Wolverine #18 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 7 #18
“Clash of the Champions”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER: That’ll be a picture of Wolverine.
WOLVERINE.
He’s been protecting the New Morlocks’ encampment for “the past few weeks” by this point (though if you’re that bothered about fitting this into continuity, he doesn’t actually say he’s been there the whole time).
He still describes his relationship with Silver Sable as casual, but when she gets hurt in battle he flies into a rage which is uncharacteristic for him these days.
He spends most of the issue simply fighting a possessed Hercules.
SUPPORTING CAST.
Silver Sable. Wolverine claims to appreciate her professionalism and the fact that she’s happy to take a supporting role if that’s what’s best for the mission. When she realises that Hercules has no particular interest in the New Morlocks, she tries to talk him down so that they can at least have their fight somewhere else, and gets knocked unconscious for her troubles. She stays that way for the rest of the issue.
The New Morlocks. The community is looking a little more healthy, at least until this issue’s fight starts smashing up the encampment. Thanks to Tushar using his repair powers last issue, they seem to have reasonable homes to shelter in, though it looks like they’re still off the grid, so the homes aren’t actually heated or anything.
Wolverine’s narration says that the New Morlocks “are about as vulnerable as mutants come” because they include “[t]he people who can’t pass for human” and “[t]he kids who’ve had to grow up too fast because their powers showed up early”. We’ll have to take his word for this, because Tushar is the only child mutant we’ve really seen, and if anything, this group is unusually human-looking for a mutant camp, certainly by the standards of recent years.
Wolverine think they’ve “come a long way” in terms of their ability to protect themselves, thanks to his training, but clearly has in mind conventional forces and thugs, since he doesn’t rate their chances at all against a single supervillain.
Tushar gets a line of dialogue while everyone is running for shelter; his assignment in this situation is to help the other kids stay quiet.
Chowdown and Deepfake take more of a leadership role among the community, directing traffic as the group attempt to shelter. Chowdown pushes his powers to consume what appears to be a burning tree – or maybe a building, the art’s really not very clear – and manages it with no apparent ill effects.
Ape shows up again right at the end as a generic speaking part.
VILLAINS
Romulus. The last few issues have contained subplots in which the Adamantine hunted down various supposed champions who had allegedly been identified to it by Romulus. Romulus’s choices included retired boxers, MMA fighters and routine mercenaries, none of which came remotely close to impressing the Adamantine. It’s still not clear what he was trying to achieve by this, other than simply keeping the Adamantine occupied. At any rate, the Adamantine finally lost patience with him last issue, and declared his time on Earth over. It turns out that the Adamantine meant that literally, and Romulus’s bisected body is dumped in the woods near the New Morlock camp, apparently as bait to lure out Wolverine. Wolverine verifies for us that Romulus is very dead. What a shame.
The Adamantine. It claimed last issue that it would replace Romulus with “the godling”, which turns out to be Hercules. As usual, the Adamantine doesn’t speak directly, but is obviously influencing its host. In the past we’ve seen it possess adamantium users, but evidently it can also go after anyone using a weapon made of mythological adamantine. (The weapon doesn’t have to be incorporated into their body – Hercules just has a mace – but then Constrictor’s coils aren’t part of his body either, so this isn’t new.)
The Adamantine apparently wants Wolverine to defeat Hercules in order to prove that he is worthy of facing the Adamantine itself.
Hercules. The Adamantine has possessed him off panel, presumably on the strength of his mace. He claims that the Adamantine has reawakened him to the joy of battle. While possessed, he seems to relish in combat for its own sake and refers to Wolverine as “little wolf”. He appears to be both playing his role as Wolverine’s trial opponent and seriously trying to win in order to prove himself as the Adamantine’s rightful champion.
He claims that Wolverine’s fighting spirit is unmatched but his physical power lets him down – reasonably enough, given that Hercules is a literal demigod and famous even among gods for his physical strength. Wolverine’s claws can cut him, although he seems to regard it as superficial damage. More bizarrely, Wolverine also seems to be able to draw blood from him by biting, and the art has the two of them wrestling as if they were of comparable strength. If the Adamantine is meant to be giving Hercules a power-up, he’s done a shoddy job of it.
OTHER CHARACTERS
Athena. She shows up at the cliffhanger to stop the fight. I believe her current status quo is as Zeus’s jailer, set up in Al Ewing stories in Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor.
“What a shame.”
Perfectly stated. I am sure we are all, everyone of us, completly devestated. Ohh, the wailing!
That cover image looks like Wolverine is cartoon crying.
Marvel killed Romulus and Paul Rabin in the same day.
No one regretted that.
Not the Wolverine/Hercules encounter I was hoping for…
@Diana: fingers crossed this goes in an Exiles direction!
“It’s still not clear what he was trying to achieve by this,”
Yeah, why didn’t he just send the Adamantine against a superhero or a super villain?
“I believe her current status quo is as Zeus’s jailer, set up in Al Ewing stories in Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor”
The problem is that in Athena’s last appearance, in Mortal Thor 8, she was talking to the Enchantress in Asgard. Except that we’ve been consistently told that no one can leave the Asgardian realms since the Rainbow Bridge was destroyed. And that includes Doctor Strange and Blackjack O’Hare, who aren’t native to the Asgardian realms. So how was Athena able to leave Asgard?
I really hope the Munchkin… er Morlock coroner shows up to declare Romulus “really most sincerely dead.”
I’m still afraid that Silver Sable isn’t making it out of this storyline alive.
“Morlock coroner shows up to declare Romulus ‘really most sincerely dead’.”
Ah, but then we are reminded that this has happened before in comics. We were assured that a character was really, truly dead only for them to return.
Suddenly, the pieces of Romulus’ corpse spontaneously combust leaving nothing except ashes.
Sure, but maybe he has an incredibly powerful healing factor and will some day regenerate.
Followed by a massive explosion completely incinerating even the ashes.
Well, I guess he’ll really never return. Cue the Ewoks throwing a celebration party.
The cover makes it look like Wolverine is about to stab himself in the eyes.
@Bengt – It’s the only way he can allow himself to cry.
Has any woman ever shot down Wolverine? Has a guy ever hit on Wolverine? I’m just saying, it’s 2026.
I don’t have any sensible way to say this, but it just seems weird…aesthetically…seeing Hercules get carved up like that.
I just never think of guys like him and Thor as super-healers. Usually, when something is strong enough to damage them, they carry that injury around for a while. Getting eyes clawed out and growing them right back feels much more “Hulk”ish.
(Could also be the Adamantine’s influence, I suppose)
@Steven Kaye: Depending on who you ask, Scott was either flirting with him in Hickman’s X-Men #7, or actually having a bit of post-coital pillow talk.
I don’t understand why you would go the a generic Logan picture when you can do a Hercules wolverine fight scene
Also is the chance to follow up on Logan’s appearance at Hercs funeral.
Well, Hercules’s appearance is played as a surprise in the book.
I agree, it’s weird to see him cut up.
@Kryzsiek- Kurt Busiek once argued that the Mansion Siege storyline suggests that Hercules is not immune to being injured by bullets and blades because (a) The Wasp sees Hercules coming and shouts to police officers “Don’t shoot” and (b) Hercules is taken to a hospital where the Wasp was operated on once and is operated on by surgeons with what appears to be normal equipment. Both of these points seem a bit iffy- the Wasp could have been worried about the bullets ricocheting and hitting civilians and if the Wasp was operated on in the hospital before, it could have special equipment designed to treat superhumans.
So many missed opportunities with this Logan/Hercules encounter.
Hercules with no body hair: Boo!
Wolverine’s costume stays intact during the entire fight: when’s the last time that happened?
I expect better next issue.
On another note, there’s a missed opportunity to play off of the Hercules’s mythological bout of Hera-induced battle madness, which could compare interestingly to Wolverine’s berserker rages.
MU Hercules is still guilty and ashamed about killing his mortal wife in the throes of that madness, as shown in the old Incredible Hercules series. There’s a nice potential parallel there to Wolverine’s efforts to prove or make himself a man and not an animal.
Of course, then we might get “The Labors of Logan.”
I hope this storyline resolves with the AU Hercules/Logan couple from that one X-Treme X-Men run showing up to demonstrate that the power of love triumphs over the power of violence.
I can just see the panel now from a 20th anniversary issue in 2046.
“Somehow, Romulus returned.”
@Taibak: Nah, it’ll be his heretofore unknown twin or clone backup, Remus.
@OmarKarindu,
Actually she was already introduced by Jeph Loeb himself in his final story of Wolverine with Simone Bianchi , and SHE , like her twin brother (before he apparently spliced himself with both Wolverine and Sabretooth’s genes/traits to look like their AkiraToriyama-style fusion) is a thousands-year-old ginger warrior with a mixed-Italian/Japanese-sounding accent , but she looks like a fusion of Inhumans’ Medusa and Elektra. Oh , and she is also a twice short-term fling of Wolverine http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix7/remuswolv.htm
I mean, Romulus was sliced in half, but those halves are still arranged suspiciously close to each other. Will they really not knit themselves back together given time? This is Romulus, the coolest and most amazing guy ever. I bet he’ll find a way to come back.
It’s probably a good thing that Herc shaved for the fight, otherwise there’s a real danger that he and Wolverine would get velcroed together forevermore.