WOLVERINE vol 8 #25
“Eruption”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Um, well, that’s a symbolic image of Wolverine floating in a pool with skulls in the background and giant syringes in the foreground.

WOLVERINE: 

He regains his healing factor immediately on shutting down Mor’s nanotech device. It seems to return him to normal within a matter of minutes, complete with regrowing the bone claws on his right hand. This means that Mor’s nanotech must have kicked in just after the fight with the Adamantine, apparently by sheer coincidence. We’re not directly told what happens to the nanotech in Wolverine’s body, either, even if it’s currently not active – let’s assume that, now that it’s completely inert as opposed to biding its time, his healing factor can eliminate it.

Department H still want to speak to him about the New Morlocks storyline, and he has no interest in co-operating with that.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Puck, Snowbird and Marrina. Understandably, they still don’t have much time for the obnoxious new Vindicator. But they do seem to accept that Mor as a genuine threat who needs to be dealt with, and that this is a legitimate mission. On that basis they’re more or less willing to follow Vindicator’s orders, although Puck and Snowbird ignore an order to “incapacitate Wolverine” in favour of attempting to talk him down. Marrina openly berates Vindicator as “triggerhappy”.

VILLAINS:

Mor. According to Wolverine, the transformed version of Dr Murat Mor just calls itself “Mor”. It’s not clear where he got this idea from, since as far as I can see, the transformed version of the character never refers to himself by name.

He’s come to Mount St Helens to fulfil a promise to his dead wife Christina Legaspi. So far as we can tell, the place was special to her – we were told in issues #23-24 that she was a seismologist – and that he simply promised to visit it in her honour after she died. There’s no suggestion that he was actually meant to do anything in particular once he got there, and it’s not entirely clear what would have happened if he had simply been left alone. Still, all the characters (including Mor himself, in moments of lucidity) seem to agree that having him near an active volcano is incredibly dangerous.

Mor spends most of the issue stomping around the volcano and seems to view anything that comes near him as a threat. There’s some suggestion that all of this is just deflection and that he’s hiding behind this robotic persona rather than facing up to his wife’s death and his own actions. Certainly a pep talk from Wolverine along those lines seems to encourage Murat Mor’s normal personality to briefly resurface.

Once back in control, Mor shows Wolverine where to injure him to damage his receiver device, and then turns off its self-repair mechanism. This causes Wolverine’s healing factor to immediately reactivate. On the face of it, Mor could have done this at any point once Wolverine caught up with him, but in fairness the previous issues don’t give him the opportunity – both of their previous conversations end with Mor panicking and turning into his Post form before explaining what needs to be done.

Mor then asks Wolverine to chuck him into the volcano before he loses control again, in order to avoid a rampage where he expects to set off an eruption. Wolverine obliges, and Mor apparently dies in lava.

Vindicator. Okay, Agent Arsenault isn’t exactly a villain in this story – she is genuinely attempting to complete a legitimate mission – but she’s certainly played as an antagonist.

Alpha Flight have apparently been warned that a superhuman battle in the area of Mount St Helens might risk the volcano erupting, and they’ve been given advice on what to do in that event. This seems to leave Vindicator overly confident that she can open fire right next to the volcano and it won’t be a problem. In fairness to her, she does actually seem to be right, and she does immediately break off to deal with the issue – though not with any acknowledgement that she might have made a mistake.

She describes the New Morlocks as political agitators, despite the fact that as far as we could see they were just a community hiding out in the woods. Wolverine regards this as ludicrous. She considers Wolverine a traitor to his country for not complying with Department H’s wishes, and accuses him of running away from the consequences of his actions; he seems to agree to an extent on the last bit, though not for the reasons she has in mind.