WOLVERINE vol 8 #16
“Cardiac Arrest”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Mike Henderson
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Alpha Flight stand over a defeated Wolverine.

WOLVERINE: Department H’s device, designed to give him a heart attack when remotely activated, actually works. Quite why they needed biodata to create it isn’t clear – don’t Department H already have records of him? Maybe it got conveniently wiped somewhere along the line. Wolverine believes that this device can actually kill him, but the control unit gets destroyed before he finds out.

Mehta mentions a “special detention order” for Logan, and implies that she expects him to serve Canada. He still sees her as a basically decent person who’s too willing to follow orders; his instinct that she has reservations about them seems to be correct.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Silver Sable. She escapes when Alpha Flight have to break off to keep Vindicator in line. In the way of these things, she does much better against her more powerful opponent when she has time to prepare.

Alpha Flight (Puck, Marrinna and Snowbird). We’ll deal with Vindicator separately. They were evidently willing to go on this mission and, in particular, Puck was willing to tag Wolverine with the heart attack device. None of them seem to show any particular concern about that, but they draw the line at Vindicator threatening to torture prisoners. While they claim to be willing to face punishment over it, they may also be fairly confident that Agent Mehta is similarly unlikely to approve of such things – in fact, Mehta might even be quite pleased to have an excuse to put someone else in the suit.

Snowbird is wrongly shown turning into a brown bear – her animals forms are always white.

The New Morlocks (Ape, Erg, Chowdown, Deepfake and others). We actually do see a couple of generics in the background of this issue, but it’s still a community remarkably light on… well, members.

Ape and Erg are known to Department H as members of the original Morlocks. Vindicator raises the obvious question of what on earth they’re doing in Canada, but then moves on to accuse them of terrorism before getting an answer. Ape is about to explain what they’re doing there but Erg cuts him off, so it’s left as a question for now.

As tends to be the case in these stories, Chowdown and Deepfake – the two new characters that we saw being trained – have the opportunity to escape, but decide to rise to the occasion and save the day. In practice, this means that one of Deepfake’s energy duplicates steals Mehta’s control device, and then Chowdown eats it (by shoving it directly into his stomach). He claims he once used his powers to consume a hand grenade without setting it off.

VILLAINS:

Department H. Represented here by Mehta, Alpha Flight, and the usual anonymous masked guys. The two who get dialogue use the word “mutie” but otherwise come across as if they’re just doing their job.

Agent Mehta. Her friendly approach to Wolverine in issue #9 turns out to have been a bluff in order to get his biodata and build a weapon to subdue him with. That makes her behaviour a lot more consistent. She regards herself as a loyal patriot who follows orders, but it’s clear that she has at least some reservations about them when directly challenged. She does seem to care about the safety of civilians.

She plainly dislikes Vindicator. No reason is explicitly given, but the implication is that she disapproves of the sort of tactics Vindicator uses in this issue.

Vindicator. She chafes at being under Mehta’s command instead of leading the field operations herself. Mehta claims that Vindicator loves her new battlesuit and is becoming addicted to it, and threatens to take it away if she steps out of line. (Presumably with a view to wearing it herself, since there aren’t any other women in Department H with a speaking part.)

Her approach to interrogating Erg and Ape is explicitly threatening. She might be bluffing, but the rest of Alpha Flight seem fairly convinced that she means it. She in turn seems surprised at their insubordination.

Her armor has a convenient weak spot on the leg for Silver Sable to shoot at. She seems to know about it and does a rather bad job of not drawing attention to it.

The Adamantine. As in the previous issue, it’s stalking people involved in combat sports (in this case, a bunch of people in an MMA octagon, who seem to be based on Street Fighter characters). Romulus has apparently identified these people as possible foes, and the Adamantine is unimpressed. But surely Romulus didn’t seriously think a retired boxer and a few MMA guys were doing to impress the Adamantine, so what was he playing at?

At any rate, the Adamantine is determined to find a champion to take on Wolverine.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES:

• As per the footnotes, Mehta did indeed shake Wolverine’s hand in issue #9. In fact, she spent over a page trying to persuade him to do it.
• Puck tagged Wolverine with the device in the previous issue. If you look closely, there is indeed a little “beep” sound effect.
• Vindicator did indeed knock out Silver Sable when they fought last issue.