DEADPOOL / WOLVERINE #5
“Soldiers of Misfortune”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Mark Basso

So… I skipped the last two issues of this book because there wasn’t much to say about it, and also because it’s a Wolverine team-up book with a character who’s at best on the fringes of the X-books. I’m certainly not doing the Wolverine & Spider-Man team-up book. But this issue looks like the story might have some wider importance to the X-books after all, and it is an ongoing, so…

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

Wolverine. By way of recap, then: Stryfe is putting into plan a scheme to cause mass destruction, which involves controlling Wolverine and Deadpool via nanites that they were infected with years ago. Wolverine was initially immune to this, presumably because his Krakoan resurrections gave him a new body without the nanites, but he’s been infected now.

An opening flashback shows us that Stryfe had Deadpool and Wolverine working for him at some point in the past, under the same nanite control, and planting bombs in power stations that could be set off at some point in the future. This broadly tracks with a similar flashback from the previous issue, where they were planting bombs in a water facility, and got interrupted by SHIELD. The flashback doesn’t tie this to any particular point in history, beyond “the past”, but it opens with a montage of three out of context panels intended to show generally what point in history we’re in.

The easiest to pin down is the third panel, which shows an Avengers line-up of Hercules, Vision (in white), Captain America, Black Widow, Crystal, Black Knight and Sersi. Curiously, Vision seems to be fighting everyone else. While Benjamin Percy doesn’t normally go in for such specific continuity references, this certainly looks like it’s meant to be Avengers #362 (1993), where the Anti-Vision infiltrates the team by impersonating the Vision. That story didn’t involve them fighting on the street, but otherwise it fits.

The other two panels are more generic. One shows Spider-Man fighting Carnage and the Green Goblin, which doesn’t really fit. Carnage was around in 1993 (“Maximum Carnage” was that year), but the Green Goblin didn’t return until a few years later. The other panel shows the Punisher shooting two ordinary looking guys in cheap pig masks, who I don’t recognise at all.

Anyway, present-day Wolverine is mind-controlled throughout this story and his entire contribution to the plot is to wander off and join Stryfe.

Deadpool. In contrast, Deadpool is not under Stryfe’s control at the moment (because pain breaks Stryfe’s control, as we established in previous issues). Deadpool doesn’t really get to do a great deal in this issue either, beyond try to get Wolverine to snap out of it. By his standards, he’s acting quite sensibly.

SUPPORTING CAST

Maverick. He tries to ignore orders and lead his O*N*E soldiers to deal with Stryfe, but they refuse to go with him. Either he massively overestimates the amount of influence he carries with them, or perhaps he’s just trying to save them from getting killed by Stryfe. They do seem a bit regretful that it’s come to this, but ultimately their reaction is totally reasonable. They have a direct order to take him in, on the basis that he might be infected with the nanites too – and that’s a completely understandable concern.

VILLAINS

Stryfe. He’s disgusted by Maverick working for O*N*E, which he sees as a pitiful lack of mutant loyalty.

His helmet, which has been missing throughout this series, was seized as evidence by SHIELD after the flashback in the previous issue, and wound up with O*N*E after SHIELD folded. The helmet contains devices that enhance his psychic powers. That was first mentioned last issue, and hasn’t come up before that I can see, but sure, why not? Stryfe  wants the helmet back, presumably to amp up his powers for whatever apocalyptic scheme he has in mind.

Speaking of which… once Wolverine is with him, Stryfe declares that “this body is not as strong as my original”, and refers to Wolverine as “my very best Horseman”. Wolverine then replies by addressing Stryfe as Apocalypse.

So…

Wolverine was briefly a Horseman of Apocalypse in 1999, circa Wolverine #145. Stryfe’s back story involves him being created as a clone of Cable in the far future where Cable grew up – Earth-4935, if you like numbers. He was essentially a spare, in case the real Cable died of the techno-organic virus. The infant clone was abducted by that timeline’s version of Apocalypse, who needed a succession of host bodies because he kept burning through them. In the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix miniseries – which is basically Cable’s origin story – Apocalypse was prevented from taking Stryfe’s body, and seemingly died.

The suggestion here, however, seems to be that either Apocalypse succeeded in taking over Stryfe after all (which seems unlikely, since that would completely screw up Stryfe’s motivations in “X-Cutioner’s Song”), or that a version of Apocalypse managed to take him over at some later point. I suppose Stryfe could simply be lying to Wolverine, but it seems unlikely, given how comprehensive the nanite-based mind control seems to be.

Since Stryfe is a time-traveller, he doesn’t have to have been Apocalypse since the 1990s; for all we know, this particular Stryfe has been travelling to specific points in time to set up his plan, and he also claims to have spent some time in suspended animation.

In terms of how this fits with earlier issues: in issue #1, Deadpool addressed Stryfe as “Stryfe”. And in issue #2, Stryfe claimed that he had come from a future which was a “punishing hell, which is why I need to fix this one”. In issue #3, he claimed to be trying to avert a timeline in which all life on earth was wiped out, and compared his plan for mass destruction to a bit of healthy muirburn in the context of the survival of the planet. Issue #4 then had an exhausted Stryfe going to a hidden base and undergoing some sort of “transfusion”, after which he delivered an origin flashback about travelling back in time to avert the collapse of the ecosystem. He specifically claimed there to be aiming for “a time beyond apocalypse for mutantkind”.

So perhaps the idea is that Apocalypse took over Stryfe’s body with the transfusion last issue, apparently as part of Stryfe’s plan. Or maybe he’s an alt-Stryfe running around alongside the main Stryfe, from a timeline where Apocalypse did succeed in taking Stryfe’s body. In that case, some of his comments in earlier issues are curious, but could imply that the future catastrophe he’s talking about isn’t his own rule, but an ecological collapse that was already locked in.

O*N*E. Director Talyn has been played as aggressive but broadly sensible up to this point, making calls that are unhelpful but understandable. This issue, on learning that the nanites are potentially capable of being hacked, her first reaction is to wonder whether they can use that to control people, rather than to free them.

The glove which she wore on her left hand in earlier issues is missing here, revealing a cyborg hand underneath.

Everyone else at O*N*E headquarters wears normal laboratory wear or uniforms, but the Director favours something more in the modern Emma Frost vein.