for Nature Girl and Curse, Doug was also acting on behalf of Krakoa.
One thing about Doug that hasn’t been talked about, but fits this concept well, is that he’s actually really young. He died at age 15 or 16, and has only been back maybe a couple of years Marvel time. But all of his fellow New Mutants are in their mid 20s. They call him a kid a lot, but imagine a scenario where this character was born around the turn of the century, his peers are married, have kids, or run billion dollar corporations and Avengers teams. How easy it would be to forget he’s not even old enough to vote.
Of course he makes stupid decisions that he thinks are wiser than anyone else’s. And of course grown adults take him more seriously than they should.
Marvel’s understandably inconsistent aging aside (Shogo was actually de-aged), Doug is definitely not meant to be a teenager now. He was married in this era. In 2024, we’re not just going to have teens be set up in arranged marriages and played off as romantically as it ended up being.
That being said, I also don’t think he’s been written as an idiot. When he let Moira go, Destiny and Mystique were trying to kill her *before* she had done anything. He couldn’t have predicted her crazy villain heel turn and neither did a lot of us until Hickman left and Percy wrote it in. I agree also that Hickman clearly had a bigger plan for him that simply didn’t happen. I don’t think the office had any other idea of what else to do with him.
Eh, it’s legal in a lot of countries to get married at 18, and in some countries it’s much younger. Krakoa always seemed very … free spirited. The marriage isn’t a deal breaker.
@Rinoa, Moonstar Dynasty- Moira had already tried to prevent any mutant births from ever happening again- you’d think that would be a clue she was dangerous.
@Moonstar Dynasty- The problem with using the United States vs. Norway as a comparison of incarceration vs. rehabilitation is that Western Europe has had much lower crime rates than the United States since 1900.
But even Norway sentenced Anders Breivik to decades in jail, and Sabretooth has an even higher body count.
I agree that it’s a cheat when villains get changed into heroes through something magic or similar, as when Sabreooth got inverted or the recent storyline with Norman Osborn.
I bet Squirrel Girl could have rehabilitated Sabretooth in one sitting.
I got the impression (admittedly based on little more than “vibes”) that the original Hickman plan would have had *Doug* turn out to be the surprise heel-turn. There was considerable mystery about his early actions in Krakoa, that never seemed to go anywhere.