Wolverine #9 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #9
“The Long Road Home”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Javier Pina
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE
The previous issue ended with Logan in a motel room receiving a mysterious letter supposedly from his mother, apologising for rejecting him (in Origin) and asking for his help. According to Logan, that was “[a] couple of days ago”. He also claims that he’s rejoined the X-Men and that “I left the wilderness weeks ago”.
Unfortunately, if we take everything in the series so far at face value, there is no time for that to have happened. The series began with him hiding out in the wilderness and Nightcrawler trying to persuade him to come back. Also, footnotes explicitly had it taking place before X-Men #1. The only gaps in the action since then have involved Logan hiding out in remote cabins trying to train Leonard the Wendigo, and also take place at a time when Nightcrawler still somehow has access to the Blackbird, which isn’t around in Uncanny X-Men.
There’s a gap of sorts between the first and second stories in issue #8, but Logan says at the start of the second story that the last thing he remembers is the first story. There’s a break of “a few days” between the main story and epilogue in that story, and then the narration clearly conveys that Logan returns from that scene to the motel room where he gets the letter. There is absolutely no opportunity for him to appear in X-Men #1, quit, head to Mexico, join the cast of Uncanny X-Men, and then appear here in the earliest break in the action in that series (which isn’t until after “Raid on Graymalkin”, due to the injuries he suffers).
So there are two options here: either rejoining the X-Men means that he’s accepted Cyclops’ intention to go to Alaska and he’ll be heading there next, or there’s a massive hidden gap between the epilogue and the motel room scene in the previous issue, despite the clear intention that they take place within hours of one another.
As in previous issues, Logan is still concerned that his violent tendencies are much closer to the surface than usual. This hasn’t subsided, despite his return to civilisation.
He is not receptive to Mehta’s appeal to his sense of patriotism, saying “My country’s already taken lifetimes from me” – evidently, any sense of nationalism he might have does not extend to goodwill to the Canadian authorities.
In narration, he acknowledges that growing up without a mother ought to be trivial compared to the other traumas that he’s suffered in his life, but implies that it isn’t.
SUPPORTING CAST
Mira Mehta. The token competent Department H agent in issues #2-3. Remarkably, this has actually earned her a promotion, and she is now responsible for keeping track on Wolverine. Unfortunately, the agents under her control are no better than they were last time round. Mind you, at least to some extent, she seems to have decided that approaching Logan without warning with a bunch of heavily armed thugs would be a good way of introducing herself, so what reaction was she expecting?
Nonetheless, her basic approach to her mission is more sensible: if her job is to keep tabs on Wolverine, then the best way to do that is simply to be reasonable with him and try to build some sort of working relationship. Logan seems willing to take this at face value as a show of goodwill, but still tells her to stay out of his way.
Elizabeth Howlett. She doesn’t appear further. Logan’s narration explains that her letter (which was saw in its entirety last issue) also enclosed a Victorian calling card with instructions to meet at the Howlett Estate.
VILLAINS
Department H. Not exactly villains here, but the soldiers under Mehta’s command are still a bunch of violent morons.
Harpoon and Vertigo. Both show up at the Howlett Estate to ambush Wolverine, with predictable lack of success. Both, of course, were members of the classic Marauders team from the 1980s. Harpoon was last seen in Hellions #4, when he was killed and put in the resurrection queue. Vertigo was last seen in Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #18 (2019), part of the pre-Krakoa Matthew Rosenberg run, where she died. She might have been resurrected on Krakoa at some point, but it’s unlikely because she isn’t a mutant – she’s a Savage Land native who was given powers by Brainchild using technology, somewhere prior to Marvel Fanfare #1 (1982). Perhaps this is just another of the many Vertigo clones to have appeared over the years, or perhaps we’re retconning her into a latent mutant whose powers were activated by Brainchild.
Wolverine regards Harpoon as a “glass cannon”, and Vertigo’s powers only have a temporary effect on him before his healing factor adjusts.
Sabretooth. He doesn’t appear, but Wolverine concludes that only he would know about the emotional significance of the Howlett Estate and have connections with two random members of the Marauders. Of course, Sabretooth died at the end of the previous volume, in Wolverine vol 7 #50. But Logan claims to pick up his scent. That said, if whoever is behind this is able to synthesise Elizabeth’s scent and knows about the significance of the estate, why wouldn’t they also be able to fake Sabretooth’s scent?
LOCATIONS
The Howlett Estate. According to Logan, it’s been “abandoned and falling apart for years”, and certainly the gates seem damaged. There is a continuity problem here: in Wolverine vol 5 #10 (2013), the building had been knocked down and a shopping mall had been built on the site. Nonetheless, this problem doesn’t originate with Saladin Ahmed – other stories have shown the Estate intact, such as Wolverine vol 7 #38 (2023). Unfortunately, it’s probably the 2013 story that has to be retconned to take place somewhere in the general vicinity instead.
With all the memory wipes/implants and repeated head trauma, maybe Wolverine isn’t the most reliable narrator when it comes to event timing.
I wonder how much of his convoluted continuity would clear up if we just didn’t take him at his word. Probably not a lot, but it might untangle a couple of continuity knots if we just stopped believing his version of events.
Maybe we should ignore the “couple of days” line and just assume that the events in X-Men take place between last issue and this issue.
I’m not liking that Wolverine’s healing factor was able to counteract Vertigo’s power. It never was before. (In Uncanny X-Men 211, the narration reads “Storm. Colossus, Nightcrawler and Wolverine have fought Vertigo before. As a result, they’re better able to resist her attack.” But that has nothing to do with his healing factor. since Ororo, Peter and Kurt can also resist it better and besides, they’re all affected.) Besides, I like the idea that there are some kinds of attacks Wolverine’s healing factor can’t protect him against.
I started reading this going “well, I haven’t read this yet but I’m sort of disinterested in it, so whatever, I’ll spoil it”, realized a few sentences in “oh, I must have started reading it” and only after reading the villains portion realized “oh wait, I did read the whole thing”.
Now, some of that is on me but also, that seems like a bad sign for the issue being at all memorable.
I agree with Michael. How do you heal motion sickness? He’s not Darwin. If anything, Wolverine should be more vulnerable, because his enhanced senses presumably include his sense of balance, so there’s more to muck up.
@Si: Wasn’t that sort of the trap Dr. Doom placed Wolverine in when the X-Men tried to rescue Arcade in Uncanny 145-147? He dumps Logan in a room with wonky gravity and the walls pointed to distort any attempt to get a sense of one’s position. Every time Logan even moves, it sets of a (and quoting the caption box) ‘vicious psychedelic lightshows’ that are overloading his senses and driving him nuts.
Same with Proteus’ ability to distort reality. Wolverine was seriously shaken when the sense impressions he got weren’t consistent, more than the rest of the team.
Next up, Wolverine doesn’t need to breathe in space because he can heal.
In the alternate future at the tail end of the Morrison run (2003-2004, perhaps somewhere in #151-154) he claimed to survive by eating his own flesh, so we are not that far from healing from airlessness.
Not really. Being able to survive by eating your own flesh makes sense with a healing factor. Use the claws to cut strips of meat from your bone, eat it, let the healing factor heal the wounds. That’s how a healing factor is supposed to work (not so much the cannibalism thing). You get an injury or a disease and your body’s T-cells go into overdrive. It shouldn’t go further than that definition.
I beg to differ.
Healing is not a cost-free activity. It makes no sense whatsoever for a healing factor to work like. You would have to present it as some sort of magic.
What do you think a healing factor is? If you cut yourself, if you have organ damage, if you are exposed to a bacteria or virus, if you break a bone, your immune system sets to work attempting to heal your body. Wolverine’s mutant power means that he has a super-charged version of how every other human’s body works. What might take two months to heal for an average human could heal in a couple weeks for Logan. What might require stitches or skin grafts for an average human could be healed naturally by Logan.
It’s a superhero comic book. Of course it’s not going to be completely realistic. A human can’t turn their skin into steel either, not by any natural law.
Were I to take that route, I would have to ask why Wolverine even eats at all. Apparently the healing factor creates organic matter out of thin air.
Nope. You don’t seem to understand how the immune system works. Our immune systems do not provide things like sustenance or oxygen to our bodies, which are essential for our immune systems to continue functioning. Hence, a “healing factor” could not do these things.
Skin regeneration is something our bodies are doing constantly. As long as all layers of the skin have not been removed, skin can regrow. Skeletal muscle can also regenerate.
That’s the point of the joke about “Wolverine’s healing factor will soon allow Logan to breathe in the vacuum of space.” It’s funny because it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the workings of the human immune system. Just as “Wolverine’s healing factor can overcome vertigo” isn’t remotely the way that an immune system works. If a virus were causing an infection that led to vertigo as a symptom, Logan’s healing factor could thus treat the virus, but that’s not the situation.
As others have pointed out, in the past it was shown that characters exposed to Vertigo’s powers can eventually build up some immunity to her power because, in reality, our brains can learn to adapt to the inner-ear problems which cause the condition of vertigo.
Now I’m wondering if Wolverine has to eat more because of his healing factor. Regenerating cells at an increased rate means burning more energy in a given period of time, which means a higher metabolic demand, right? (assuming anything about Logan’s biology adheres to the physical laws we know.) Would all the energy his body could get from eating parts of himself just get burned up repairing the places that got injured in the process of carving himself like a ham, leaving him right back where he started?
Deadpool’s shown eating a lot when he eats, and his healing factor is, at least with certain writers, working constantly in fighting his cancer. That might just be for comedic effect – look how many tacos he’s got! – or Deadpool being prone to overindulging.
@CalvinPitt- During Larry Hama’s run, Wolverine is shot and he has to eat dead birds, because his healing factor can’t regenerate tissue without protein.
To be fair, Wolverine’s healing factor _has_ been treated as magically capable of transcending the limitations of physics and even logic at least since the 1980s.
There is no other way of explaining why it makes his aging drammatically slower instead of faster.
Still, the idea that it does not require energy – or, equivalently, that the energy just appears _because_ he happens to have this marvelous thing by the name of “healing factor” – is the stuff of MAD/What The…?!? parodies.
Pretty much every super power produces more energy and/or mass than should be available. Extra-dimensional sources and all that.
I recall seeing a panel recently from a story where Logan explained he needed extra calories to fuel the healing factor, which makes sense. He can heal rapidly, but in general he needs fuel for that to happen. Self-cannibalism would be at best a non-productive loop where he was fueling his healing with the very flesh he was consuming.
Unless he’s supercharged from an extraordinary source (cue the one story where the magic crystal let him regenerate from a drop of blood, or somehow recovering from being nuked down to a skeleton), one should expect he needs sustenance to power his healing. (Maybe that’s why he drinks so much, it’s fuel for the factor…)
Stupid answer:
It’s Mystique. She’s supposed to be able to mimic people’s scents now right? So what if she has no way of knowing what Mrs Howlett smelled like , or maybe they met once long ago?
Theory: Mehta is a deliberate illustration of the Peter principle, in which one is promoted to the level of their own incompetence. She may have been a competent agent, but that doesn’t mean she’s any good at being a team lead.
Or maybe Ahmed just wanted to add some punching.
Wolverine eating himself only makes sense as a comfort thing. He is routinely seen healing without gorging himself so he has to have an extraordinary source of matter and/or energy as part of his powers.
As for needing oxygen. You need to oxygen to get energy out of carbohydrates, so if his powers only provide him with a variety of basic sugars, proteins, and fats he would still need oxygen (and water). If his powers directly provide all matter that composes a body, including energy carriers like ATP, he can go without oxygen, water, food, or heat.
Luis Dantas> To be fair, Wolverine’s healing factor _has_ been treated as magically capable of transcending the limitations of physics and even logic at least since the 1980s.
There is no other way of explaining why it makes his aging drammatically [sic] slower instead of faster.
Eh, aging is largely accumulation of genetic damage. Not every animal suffers that in the same way, or to the same extent – there’s a breed of shark that lives over 250 years. I don’t think “repairs damaged genes (and kills potentially cancerous cells with greater efficacy) during replication” is particularly out-there as a thing for improved healing.
My guess is this’ll be down to one of the Masterminds, just because it’s within their power to set it all up.