THE LAST WOLVERINE #1
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Edgar Salazar
Colour artist: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Leonard as Wolverine, with the original (in his Revelation-era costume) looming in the background.

This is the “Age of Revelation” stand-in title for Wolverine, obviously.

PAGES 1-4. Wolverine rescues kids from a burning building.

We’re in Vancouver, which is comfortably outside Revelation’s reach and seems to be carrying on pretty much as normal for now. The new Wolverine is Leonard, the kid who debuted in issue #2 of the current Wolverine series. He’ll recap his back story for us in the next scene, so we’ll come back to it. At this point, Leonard is wearing a Wolverine costume and seems to be very well established as the local superhero of Vancouver. He’s remarkably cheerful, in a Silver Age Superman kind of way, and it seems from dialogue later in the issue that he keeps this up whenever he’s in public, so it’s not just for the kids’ benefit. He’s just really keen to be a good old traditional superhero. (Given that he’s a Wendigo, it’s possible that making a conscious effort to keep up the persona also helps him stay in control.)

PAGE 5. Wolverine recaps his origin story.

The first two panels basically come from Wolverine #2-4. Leonard got stranded in the woods and ate human flesh out of desperation (he glosses over this for the benefit of his audience), which meant that he cursed to become the Wendigo. The original Wolverine found him and managed to help him control his hunger and regain his humanity. Understandably, Leonard has a very high opinion of Logan.

What Leonard doesn’t mention here is that his story arc ends in Wolverine #8 with him apparently being cured of the Wendigo curse as a reward for maintaining his humanity. It seems that Leonard somehow regains his Wendigo powers, but with his normal personality in full control. Leonard tells us that “once [he] was old enough”, he started using his powers as a neighbourhood superhero and eventually became Logan’s sidekick. Obviously none of that has happened in the regular series to date, but it may well be foreshadowing upcoming stories.

PAGES 6-7. Wolverine completes the rescue.

There’s an obvious irony in this Wolverine being a hulking giant as he attempts to take up Logan’s mantle. With this, his powers and his persona, he really doesn’t have anything in common with Logan beyond an association with the Canadian wilderness. But he’s trying.

PAGES 8-11. Flashback: Logan rejects Leonard.

Logan is already in the silent enforcer mode where we’ve seen him throughout “Age of Revelation”. Leonard reasonably concludes that he’s under mind control or some similar compulsion, given the complete personality change and unusual behaviour. Amazing X-Men #1 confirms that he’s certainly under Revelation’s control now, despite efforts to resist.

Since he idolises Logan, Leonard seems to have been bending over backwards to give Revelation the benefit of the doubt. He’s presumably working on the official back story that Revelation wasn’t responsible for the X-virus, and has legitimately saved an area of America that would otherwise have become uninhabitable. Still, he can’t overlook the warning signs, and he doesn’t seem minded to ignore the rumours he’s heard. But it’s probably the change in Wolverine that really serves as a dealbreaker for him.

It’s not clear why Logan attacks Leonard here. He might be acting under orders from Revelation, but it seems unlikely given that he just standards there and listens for a while. It’s possible that this is Logan trying, within his current limitations, to get Leonard to leave the Revelation Territories for his own safety. Note that he takes the opportunity to throw Leonard off the roof instead of (say) beheading him – it can’t really come as a surprise to Logan that a Wendigo could survive that.

PAGES 12-13. Leonard returns home.

We get some more people being impressed by their local superhero. Leonard apparently doesn’t have a secret identity, since he seems entirely unbothered at showing up at a friend’s house in full costume.

PAGES 14-18. Leonard has dinner with Kurt and Mackenzie.

Nightcrawler. He’s somehow lost his powers and retired as a superhero. He makes a passing reference to being “transformed by Revelation”, whatever that means. If it’s a punishment, then it’s interested that Nightcrawler seems to have been simply banished rather than Babelled. His swords are mounted on the living room wall as a display, and there’s a group photo of the X-Men on the wall as well.

Mackenzie Wagner. This is Mackenzie DeNeer, as a supporting character from Uncanny X-Men. In that book, she’s been enthusiastic in her praise for mutants in general and Kurt in particular ever since he saved one of her kids from being run over by a truck. At some point Mackenzie has married Kurt and they’ve had a daughter, Freida. Given Freida’s age, this can’t be too far into the future – the “Age of Revelation” stories are only meant to be ten years away.

The father of Mackenzie’s two existing children has always been conspicuously absent from Uncanny X-Men stories, but the children themselves are also missing here. They might have moved out, of course, but they seem a bit young for that. The dinner table has two unused seats, which nobody mentions.

PAGES 19-20. Vindicator shows up at Leonard’s apartment.

This is the Heather Hudson version of Vindicator. In the mainstream timeline, we last saw her as Nemesis in the “Fall of X” Alpha Flight minsieries, which left her in a coma. As far as we know, that’s where she remains – the rest of Alpha Flight showed up in X-Men #11 with a woman called Agent Arsenault as the new Vindicator.

Heather refers to “a way to save my husband, a way to save Wolverine”. Obviously, her husband would normally be James Hudson. It’s not clear whether she’s meant to have married Wolverine in this timeline, or whether she’s meant to be referring to two different people.