Wolverine #10 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #10
“All Happy Families”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Javier Pina
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE
Okay, so I’m busy today, and this issue is a real blessing, because at least in terms of annotations, there’s not that much to say about it.
Just to recap, issue #8 ended with Logan getting a letter supposedly from his mother, asking for his help. Issue #9 then saw him crossing paths with a yokel in a bar, then running into Department H before driving back to the ruins of the Howlett Estate. On arriving, he defeated Harpoon and Vertigo, and the issue ended with him claiming to pick up Sabretooth’s scent in the building.
This issue picks up directly from that, with Logan helpfully reminding us that Sabretooth is supposed to have died in Wolverine #50 (of the previous volume), and his mother shot herself back in Origin #3 over a century ago. In this version, the Howlett Estate is abandoned and in a state of decay, though the house is still full of dilapidated furniture. Logan claims to still recognise the underlying scent of the house from his childhood in Origin.
As in issue #8, he’s adamant that he can pick up the actual scent of his mother. He also seems quite convinced that he’s dealing with the real Sabretooth – despite the latter’s scent being “hard to follow”. Logan attributes this to Sabretooth “masking it somehow”, but it all seems rather suspicious – the idea seems to be that scent is particularly convincing to Sabretooth and, at least where it concerns people with whom he has strong emotional ties, it cuts through his scepticism.
SUPPORTING CAST
Elizabeth Howlett. Elizabeth – or at least the woman claiming to be her – is entirely convincing to Logan. She’s dressed in vintage clothes and she’s been chained up, presumably by Sabretooth. Logan verifies that she’s a real person with the correct scent. She certainly claims concern for him and seems to know that the ghosts are attacking him outside the room. She doesn’t seem to believe that she has any power over the ghosts, though, despite them deferring to her will almost at once.
Elizabeth has four relatively fresh cuts on her face – our attention is drawn to them, but they’re not explained further. This wasn’t a feature of her death in Origin #3, but that scene did have multiple clawmarks on the face of Thomas Logan’s other son Dog, so that might mean something.
VILLAINS
The yokel from issue #9. This guy didn’t get a name in the previous issue either, but he’s been pressganged into attacking Wolverine in the house. He claims to have been forced to do this because his sister was taken hostage – Wolverine assumes the guy is blaming Sabretooth, but in fact he only ever refers to an unspecified “he”, which seems like it’s probably significant. There is indeed a seemingly dead woman elsewhere in the building who appears to be the sister.
Sabretooth…? Logan seems convinced that he’s dealing with Sabretooth, and the cat-and-mouse aspects of the story fit with that, but it’s obviously all a bit suspect. Sabretooth does indeed show up at the end, drawn to look absolutely massive, though it’s hard to tell whether that’s actually the intent or whether it’s simply an art quirk. He’s wearing his traditional costume, but he had that in Wolverine #50 too. He claims to want revenge for his death.
The ghosts of John Howlett and Thomas Logan…? These two ghosts both have glowing red eyes. As the narration spells out, Thomas is Logan’s biological father, while John was his mother’s husband and the man he believed as a child to be his father. So these are his two competing father figures, though they act in much the same way, appearing as a duo and appearing horrified by him. Howlett has the gunshot wound that killed him in Origin.
Logan is quite clear that neither of these ghosts has a scent, and that they seem to be incorporeal magical entities who can drain his life force. They both relent when Elizabeth calls to them to let Logan do. It’s obviously curious that these two show up as ghosts when Elizabeth appears to have been actually resurrected in some form.
Wolverine also points out that just before “Sabretooth” shows up, it goes dark and Wolverine can’t see in the dark- which makes no sense, since his night vision is superior to an ordinary humans’s.
Wasn’t there something else recently in the X-line featuring that famous quote from Anna Karenina?
Is this Wolverine story-arc going to be the equivalent of the Morrison Batman RIP/Thomas Wayne fakeout? Of course, Logan, it’s your previously unknown Satanist great-aunt who is also known and looks exactly the same as your Elizabeth Howlett, and happens to share the same scent as Logan’s mother due to always borrowing each others’ clothes and perfume.
“Is this Wolverine story-arc going to be the equivalent of the Morrison Batman RIP/Thomas Wayne fakeout? Of course, Logan, it’s your previously unknown Satanist great-aunt who is also known and looks exactly the same as your Elizabeth Howlett, and happens to share the same scent as Logan’s mother due to always borrowing each others’ clothes and perfume.”
Sounds delightful. Logan already has Romulus and Kayla Silverfox in his back catalog, he certainly seems to attract that style of nonsense.
> Logan attributes this to Sabretooth “masking it somehow”, but it all seems rather suspicious – the idea seems to be that scent is particularly convincing to Sabretooth and, at least where it concerns people with whom he has strong emotional ties, it cuts through his scepticism.
“particularly convincing to Wolverine”, no?
So we have
1) Sabretooth, back from the dead
2) Mom, back from the dead
3) Dad, a ghost
4) Bio Dad, also a ghost
5) 2 random Marauders, presumably not dead
I’d say Mister Sinister and clones, given that he’s cloned Sabretooth, Vertigo, and Harpoon numerous times before, but certainly Marvel wouldn’t pull the Sinister card here at the same time he was appearing in Exceptional, right? RIGHT?
Second guess is Arcade, pulling some sort of massive fakearoo, but he’s more robots and gimmicky death traps, not ghosts and mirrors.
Third guess is Mastermind. I can’t remember if he’s capable of fooling Logan’s senses these days.
If it was Arcade or Mastermind, I’d still have to wonder who was really pulling the strings because neither has a -huge- reason to go up against Logan on this sort of scale. Some vestige of Weapon X?
Ahmed does like deep cuts, given the way he brought in *sigh* Romulus, so we may be in for a weird reveal.
Speaking of, what’s the status of the Ladies Mastermind these days? Could be one/both of them — if they’re currently alive.
They’re both still alive, as far as is known,
Lady Mastermind was last shown alive on Krakoa. She somehow ended up at the X-mansion (in Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler by Hickman), when it was taken over by the Sidri. A contingent of heroic mutants rescued her and took her back to Krakoa. She must have been alive at the end of Krakoa and most likely did not leave with the Krakoans.
Martinique has never died. It’s been a long time since she’s been seen, as far as I know, but must have been living on Krakoa somewhere.
If I controlled Marvel for a day, I’d reveal that there are in fact no Lady Masterminds, it’s just the OG Mastermind pretending they exist to mess with people’s heads.
@Chris V- Martinique showed up in Hellions, where she killed a man who kidnapped her because Arcade threatened his family and helped free her when they were safe. She did this on her father’s orders- he felt that no one should threaten a Wyndygarde, even under duress. Presumably this was meant to go somewhere. considering the “Kill No Man” law but it was never mentioned again.
And Martinique and Lady Mastermind were last seen in Dark X-Men 1, having tea with Maddie.
@Michael: in regards to the dark, I think the issue was trying to imply that it was some sort of supernatural or unnatural dark, since it was causing Logan problems. At least that is how I took it.
Also, that art when the two specters were attacking Logan and it looked like he was melting into them was beautiful. I also wonder if that was supposed to indicate some sort of spell or supernatural shift going on.
Honestly, there’s plenty of people capable of faking this. The Jason Wyngarde we saw in Hellions was powerful enough. Mystique as she stands now could probably make herself smell like Elizabeth Howlett, though someone else would have to make the ghosts. Arcade or Mysterio could have a handwave solution to bypassing Logan’s senses.
I said in last issue’s discussion my money was on one of the Masterminds.