LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #9
“Blood Ties, part 1”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colourist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Well, that’s Gabby leaping towards the camera. (Her codename “Scout” is never used in this story.)

PAGES 1-6. Flashback: Gabby and Xarus fight Strega.

“The Ossuary.” An ossuary is a place for storing bones. This one isn’t a Marvel Universe location, but the one in the actual Paris Catacombs.

Gabby Kinney. Gabby showed up at the cliffhanger of the previous issue waiting on Laura’s doorstep with their pet wolverine Jonathan, and with half her face deformed. The recap page describes it as “skin sliding off her face”, though it looks more like she’s growing lots of excess skin. This flashback establishes that it’s something done to Gabby by Strega. Gabby theorises later on that her healing factor is overreacting to it, though Clea will identify it as a curse.

Gabby showed up in Laura’s “perfect life” dream sequences in issues #6-7, but otherwise hasn’t been a presence in this series or in NYX, without any real explanation. Gabby explains here that with Laura “doing her whole ‘independent woman livin’ in the city thing”, she decided to go off and do some superheroing with Xarus, whom she met and befriended in the one-shot X-Men: Blood Hunt – Laura Kinney The Wolverine. Dialogue later in the issue implies that Gabby has been living in New York but not with Laura.

Xarus. Dracula’s son does have some track record with the X-Men – he was the main villain in “Curse of the Mutants”, the 2010 storyline where Jubilee became a vampire. In Blood Hunt, Xarus and Dracula were allied with the heroes against Varnae, though that was more of an alliance of convenience, and the Laura Kinney one-shot somewhat arbitrarily made it a full blown face turn. In that one-shot, Laura and Gabby save Xarus from Varnae’s vampires (who have been experimenting on him), and save his life at the end, so he does have good reason to care about Gabby.

Strega. The witch leading these demons gets named later in the story. According to Gabby, she was “kidnapping tourists and turning them into her demon-zombie kids or something.”

Strega appears to be a new character – there’s an obscure Captain America villain of the same name, but she bears no resemblance to this one. “Strega” is simply the Italian word for witch. (And for some reason I seem incapable of spelling it correctly, but that should be fixed now…)

PAGES 7-9. Laura reluctantly admits Xarus to her apartment.

“I was so worried when I didn’t see you at the Vigil.” The Vigil was in X-Men: Hellfire Vigil #1, as footnoted. I don’t think anything about Gabby was mentioned there, though.

“I left a note with Anole…” Apparently Gabby was still sufficiently in touch with Laura to know to leave a message with the cast of NYX (who have a clearly advertised building).

Xarus can’t enter the apartment without an invitation, because he’s a vampire. However, that doesn’t entirely explain why he’s lurking around aside – Gabby and Jonathan were waiting on the steps without him when Laura got back at the end of the previous issue. Perhaps they thought that seeing Xarus would provoke Laura. Or maybe he was waiting for nightfall, although vampires in the Marvel Universe are supposed to be immune to sunlight since Blood Hunt.

As in the Blood Hunt one-shot, Laura is instinctively distrustful of Xarus; she winds up trusting him at the end of that story, but that seems to have been reset here. Perhaps she’s blaming him for Gabby’s injury (or displacing her feelings onto him), or perhaps she sees him as a threat to her role as Gabby’s pseudo-parent/sister. Her narration throughout the issue hammers the point that she’s grudgingly tolerating Xarus’s presence.

PAGES 10-11. Next morning: Laura keeps grumbling about Xarus.

PAGES 12-13. Laura, Gabby and Xarus visit the Sanctum Sanctorum.

“The last time we were here togther, we had Zelda and Bellona with us.” As it says, All-New Wolverine #4 (2016). Laura brought the three clones to Dr Strange to ask for help in sheltering them from Alchemax.

“The Sanctum is always open to a fellow Avenger.” Laura has joined a version of the Avengers over in New Avengers, with the other members of that team being Winter Soldier, Black Widow, Namor, Hulk and Carnage (Eddie Brock). That story expressly follows Laura Kinney #3-5 which, in practice, means it has to go between Laura Kinney #7-8. This group has no actual connection with the “official” Avengers and is basically the latest incarnation of the Thunderbolts. That book is still at the “gathering the team” stage, and Clea’s relationship with Laura is nowhere near as warm there as it is here.

As far as Clea is concerned, Dr Strange is off in Asgard trying to regain his power, as seen in Dr Strange of Asgard.

PAGES 14-15. Clea tries to help Gabby, and Strega gets in.

Apparently Gabby’s magical infection is some sort of means by which Strega can teleport herself and her forces to Laura’s location, which lets them bypass the Sanctum’s defences. If the plan all along was to hope that Laura got taken to the Sanctum then that’s rather ambitious (though not completely mad, since Gabby is at least in the superhero community).

PAGES 16-19. Strega fights the heroes and abducts Gabby.

The Sphere of Shooyen. The convenient artefact that Strega steals seems to be new. If you don’t buy into Xarus’s face turn, you might conclude that he set Gabby up for this in order to get access to the Sanctum – the previous scene established that he can’t get in even with an invitation, and he conveniently waits until it’s slightly too late to think of at least blasting the door off its hinges so that he can fire on the attackers from a distance.

But Strega claims that Gabby’s blood is useful to her because it “sustains my children” and “strengthens my magic”. Quite why isn’t clear, since they were doing just fine before Gabby showed up in the ossuary.