WOLVERINE vol 8 #23
“Power Grab”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Julius Ohta
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Taskmaster advances on Wolverine, with adamantium claws extended. This doesn’t actually happen in the story, where Taskmaster only has the copied healing factor.

This is a pretty straightforward issue, but we’ll run through it anyway.

WOLVERINE:

For those just joining us, his healing factor has been switched off by nanites, and his right-hand claws are still broken from the fight with the Adamantine in issue #20. The previous issue established that his adamantium is poisoning him without his healing factor (which has happened before), but was rather inconsistent about how far this was affecting him – at times he seemed to be having trouble standing, but he also seemed able to hold his own against Taskmaster. This issue seems to be saying that his berserker rage is partly responsible for keeping him on his feet, and that his enhanced senses still give him some advantage in anticipating Taskmaster’s moves.

In what seems like a byzantine scheme, the nanites have apparently been teleporting the compounds created by Wolverine’s healing factor into Taskmaster’s body, where it seems they work just fine. (Has he considered donating more blood?) Shutting down Taskmaster stolen healing powers doesn’t cure the problem, because the compounds are also being teleported to someone else.

Wolverine’s first instinct is to find out who Taskmaster is working for by beating him up, but he defers to Cecilia’s wishes on that. Instead he simply heads for the signal in Seattle that Puck told him about last issue.

He can get his hands on a decommissioned SHIELD sky-cycle by raiding old safehouses that he knows about.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Cecilia Reyes. She still keeps her old X-Men uniform handy (which makes sense, since it’s supposed to provide some degree of protection). She’s not great in a fight but her force field and an element of surprise are enough to get by. Remarkably, she’s been able to knock up a serum to force Taskmaster to reject his new healing powers in what must have been a matter of minutes.

VILLAINS:

Taskmaster. Wolverine says that they’ve fought “more than once”, and Taskmaster claims that “I owe you a beating or two”. In fact, as far as I can see, they’ve never fought on panel – Taskmaster does appear in Wolverine #167-168 from 2001, but only as one of the other competitors in a knock-out tournament, and he gets eliminated by Mr X before he gets to fight Wolverine. Of course, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have fought off panel somewhere. At any rate, Taskmaster seems very pleased that the nanites are giving him the upper hand on someone who would normally be out of his league.

For some of the issue, he fights holding Elektra-style sai in his hands, which seems to be an improvised attempt to copy Wolverine’s claws.

His mask can’t be removed – Cecilia claims that it’s boobytrapped, though how she figured that out isn’t clear.

Dr Murat Mor. The scientist on the run from Department H, as mentioned by Puck last issue. He is indeed responsible for the nanites.

He claims to have infected himself with “the Post variant of the techno-organic virus” in an attempt to find a cure for his fatally ill wife, Tina. This apparently refers to Post, the henchman of Onslaught from the late 90s; his back story did indeed involve him being exposed to the TO virus. Injecting himself with the techno-organic virus appears to have achieved precisely nothing in terms of curing Tina, who is said to have died off panel.He suggests that his aim in stealing Wolverine’s healing factor was to cure himself of the TO infection. Quite where hiring Taskmaster fits into this isn’t explained, at least not yet.

He’s understandably terrified of Wolverine and claims to be willing to set things right, but any threats from Wolverine apparently provoke the virus to transform him into a new Post – a blue skinned hulk with metallic plates and components over part of his body.