WOLVERINE vol 7 #19
“Wisdom and War”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

Once again, Martín Cóccolo’s name appears in the credits as “MART N C CCOLO”. This also happened in (at least) issues #14 and #17. Has anyone thought of putting in a call to IT? It feels like the sort of thing that shouldn’t be giving a professional publishing company this much trouble.

COVER: Wolverine fights Hercules. This happened, uh, last issue.

WOLVERINE: 

The previous issue ended with Athena intervening in the fight between Wolverine and Hercules. This one opens with her magically calming them both down. Although it was only Hercules who was directly under the Adamantine’s influence in the previous issue, Athena talks as if it had been influencing Wolverine too. (“My magic has banished the Adamantine’s cruel influence long enough for you to remember yourselves… You have let yourselves be used by ancient evil.”) It’s possible that she simply assumes the Adamantine was influencing them both, but more likely she means that the Adamantine manipulating Wolverine by goading him into a fight. He was uncharacteristically berserker for 2026 last issue, so it might be a bit of both.

Once calmed down, Wolverine immediately starts blaming himself for succumbing to his berserker side and focussing on the fight instead of trying to lure Hercules away from the camp. He goes on to blame himself for bringing trouble down on the New Morlocks more generally. This seems a bit harsh, since Department H showed up in issue #14 without him having anything to do with it, although you can make an argument that the way he dealt with them provoked an even more heavy handed response in issues #15-16. Despite this, Wolverine’s initial reaction is that he needs to stay and sort out the New Morlocks plotline before turning his attention to the Adamantine.

However, Athena persuades him without much difficulty that he should deal with the Adamantine first as the greater immediate threat – and besides, Silver Sable encourages him to do it. Athena claims that Wolverine is the only person capable of defeating the Adamantine, and that he has some sort of “savage champion” status as someone who embodies “man”, “beast” and “metal” in a single soul. The art for this panel seems to view “metal” as representing technology, although Athena’s dialogue suggests that she’s thinking more of metal as a naturally occurring substance. The Adamantine also refers to Wolverine as “the savage champion” later in the story.

When Wolverine does fight the Adamantine, his initial plan is to look for a weak spot in the same way that he did with Romulus in issue #9. But what happened in issue #9 was that Wolverine stabbed Romulus in his mouth to reach the unprotected flesh – that obviously doesn’t work with an empty suit of armour.

Somehow, and presumably with magic involved, the claws on Wolverine’s right hand break off. The art here is extremely confused – the panel where they break very clearly and unambiguously  shows them shattering against the adamantine armour, as opposed to just coming away from his body intact (which would be more consistent with the normal rules of adamantium). But at the end of the issues, the Adamantine seem to have picked them up off the ground intact and attached them to his own glove. We know from past experience that the bone claws will grow back.

GUEST CAST:

Athena. The goddess of both wisdom and war is here principally to deliver exposition about the Adamantine, and also to ferry Wolverine and Hercules to the next part of the plot. She evidently regards the Adamantine as a sufficient problem to merit godly intervention, though it’s taken her long enough to get around to it – it woke up in issue #1. She disapproves of the Adamantine, regarding it as a meaningless killer as opposed to the “battle with a purpose” that she represents.

Hercules. As in the previous issue, there’s a mention of Hercules having become calmer of late – I honestly have no idea what this is referring to, as his most recent appearances were in the Avengers Infinity Comic, which had nothing to do with that. Naturally, he’s very keen to go and fight the Adamantine in his usual fashion (run at it and hit it as hard as possible), and his confidence is completely unfazed by Athena expressly prophecying that it won’t work – he dismisses this as “doomsaying”. He then proceeds to fare exactly as well as Athena predicted.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Silver Sable. She initially defends Wolverine from criticism, but does encourage him to prioritise the Adamantine over rebuilding the New Morlock settlement. She gently points out to him that he really isn’t in a position to contribute much to that exercise anyway.

Deepfake. Her instinct is to defend Wolverine against Athena’s criticism, and try to explain away his errors of judgment – she clearly sees him as a hero.

Chowdown. In contrast, he thinks Athena has a point in blaming Wolverine, and that he did let himself get caught up in fighting Hercules as an end in itself, instead of actually trying to protect the New Morlock camp. He’s not angry so much as disappointed.

The New Morlocks. Erg and Ape are still among them, but they don’t have any dialogue. The latest camp seems to have been wrecked. Most of the ones who speak are very unhappy about the whole thing and seem unimpressed with Wolverine’s failure to protect the camp. Well, they’re under stress.

What happened to the kid from issue #16 who could fix things instantly? Is the scale of damage here beyond him? (They moved on from their previous camp because it had been compromised, not as such because it had been damaged.)

VILLAINS:

The Adamantine. According to Athena, Goddess of Exposition, the Adamantine is “a concept given form” – specifically, a personification of “the very idea of the earth’s metal”. She doesn’t explain why it was dormant in the first place, but says that it “awoke to cleanse the world of man’s creation, adamantium, which it calls false metal”. This was in issue #1, when it was woken by Cyber and Wolverine fighting in the area, apparently making it aware of adamantium.

Athena then suggests that the Adamantine previously regarded itself as a tool or weapon to be used by others, but that encountering Wolverine led it to realise that it could be “both weapon and wielder”. Quite how that fits with the idea that the Adamantine was already motivated to purge the world of adamantium is a little hard to follow, but the upshot seems to be that the Adamantine has taken up killing as an end in itself, after Wolverine showed it how enjoyable it was.

The Adamantine attacks something called the Bluewater Strategic Development Facility, described as an experimental weapons facility, apparently expecting to find a tribute to war in the world’s deadliest weapons. Given that it doesn’t regard adamantium as sufficiently authentic, it’s unsurprisingly contemptuous of hi-tech weaponry. It doesn’t even like bullets, which it regards as a waste of good metal. It regards Hercules as having gone soft since the days which he wielded an adamantine mace in good honest warlike bashing. It seems to have come down on the side of killing Wolverine as some sort of symbolic purging of the “false metal”, which it views as some sort of sign of global decline. Despite that, at the end of the issue it attaches Wolverine’s severed claws to its own glove, presumably as some sort of trophy.