Wolverine #13 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #13
“Godfather for a Day”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER: Well, that’s Logan with Donna Angelina Andiamo and a bunch of dead guys. The logo is, of course, a parody of The Godfather.
PAGES 1-3. Wolverine and Nightcrawler in Louisiana.
They’re at the X-Men’s base at Haven in Louisiana, from Uncanny X-Men. Nightcrawler is part of the regular cast of that book, but he’s continuing to serve the role of sounding board and supporting character that he had in the book’s first arc.
Wolverine is attempting to drown his sorrows after the trauma of Mastermind faking his mother’s return from the dead in issues #9-12. As previously mentioned in issue #9 (and long established before then), this has little practical effect because his healing factor sobers him up almost immediately.
PAGES 4-5. Wolverine arrives at Donna Angelina Andiamo’s home in Chicago.
This is a single-issue story, but as per the footnote, much of it was set up in the 5-page Wolverine backup strip in Giant-Size House of M #2.
Most of that story is a flashback to 1920s Chicago. (The decade isn’t directly mentioned in that story, bt it’s fairly easy to infer it from dialogue, and Angelina confirms it directly in this issue.)
Logan is working for Don Angelo Andiamo. He’s described as “a sort of freelancer here by way of our affiliates in Madripoor”, which fits well enough with continuity – Logan did indeed visit Madripoor for the first time in the 1920s, and his limited appearances from that part of history are things like him showing up as a Pinkerton.
When Angelo is cornered by the rival Flanagan family, Logan is the only person to stick by his side, despite being a hired gun. Angelo gives Logan the Andiamo Signet ring to pass on to his son Ricardo, describing it as a “symbol of office, which legitimises Ricardo as my successor” – we’ll come back to that. Angelo then dies holding off the Flanagans while Logan escapes.
For reasons which aren’t explained (“life got in the way”), Logan doesn’t deliver the ring – it’s possible that he gets promptly mindwiped by Romulus. When he regains all his blocked memories as a result of House of M, he remembers about the ring and returns it to Angelo’s great-granddaughter Angelina. He also offers her a favour as an apology for taking so long to fulfil his promise. Angelina is duly delighted, and claims that the Signet “gives us a real chance to make peace between the families” (which is explained in this story).
Logan wasn’t in costume in that story, and while Angelina has evidently worked out that he’s Wolverine, she hasn’t chosen to share that with her henchmen – hence the fight here. Presumably she didn’t want to give away that he was Wolverine, since otherwise she’d surely have told the guys to expect him.
PAGES 6-9. Angelina asks Wolverine to become a temporary Don.
Angelina’s pitch is that the Andiamo family mainly wants to end the gang wars in Chicago and restore stability. The Andiamo Signet is rumoured to have magical properties that help its holders to ensure peaceful rule, and indeed the family did go into gradual decline after Angelo died, before seeing an improvement when it returned. Most of the rival gangs have now made peace, but the Flanagans remain determined to fight. However, their patriarch Linus Flanagan wants to do a peace deal. So far, so relatively sensible.
At this point the plot goes very much into “these are the arbitrary rules which the characters obey”. The peace treaty has to be signed in person by the family heads but Linus’ captains will kill Angelina if she tries to show up and sign it. And if she kills them in self-defence, Linus will be honour bound to refuse the contract. So the solution is to make Logan the temporary Don, and have him non-fatally subdue the recalcitrant captains before signing the deal. Which, once signed, will apparently be honoured by all these captains who currently have no compunction about ignoring Linus’s wishes. Bluntly, it’s a story which only works because most of the characters are honour bound to let the plot happen.
PAGE 10. Wolverine takes the Andiamo oaths.
Angelina does clarify in narration what Wolverine is getting in return: she’ll release him from any further obligation to the family. However, if you buy the premise of the story in the first place, there’s nothing especially problematic about Wolverine playing along with this. He’s only being asked to fight some mobsters with a view to putting an end to a gang war.
PAGES 11-16. Wolverine fights his way to Linus Flanagan.
Basically a fight scene. Nobody seems to raise any objection to the idea that Logan counts as the real Don (including Linus, who clearly hasn’t been tipped off, since he doesn’t know Logan’s name).
“Pactum pacis” just means “peace treaty”, as you’d epxect.
PAGES 17-18. Logan and Linus sign the treaty.
PAGES 19-20. Angelina releases Logan.
More to the point (assuming that this issue has any wider significance), she indicates that the family may be willing to help Logan in future. Oh, and for some reason, the people in the restaurant include Jay and Silent Bob.
I like how Marvel are publishing inconsequential stories (outside X-Men) before AoR so that nobody misses these books for the next five months. That’s quite the marketing strategy.
They could have at least teased Wolverine meeting Jay and Silent Bob in the next volumn of Wolverine.
“this has little practical effect because his healing factor sobers him up almost immediately.”
Remember back in the day when Wolverine could get drunk, he just got sober quicker, but not immediately (like way back in Uncanny X-men Annual 11).
If only the Mob had Docusign.
This is truly a horrible issue. It’s a series of contrivances to force Wolverine into a situation where he has to defeat his opponents without killing them. And then he does that easily.
@Chris V- That’s not completely true. Magik and Storm had to speed up their stories to finish the arcs they’d been building toward since issue 1. In fact, Magik had to go biweekly so that there was enough space to finish up the Liminal arc.
I have to wonder if Age of Revelation was originally supposed to take place in November or December and it got advanced for some reason.
Wasn’t the upcoming crossover for three months only?
No one knows. Marvel has been keeping it a secret, acting like they plan to extend the event if sales are strong enough (they treated AOA as of it was the new ongoing status quo at first too), but someone on here commented that they read AoR is continuing until February.
Yes, doing some digging Bleeding Cool repeated the information from IGN which broke the news after apparently hearing it from Gail Simone.
I’m still amused by this plot. Wolverine has to not kill people, and he succeeds. That’s technically the subplot of every single issue of Spider-Man ever written.
Except the Gwen Stacey issue I suppose.
@si: Oh snap!
A few years back, MacKay’s Black Cat had a Maggia ritual where two families settle a war by having two family members marry each other then fight to the death in a high-security room conveniently free from prying eyes. It’s mainly a contrivance to have Spider-Man and Black Cat getting married on a cover.
That issue worked where this one falters, and it’s because MacKay’s story freely admits that it’s silly, and puts it down to the Maggia being a bunch of weirdos who do things like turn old men into cyborgs. Ahmed’s story has the characters pretend the contrivance makes total sense.
It may seem bizarre, but Mafia rituals are actually very similar in reality to what is depicted in this issue. The holy cards, blood pacts, and “quibbles” concerning roles within families are still present and taken very seriously within the criminal gangs of southern Italy. And honestly, as an Italian, seeing Logan become an affiliate of an organisation that causes so many deaths in my country in such a realistic way is something I found a little disturbing.
@Si: Also, even Wolverine doesn’t kill people all the time! That’s why he has some recurring villains who haven’t been repeatedly resurrected.
What he does here is only an accomplishment on a metatextual level, because this time he’s not killing the kinds of nameless goons who’d otherwise die by the score.
Yeah, @Midnighter, but this is the American mafia, a bunch of dumb nouveau riche slobs fighting over the scraps of whatever private equity hasn’t razed. It would make more sense if it was the Camorra, but since it’s the US, Logan should have had to travel to a gaudy McMansion where he’d have to argue with some violent moron about whether the NFL is “too woke” these days
“Also, even Wolverine doesn’t kill people all the time! That’s why he has some recurring villains who haven’t been repeatedly resurrected.”
Roughouse and Bloodscream?
The Mafia family is actually named Andiamo. It would be like naming a Marseilles gang Allonsy. Much like MacKay with Black Cat, I don’t think Ahmed is taking this story seriously.
This basic story maybe could have worked with more room, but as presented it’s just too stupid for me to get past.
Can I believe that a group of young gangsters would ignore their old boss and attack someone their boss wants to make peace with? Absolutely.
Can I believe a group of gangsters are so devoted to the cause that they’ll abide by a peace treaty with people they hate just so long as it’s official? Also yes.
Can I believe those two groups of gangsters can be the same group of gangsters? Absolutely goddamn not.
[…] #13. (Annotations here.) It’s not a great week for claws. There’s a slight sense of books filling time while […]