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

HELLVERINE vol 2 #3
“The Devil’s Orphan”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Raffaele Ienco
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Ravis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso

HELLVERINE:

Mephisto has been taking locations where Akihiro suffered “great personal tragedy” and turning them into places that corrupt mutants in the vicinity and make them into serial killers. The incident at X-Force’s Greenhouse last issue was one of these places, the significance apparently being that Akihiro died there rather than anything to do with the mechanics of his resurrection.

It’s not entirely clear whether the people affected by these locations need to have any awareness of the relevant events; the people at the Greenhouse and Jasmine Falls presumably did, but it seems more likely that Mephisto is just somehow weaponising Akihiro’s emotional link to these places. At any rate, this means that Akihiro has to sort the problem out for magical reasons, rather than just handing the whole issue over to the experts.

Following Strange’s advice, Akihiro decides to visit locations that he associates with pain, starting with Jasmine Falls, the town where Romulus killed his mother and abducted him. This turns out to be a good guess.

In narration, Akihiro talks about needing to find his own way, and recognises that in the past he’s allowed himself to be defined in relation to others – Wolverine and Romulus in particular. This would have been a strong point pre Krakoa, but it feels a few years late. Still, that’s how Akihiro sees it.

Akihiro turns into Hellverine as soon as the Mother turns up, apparently involuntarily – though he believes that he wouldn’t have been able to fight her anyway. Once again, it’s not entirely clear what the demon Baragh-Ghul is doing by taking over here – if it’s consciously aligned with Mephisto, why does it want to fight one of his creations?

GUEST STAR:

Dr Strange. Having completed his infodump, Dr Strange gives Akihiro a potentially-relevant magical book (the Book of Lamentation, which is a new thing). Then he departs to appear in the upcoming Dr Strange of Asgard #1. The details of that don’t matter – the book just needs rid of him now that his plot function is exhausted and there’s no point in this story coming up with a pretext when he’s genuinely got something more important going on his life anyway.

SUPPORTING CAST:

This book doesn’t have a regular supporting cast, but this issue has the population of Jasmine Falls. In the original stories, starting in Logan: Path of the Warlord (1996), Jasmine Falls was a town of ex-ninjas training for a more peaceful way of life. But that was over fifty years ago and it now seems to be a relatively normal, if somewhat run down, small town. Some of the art of the surrounding farms seems extremely dated.

The population we see are middle aged, but then the children have been mysteriously picked off by the Mother. A single child, Botan, is left, and he’s been chained up by his father to keep him safe. This doesn’t work; he breaks his own ankle to get away and follow the Mother.

Logan and Itsu’s house has come to be seen as cursed and abandoned; rather improbably, there’s a photo of Logan and Itsu still lying around, though it might have been left there by Mephisto. The locals are aware that Itsu’s husband and son were mutants. Quite how they figured that out isn’t explained. Some people might well have recognised Wolverine with hindsight once he started appearing in public unmasked, but Akihiro didn’t even grow up in the town, and they don’t recognise him until he introduces himself. Despite their obvious aversion to mutants, the locals are still fairly willing to give Akihiro the benefit of the doubt – either that or they’re simply desperate.

VILLAINS:

Mephisto. According to Dr Strange, “Mephisto seems to have developed a kink for [Akihiro’s] suffering, an obsession with you as an inspiring conduit of pain”. This all seems a bit low-grade for Mephisto, but then an interest in individual Ghost Riders would always be a bit below his status, so we can probably take it that Mephisto’s interest is linked to the whole Hellverine thing. A flashback shows him turning up in person at Jasmine Falls.

The Mother. Either a demonically transformed version of Itsu, or a demon patterned on her – it could be either. There’s an apparent second face with miniature arms reaching out from her stomach, though she doesn’t appear pregnant. She’s been luring the children of Jasmine Falls into the woods, where they gather around her in silhouette with glowing eyes at the end. At least a couple seem to have leaves in their hair, like her.

FOOTNOTES:

Page 5 panel 1: According to Dr Strange, the mutants who have committed murders were all “exposed to the Hellish Altar” at the Greenhouse. This doesn’t really fit with what we saw last issue, where there was a big skeletal idol at the Greenhouse, but it had clearly been built very recently – it wasn’t there in the flashback where after Evan and Claire discovered the hole in the ground, and that appeared to have been the event which triggered the sequence of events leading to everyone but Evan dying. Presumably, then, these are other mutants who hung around at the Greenhouse for a time after X-Force moved on (since X-Force seem to be fine), and who were exposed to some sort of demonic influence associated with Akihiro’s dismembered body being buried in the area. The alternative is that Akihiro rescued a bunch of them off panel and they’ve had time to return to civilian life and get jobs, all in the time between issues #2-3 with Strange yet to complete his infodump – which seems improbable.

Page 10 panel 1: Itsu was murdered, while pregnant with Akihiro, in flashback in Wolverine #40 (2006).