WOLVERINE vol 8 #29
“Aftershocks on the Riviera”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Julius Ohta
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: A straightforward Wolverine pin-up.

PAGE 1. A family of hotel guests get gassed.

We’ll find out in the next scene that this is Solem taking hostages. On the next page, Wolverine talks about this as a hotel for the “ultra-wealthy”, but Ahmed is going out of his way here to present this family sympathetically (“years of saving”).

PAGES 2-7. Wolverine arrives at the hotel and meets Solem.

This is the first time we’ve seen Solem in this series since the end of the Krakoan era. He did make a couple of appearances in Deadpool #9 and #13 last year, where he was still doing his smug hedonist routine. In those stories, he had given away his version of the Muramasa Blade, and the sword he’s carrying here seems to be a new one. Solem’s mutant power (aside from his evident longevity) is meant to be his adamantium skin, which was always a bit of a stretch given that it’s a man-made alloy, but we’ve seen stranger powers than that. This scene spells out that it’s more accurately described as an “adamantium mesh covering your skin”, essentially a sort of chainmail – this has certainly been offered before as an answer to “so how does he move”, though I’m not sure it’s been spelled out quite so directly in a story.

Benjamin Percy tended to write Solem as more of an exasperating but loveable rogue; while he’s entirely amoral and pleasure-seeking, he’s also meant to be exceedingly charming. This story presents him as a much more conventional villain who isn’t even making an effort to charm Wolverine, but simply resorts to hostage taking. However, it’s perfectly in character for Solem to go to all this effort just to get Wolverine to verify the authenticity of an antique wine bottle. That said, Solem would also probably know that a wine bottle of that age is unlikely to be worth drinking anyway, and given the cliffhanger, he may have an ulterior motive in all this.

PAGES 8-9. Solem takes Wolverine to the auction.

This is obviously an underworld auction, but aside from her willingness to participate in such a thing, the auctioneer Val appears to be basically normal. She seems to be a wine obsessive, and claims that Wolverine is a legend among fans because of his acute sense of smell, as publicised in an article in the magazine Wine Enthusiast (which is a real publication).

Aside from assorted generic criminals, there are two recognisable villains here. Madame Masque is primarily an Iron Man villain, and is appearing prominently in his series at the moment, where she’s been associated with AIM; she does have historic ties with the Maggia, though.

The Rose is Richard Fisk, the Kingpin’s son. I think this is his first appearance in the X-books, but he’s been knocking around in Spider-Man stories since 1970 (and using the Rose identity since 1984). At this point he’s just a generic New York mob boss; his last significant appearance was making up the numbers in the Spider-Man “Gang War” event.

PAGES 10-20. The auction devolves into a fight.

Look, there’s really not much to be said about this issue from an annotation standpoint. (Which is fine, it’s a story about a wine auction.)

Château Lafite is a real wine estate; it’s been called Château Lafite Rothschild since the Rothschild family acquired it in 1868. However, it certainly did have an established reputation by 1796. Apparently the 1795 vintage was highly regarded. The location is indeed on the Gironde, which was indeed occupied during World War II, so Logan’s claim to have fought Germans there in 1945 seems to work.

Wolverine identifies the bottle as genuine but evidently doesn’t pick up on whatever’s inside it that causes him to transform at the cliffhanger. We might infer that Solem has something to do with this, and at the very least he seems to be aware that the contents of the bottle will have an effect on Wolverine. When Wolverine smashes the bottle, Solem is initially shocked, but then tells Wolverine that he’ll be sorry he did that, and leaves. Solem does specifically asks Wolverine to give him the bottle unopened, so it’s at least possible that he’s genuinely trying to keep the contents contained, though that wouldn’t explain why he didn’t simply tell Wolverine. Maybe he just thinks the roundabout approach is more fun.