Laura Kinney, Wolverine #7 annotations
LAURA KINNEY, WOLVERINE #7
“My So-Called Perfect Life, part 2”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE
Last issue consisted entirely of Laura hallucinating about a world in which she lived a happy family life with Logan as her father and Gabby as her younger sister, with Julian Keller (Hellion) showing up at the end of the issue. As it turns out, all of this is the result of Beautiful Dreamer (see below) being used to sedate Laura while the Badoon try to experiment on her.
Laura’s dream life includes Julian as her boyfriend, which fits with the way their relationship was written in NYX #8. For some reason, Julian’s arrival also seems to destabilise what was previously a fairly ingrained illusion: not only does he lead her to step outside the house (which she didn’t do at all in the previous issue), but he proposes marriage to her.
Apparently Laura’s mind rebels so much at the idea of this degree of contentment that it breaks the illusion for her. In fact, despite Beautiful Dreamer claiming that she “saw your desires” and “tried to give you the perfect life”, the world she actually created in the previous issue was one where Laura was mentally ill and her mother was dead with Laura carrying some of the blame.
While Beautiful Dreamer could be deliberately trying to botch her assignment, she doesn’t claim to be. So the idea seems to be that Laura’s mind simply rebels at this attempt to give her happiness. Naturally, Laura is appropriately miserable at the thought that this sort of life is inaccessible to her.
Logan, Gabby and Julian don’t actually appear in this story, but clearly figure in her mind as the people she’d be with given a free choice – which reinforces the question of where Gabby as and why Laura left her. Her brother Akihiro doesn’t make the cut, but then she’s spent much less actual time with him, and she barely knows her mother. In that sense, it’s understandable that they don’t figure in her ideal world.
GUEST STAR
Beautiful Dreamer. Beautiful Dreamer is one of the Morlocks. She debuted in Power Pack #12, where Masque tried to enlist her assistance in wiping Power Pack’s memories with her “dream smoke” so that they could be abducted as replacement children for the Morlock empath Annalee. Annalee’s own children have died, and the story claims that her distress is affecting those around her. Beautiful Dreamer doesn’t actively assist with this plan, on the grounds that it would be against Callisto’s orders. Frankly, her involvement in the plot is minimal.
In Uncanny X-Men #195, Masque has another go at the same plot, and this time most of Power Pack do get transformed into Morlocks with Beautiful Dreamer’s involvement. Callisto ends up ordering her to reverse it. Once again, she’s more a plot device than a participant in the plot.
Despite her doing very little in these two appearances, she seems to have been memorable enough to keep cropping up as a background Morlock in later years. She survived the Morlock Massacre, hung around with X-Factor for a few issues afterwards, and somehow even made it into the 198 mutants who kept their powers after M-Day. She was last seen among the Morlocks who were hiding out on a yacht in Dark X-Men vol 2 #2-3 during “Fall of X”, but she didn’t really do anything there either.
Basically, she’s a perennial background Morlock who’s been just recognisable enough to stick around in that role without ever actually doing very much.
In her early appearances, her “dream smoke” comes from a cigarette, but times have changed and she now seems to just produce it from nowhere. Although she does always wear a patched dress with a hat, in her early appearances she has nothing of the glamorous look seen here – instead, the art is clearly going for “homeless and mentally ill”.
She claims not to trust surface dwellers, and says that she’s always been used by them (not really a claim that’s backed up by her previous appearances).
VILLAINS
The Badoon. Reptilian alien race who’ve been around for ages, serving here as all-purpose baddies. There were some Badoon among the aliens pursuing Corsair in X-Men #11-12, but that seems unlikely to be connected. So far as I can see, their last significant appearance as villains in the main Marvel Universe was in the “Reckoning War” storyline towards the end of Dan Slott’s run on Fantastic Four.
These particular Badoon have a vaguely gestured-at plan to “create hybrids from your mutant cells”, dominate the Badoon, and then… conquer stuff, I guess. They seem to have captured several other mutants as well as Laura, and it’s not clear where they came from. They don’t look like Morlocks, but in this issue, nor does Beautiful Dreamer. Issue #5 ended wth Laura being shot with an energy weapon by a hooded attacker as she was returning home, but their dialogue here suggests the Badoon were particularly interested in her for some reason.
The Badoon refer to Laura fighting the Brood in Captain Marvel #49. In fact, the reference is to the whole “Revenge of the Brood” storyline from Captain Marvel vol 10 #43-49, which has Laura among multiple guest stars, and also tied in to Gerry Duggan’s X-Men. The storyline involved the Brood trying to infect various superheroes for their power, which at a push might have some similarities to what the Badoon are doing here. But the Badoon themselves weren’t in that storyline, and seem to be referencing it just as a relatively recent Laura / aliens fight that they’ve somehow heard of.
I don’t recall the Badoon looking quite so much like off-brand Skrulls. Was that how they looked in Reckoning War?
In Sentnels 5, Larry Trask predicted that “in the future, a Wolverine will see the stars”. This seems to be what he was referring to.
So it was the Badoon behind this. I guessed the Skrulls last time. I was so close.
In Beautiful Dreamer’s defense, she was used by the Leper Queen to kill hundreds of people. No wonder she’s distrustful of surface dwellers.
Beautiful Dreamer’s original appearance was definitely more “decrepit old woman in equally decrepit old clothing” because she became more of a “young woman in stylishly flapper attire.” My No-Prize for this is that her original look was courtesy of Masque as part of her Morlock initiation, and she’s always been on the younger (college age) side otherwise.
And as mentioned, she was killed by the Leper Queen in an X-Force run, so when she was brought back by Krakoa, she opted for her younger look again. She’s always been more of a plot device than a character with any real arc of her own.
The badoon are often drawn looking very skrully, especially now that skrulls are often drawn as hulking warriors instead of little green men.
There was an Annihilation tie in way back when, where a prison ship crashed on Earth, and the two bad guys were a skrull and a badoon, except they were drawn as identical giant green dudes. Worst is, they were fighting Drax, a giant green dude. Why even have aliens if you’re not going to get freaky with the designs?
On the one hand, if Schultz didn’t have an original idea for breaking out of the vision, or doing something thematically resonant or basically anything that would set it apart from other, similar stories, than it’s probably good she wraps it up as fast as she does here.
On the other hand, if she didn’t have an idea that would make this story stand apart from other, similar stories, why devote an entire issue to the fake world?
Somehow the two halves of this story don’t come together neatly for me. After an entire issue and a bit of this next one of the fake world, Laura wakes up and – surprise, it was aliens! Slash slash, swish, swoosh, end of story. It’s… abrupt.
Maybe it’s an introduction of sorts and Laura will proceed to get together with the real Gabby and Julian? That might make it work better.
It always surprised me how Beautiful Dreamer was actually a main cast member in the TV show The Gifted. It made some interesting choices! I still think it was a fun spin on the X-Men overall 🙂
When you build your TV show around Fenris, Then anyone can be come a main Character, I an way it was Lorna who stood out for being an a lister
Yeah, The Gifted found some odd characters to go with. Hell, they dug up Reeva Payge as one of the main villains.
I never did watch The Gifted or Legion. That was an era of particularly weird “almost but not quite” X-Men spinoffs.
@OtherMichael, definitely give Legion a try. It’s probably better if you ignore “what you know” from the comics. It’s actually fantastically staged and directed, very dreamlike quality. I’ve had several non comic friends really enjoy it on its own cinematic merit!
@Alistair, I always forgave the Gifted for putting Fenris as our POV characters. They just used the powers and concept. It was an interesting tension with the parents being pro mutant, but the slow build of the children towards actual villainry was neat 🙂
I quite enjoyed the gifted but some still went to fox and said for our pov characters have you ever read any stories about the nazi incest twins, we think they will speak to the kids of today
Hah, that was Reeva Payge in name only , the OG 616-RP in 616 was an ethnically White voice-based illusionist (like a female version of Bernard the Poet), while FoXmen-RP was a ethnically Black sonic screamer (like Siryn)
Jdsm24: Yes, but they still dug up one of the most obscure X-Men characters out there for one of the main villains.
Compared to her, Ahab was an A-lister!
@Taibak, wasnt he ? Chris Claremont seems to believe so LOL