Wolverine #8 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #8
“Adamantine Unleashed” / “This is Your Life”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
This issue is legacy number #400. The numbering ignores the original miniseries because the legacy numbers are supposed to represent the number that the ongoing title would have reached if it had never been rebooted.
To celebrate, we get a very odd issue which opens with a ten page story resolving the Adamantine storyline (or at least ending its first act), followed by a 30 page story resolving the Wendigo storyline and setting up the next arc. Since both of those stories are by the same regular creative team, I’m treating them here together.
There’s a break in the action of “a few days” before the end of the second story, but it seems we still haven’t reached a point where Wolverine can go off and appear in any other X-books – and so this whole series is still apparently set back before X-Men #1.
WOLVERINE
He thinks of Laura as “my kid” and is fired up by the thought that if Romulus defeats him then Laura will be next. The Adamantine seems impressed by this – not only is Wolverine literally one with his weapon, he represens a combination of “animal savagery with heroci purpose” and “false metal with true spirit”. It addresses him as a “champion”.
He recognises that Arcade’s reconstructions of traumatic events from his past are intended to provoke them, but that alone doesn’t prevent him from lashing out. However, the thought that he needs to stay rational in order to save the Wendigo and Arcade’s other victims does keep him in control. Being reminded of the murder of Silver Fox also upsets him, but he regards references to his romantic triangle with Jean and Scott as outdated.
He regards Arcade’s escape as yet another example of having failed to “put out of commission” someone who’ll hurt innocents in order to get at him, and can’t bring himself to talk to the random civilians that he rescues from Arcade.
Once Leonard is cured, Logan agrees – with some pushing – to take him back home, which is an opportunity for him to remember how important mothers are. He has conflicted feelings about his own mother, Elizabeth Howlett: “Soon as my mutation emerged, my ma called me an animal and cast me out of the house. Then she took her own life.” This is from Origin #2-3, where young James’ powers emerge after his father is killed. Elizabeth does indeed reject him and throw him out of the house, and shoots herself a few minutes later. All of this is more of a mental breakdown than anything else, but clearly Logan regards it primarily as a rejection.
SUPPORTING CAST
Leonard the Wendigo. Nightcrawler is able to keep him calm by talking to him. He adores Wolverine and licks him enthusiastically when reunited.
Arcade tries to provoke him to kill innocent humans with pain and “hunger inducing drugs”, which does indeed send him into a rage, but Wolverine’s example of self-control seems to help him to regain his senses. After he resists his homicidal urges to save Wolverine from Arcade’s deathtraps, he’s seemingly killed by acid, only to emerge from the Wendigo body restored to human form (complete with clothes). Wolverine takes this to mean that the “so-called Northern Gods” have released Leonard from the curse after he “earned a second chance”, which is as good a theory as any.
Wolverine (Laura Kinney) and Nightcrawler have brief appearances in the first story.
Elizabeth Howlett. Logan receives a letter from her at the end of the issue – or supposedly from her, because it would imply that she’s somehow lived way beyond her natural lifespan and that she was able to track him down in a random motel where he happened to be spending the night. Logan recognises that this makes no sense, but claims that the letter smells correct.
Elizabeth offers to meet with him and explain herself, and claims that “our family’s enemies are closing in on me”.
VILLAINS
Romulus. After he repeats his rant from the previous issue about using the Adamantine’s power to bring back the age of myth, he gets defeated when Wolverine’s claws are rammed down his throat. It’s all very summary and a bit weird, frankly. Wolverine tells Laura that the Adamantine escaped and “took Romulus with it”, which is absolutely not what the art shows – the art shows Romulus’ body still lying there as the Adamantine seeps away into the ground, though some effort seems to have been made to put a glowing effect on him.
The Adamantine. Once Romulus is defeated, it abandons him, declaring him “disappointing” and “not worthy of our gifts after all”. It acts as if it allowed Romulus to retain his own mind, rather than being under his control through force of will as he had suggested.
The Adamantine is impressed by Wolverine as a potential champion; Romulus’ failure apparently prompts it to modify its attitude to adamantium and to consider whether “tainted heroes made of tainted metal” are more suited to the modern world. It takes a physical form as a suit of armour, and decides to go off and learn more about the modern world before returning to Wolverine once it’s figured things out. It seems to be planning a bit of war-mongering, that being the only part of the modern age that really interests it.
Lady Deathstrike, Cyber, Donald Pierce and the Constrictor all have cameos, lying around unconscious.
Arcade. For reasons which aren’t spelled out, he kidnaps Wolverine and the Wendigo and tries to engineer a scenario where the Wendigo will kill innocent victims. No motivation is given beyond the fact that Arcade enjoys it – traditionally, Arcade was a contract killer, but Wolverine doesn’t seem to consider the question of who he might be working for. Of course, Arcade’s modus operandi only really makes sense if his main motivation is sadism, because he can’t possibly be making a profit even on the vast sums he supposedly charges.
Somehow, Arcade has become aware of the Wendigo (who in story terms has not been around very long), and he also has some fairly detailed information about scenarios from Wolverine’s past. He can make a recognisable Weapon X project and a version of Silver Fox who apparently smells right. On the other hand, whatever information Arcade is working from is a few years out of date. An obvious possibility is that he’s using data that originated with the Weapon X project itself, since Silver Fox figured into some of their memory implant scenarios. Since the only other people to have encountered this Wendigo, and to know of Wolverine’s relationship with it, are Department H, perhaps someone there is responsible for this.
FOOTNOTES
- Arcade’s distorted version of the Weapon X laboratory shows an obvious dummy of Wolverine in his floatation tank (from the Barry Windsor-Smith “Weapon X” story in Marvel Comics Presents #72-84) and a version of the Professor, the lead evil scientist from that story.
- Silver Fox was killed by Sabretooth in a flashback in Wolverine vol 2 #10, the accuracy of which has become extremely murky through later retcons in which she shows up alive and well without any real explanation. The current state of continuity seems to be that the flashback took place more or less as shown, but that Silver Fox somehow survived. Wolverine claims here that Sabretooth “murdered” her, which is essentially correct in terms of that being the event that brought an end to their time together.
- Elizabeth’s letter refers to his choice of the name “Logan” as causing her guilt; for her, Logan is the name of the groundskeeper that killed her husband, and who was strongly implied to be Logan’s biological father.
“Onryō”
Writer, artist: Daniel Warren Johnson
Colour artist: Mike Spicer
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
This is a ten-page short set “years ago” in Japan, with no wider continuity implications. An “onryō” is a vengeful spirit, as the first page indicates. The basic idea here is that Logan shows up to avenge his murdered town and does the usual vengeful spirit routine of being indestructible and implacable, but because his claws are part of him, he cannot fulfil the usual closing beat of laying down his weapon and finding peace after taking his revenge.
I don’t think I’d describe Arcade as a sadist. His compulsion is usually written as having to allow his victims a small chance to escape- he enjoys the “game” and doesn’t care who gets hurt.
“He regards Arcade’s escape as yet another example of having failed to “put out of commission” someone who’ll hurt innocents in order to get at him”
Which is kind of ironic, considering that the current story has Arcade helping the Avengers against Doom.
Arcade is still a sadist. You can enjoy playing games with people while still being sadistic. In fact, it adds to the sadistic appeal if you play fair with them, allow them some slim chance to escape, but still end up killing them. It’s more than not caring who gets hurt, in that Arcade wants to win (meaning death for his opponent). The point is that Arcade must gain enjoyment from his (sadistic) games, rather than simply being a hired assassin, because Arcade is spending far more on the elaborate traps than he could possibly make on taking the contracts.
He’s a thrill killer. His origin was that he was so good at assassinations that he grew bored, so he came up with elaborate games that could maybe give him the feeling of enjoyment again. Which is, frankly, sadistic.
The problem with saying that Arcade was so good at killing people, he eventually had to build entire deathtrap-filled amusement parks to even the odds, is that his track record over the course of his published appearances is abysmal.
Yes, we can assume he regularly kills civilians to pay the bills (not that I can imagine him actually turning a profit on this most of the time) but against superhumans, he’s little more than a joke–hence the entire Avengers Arena storyline and its aftermath.
(Why he’s allowed to live after that, I’ll never know.)
Thing is, how often have we actually ever seen him murder people through any skill, talent, experience, or training? I can’t imagine him as a hitman pre-Murderworld, and the Marvel Universe is ridiculously full of colorful, gimmicky assassins as it is.
It’s probably a vicious circle. Arcade is probably also a masochist. Wasn’t there a story that once a year he allows Miss Locke to attempt to kill him to see if he deserves to live? Superheroes are, obviously, above his level. So, every so often, he takes a superhero contract in order to punish himself. After the superhero survives, he’s so degraded and humiliated that he feels the urge even stronger to take up contracts to torture and kill more civilians in Murderworld. The ennui increases, so he takes another superhero contract to bring the thrill back.
Eh, I like Arcade. Does his business make any sort of economic sense? Not in the slightest. He exists because wacky deathtraps are fun. Sometimes you just want to read about superheroes trapped in a giant pinball machine.
My best attempt to reconstruct Arcade would be that he’s not an assassin, but a distraction-for-hire. He’s the world’s greatest kidnapper and other villains hire him to keep a superhero busy for a few hours while they pull a job.
Saladin Ahmed had better title one of these stories Adamantine Rage.
Arcade has gotten a bit more play in other places outside the X-Men and racked up a few “wins.”
In Kelly Thompson’s BLACK WIDOW mini from a few years ago, Arcade was hired by a group of her enemies (headlined by Madame Hydra) to brainwash Natasha, provide her with a fake life to keep her off the grid, and keep an eye on her. She eventually broke free and figured it out with the help of her pals, but she was forced to put her son in hiding afterward, and vowed revenge.
There were a series of Murderworld titled one-shots which were an unofficial mini series from 2023-2024 that established that Arcade holds viral contests for cash prizes from internationally chosen contestants, in which 200 enter and only 1 survives. Supposedly he’s killed thousands this way, and in the mini series itself he killed a mutant as well as the original Leap-Frog, among some other original characters (that included a HYDRA spy). Black Widow pursued him, and even tried to get help from Shadowcat (who dismissed her as being too busy), but he escaped. Then she got distracted becoming a Venom.
In SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MEN, Arcade teamed up with Mentallo to fun a full VR simulation machine on duped college students (among others) in order to get then hooked on their fantasies and then sell this service to the highest bidder. The scheme was bankrolled by Hammerhead, and wound up accidentally creating an evil AI robot. Even Miles Warren/the Jackal got involved and showed interest. Both Spider-Men (Peter and Miles) got roped in and thwarted the scheme, but Arcade escaped and most of his victims were so traumatized by having their fantasies ripped away (or learning unpleasant truths about their desire) that they arranged for group therapy at the Coffee Bean. Seriously, that’s the subplot for the second arc.
And in ONE WORLD UNDER DOOM, Carol Danvers and the Avengers decided that the best way to distract Emperor Doom, who is effectively using public relations to run circles around the heroes, is to distract him by teaming up with the Masters Of Evil in public, which include Arcade. Despite Avengers Arena, where he literally murdered the boyfriend of Carol’s latest trainee (Hazmat), she and the team were willing to team with him when convenient.
So, here and there Arcade has gotten around. And in fairness, he’s very good at capturing superheroes and building robotic duplicates. He just hasn’t actually killed anyone high profile. And yes, he is a sadist, especially in those Murderworld minis where it’s clear Marvel intended him as a Jigsaw (from SAW) proxy.
The Murderworld one-shots was a clear riff of Squid Game (so much so that there was even a completely nonsensical sequence narratively speaking that forced the contestants to rest in a dormitory virtually identical to the one in the TV series.
That Murderworld not-a-mini was surprisingly good.
Arcade’s biggest win in the x-books might be destroying the former Mutant Town in X-Factor Investigations… if I remember the story correctly. So again, he did what he was hired to do, it just wasn’t an assassination.
Avengers Arena was pretty fun, but I’ll excuse a lot for Kev Walker art.
Several writers over the years have written Arcade as a more monstrous sadist, not as someone who sees it all as a (sadistic) amusement.
The Wolverine/Gambit: Victims miniseries infamously had Arcade kill Miss Locke, then start killing other women and leaving their bodies around as some kind of weird effort to frame Wolverine.
And then there’s the Dennis Hopeless Avengers Arena mini, in which Arcade deliberately kidnaps a bunch of teen heroes so he can finally rack up some kills. Not coincidentally, that series refers back to W/G: Victims, confirming that all the Miss Locke appearances afterwards were robots. In the Hopeless series, Arcade even states that he killed Locke because she was getting too close to him emotionally.
So, regrettably, “vicious, sadistic creep” Arcade does have some canonical basis, and it really cuts against the original (and most frequent) take on the character.
Ackchyually,
1) Thomas Logan WAS already confirmed to be Wolverine’s biological father* in Jason Aaron’s 2010 Wolverine Goes to Hell storyline around 15 years ago IRL (this was also the same storyline that also introduced the current form of the 616-Abrahamic Biblical Satan aka The Fallen Archangel Lucifer aka OG Marduk (Kurios)
2) Since all of the “innocent” victims , or at least the important ones , from Avengers Arena have now been resurrected in 2025 (Mettle in the Avengers Academy Infinity comic , Juston and Sentinel in the Sentinels mini-series) maybe that’s why Arcade now gets a pass since nobody really liked Kid Briton and Nara ,Apex was an outright supervillainess , and maybe Red Raven even got resurrected as well already , she was Inhuman on her mothers side and there IS a way for them to resurrect (via the Inhuman Lineage’s powerset), furthermore , Arcade only directly killed Mettle anyway
* if you read the Wolverine Origins mini-series , and this has also been noticed on the r/Xmen subreddit , it’s arguably implied that Old Man Howlett / John Howlett Sr IS also both Wolverine’s AND Dog’s actual biological grandfather which would be possible only if BOTH John Howlett Jr/John Howlett Jr and Thomas Logan were his biological children by different mothers (I.e. OMH has John by his legal wife while he had Thomas by his concubine , most likely a domestic servant/maid/housekeeper , as was/is common , even in Marvel 616 , ex. Kraven the Hunter and the Chameleon) , which makes perfect sense since 1) both Thomas and Dog , despite being irreverent hardboiled bastards were clearly both uncharacteristically fearful and even subduedly/grudginly deferential / reverential to OMH , when they would otherwise be expected to be sullenly resentfu toward OMH , and likewise 2) OMH was uncharacteristically patient / tolerant of both Thomas and Dog by continuing to still keep them in his own employ despite all their bastardry , when he otherwise would be expected to get rid of them as soon as possible
I’m not sure we can count on mettle not being dead still. 1. It Avengers academy which seems so far from cannon most of the time it may as well be a fanzine. 2. When he returns in empaths castle there is no explanation
Well the first part of this issue was a very damp squib.