Wolverine #10 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #10
“Mercenaries”
by Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert & Frank Martin
COVER / PAGE 1: Logan and Maverick in action.
PAGE 2: Recap and credits.
PAGES 3-5: Logan takes the lead with Maverick.
The basic point here is that their relationship is so ingrained that Maverick is willing to take Logan’s lead just on a vague sense of who he is. The Merchant’s comment that the two of them “don’t put much value in history” is somewhat ironic – they can’t put much value in their history, because they can’t remember it, or can’t trust what they do remember. The Merchant, in contrast, seems to value Marvel Universe trinkets largely on the basis of their supposed historical significance – or at least he serves customers who do. Even though Maverick was being sold as a useful weapon, most of the Merchant’s stock appears to be mere cast-offs and collectibles from famous heroes and villains. In a sense, he’s obsessed with history without actually seeming to grasp why it matters.
PAGE 6: Dolores Ramirez calls in her backup.
The gun that the Merchant is about to fire, just before Dolores zaps him, has a Phoenix logo on it. It’s possibly meant to be the Phoenix Gun from the Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine miniseries (also drawn by Kubert), which was designed to fire a special bullet with the power of the Phoenix Force. If so, presumably the Merchant doesn’t have the actual bullet – if he did, he’d be insane to be carrying this planet-destroying weapon around with him like this.
Dolores comes across as much less sympathetic here than she does in Marauders, but in fairness, we do establish later that her original mission was simply to get Maverick back, and preferable to do it by spending money rather than by force. Keeping him out of the hands of any of the other bidders would have been no bad thing. Quite why she asks her agents to capture Wolverine too is much more difficult to understand. They’re not even in the USA, he’s a prominent Krakoan, and he’s a tougher target than Maverick – what on earth is she thinking?
PAGES 7-10: Wolverine and Maverick escape.
Maverick joins the very short list of mutants who express no interest whatsoever in coming to Krakoa, because their sense of identity lies elsewhere.
PAGE 11: Data page. Delores reports back to the CIA Director, who seems pretty sensible, to be honest. Buying Maverick seems to have been Delores’ idea – the Director specifically tells her it was “your goal” when she tries to frame it as “our goal” – but the basic idea of getting him on side remains appealing. Ultimately, since Maverick prefers to be a mercenary than to go to Krakoa, Delores’ plan is simply to hire him.
PAGES 12-13: Maverick and his Mercs take Logan back.
Shayetet 13 is a unit of the Israeli navy, comparable to the Navy SEALS. The Recces is a nickname for the South African Special Forces.
Once again, the Professor’s name is given as “Thornton” instead of the usual “Thorton”.
Maverick really is spectacularly unconvinced about Krakoa, and frankly he has a point about the island’s happy-clappy tendencies.
PAGES 14-16: Wolverine joins the Mercs in breaking into the Merchant’s warehouse.
There are a ton of random pieces of continuity junk lying around in this warehouse, most of them presumably just easter eggs. In continuity terms, there’s a fair chance most of these are copies.
- On the left hand side of page 15, there’s what appears to be one of Mojo‘s seats.
- Below that is one of MODOK‘s seats.
- There’s a large bell at the top of the page, which doesn’t leap out as anything in particular.
- A ruined Sentinel head.
- Something that appears to be the armour of Onslaught. He was a psychic entity, soo this can’t be genuine.
- A big 4, presumably taken from a Fantastic Four sign.
- Some Iron Man armour.
- There’s what looks to be a coffin with a D on it – no idea.
- In the top right, a robot resembling Nimrod (again, surely a copy).
- A sword of some description lying next to the original shield of Captain America.
- On page 16, I’m sure the armour with the red-crested helmet comes from some god or other.
- There’s the head and shoulders of an Ultron robot.
- One of the Green Goblin‘s pumpkin bombs.
- What appears to be the headset for Wolverine in Weapon X. It’s prominent for us, but Wolverine can’t see it from way down there.
Wolverine finds a box with memorabilia of Team X, but chooses not to look inside and learn more about his past. Instead he lets Maverick burn everything down.
Wolverine’s claim here that “I never owned much more than the clothes on my back” is dubious, but I suppose it’s largely true that he’s lived for most of his life in places that belonged to other people. Still, Wolverine’s been shown collecting trinkets from his life in the past, and storing them in Madripoor – see Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery in Madripoor #1, and the recent Black Cat #9-10.
PAGE 17: Data page. Wolverine wants the Five to look into where the Merchant’s duplicate of his arm could have come from.
PAGE 18: Maverick visits Krakoa.
Maverick lost his powers on M-Day, although as a depowered mutant, he’s still welcome on Krakoa. Wolverine tries to encourage him to join Krakoa with the promise of restoring those mutant powers. He’s somewhat evasive about how exactly this works, simply claiming that “the Five can make you that Maverick again” – as we’ve seen in X-Men and New Mutants, Maverick would have to get himself killed in ritual combat in order to qualify for resurrection. So again, his response – “What’s the price? I gotta join the cult?” – is perfectly fair. Mainly, though, Maverick just doesn’t identify as a mutant; he lives in the present and sees his mutant powers as part of a past in which he has no real interest. Maverick’s also serving here as a representative of a world in which Wolverine would appear to fit in more than he does on Krakoa.
PAGES 19-20: Maverick meets up with Delores.
Obviously, she’s going to try and hire him. Last issue signalled that Maverick would be a useful spy on Krakoa, and surely that’s where Delores is heading with this. (Even in Marauders, she’s working in intelligence, after all.)
PAGE 21: Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: BLOOD FOR BLOOD.
Coffin with a D – surely Dracula’s?
The large bell might be equipment belonging to Howard the Duck archvillain Doctor Bong.
I don’t think that Bell looks like anything belonging to Dr. Bong.
But also next to Captain America’s shield is something that looks like Ultimate Thor’s hammer, and on page 16, next to the pumpking bomb are The Shocker’s power gloves and Luke Cage’s tiara.
Leaning on the MODOK chair is one of the Taskmaster’s shields.
I’m pretty sure the helmet with red plume, armpiece with spiked shoulders, and hammer were used by the Hulk during Planet Hulk / World War Hulk.
Ah yeah, and that’s probably a Doc Ock tentacle draping down from Onslaught’s armor.
…and Ultimate Thor’s hammer also has to be a fake, because the Odinson and the Collector found that in Old Asgard after Secret Wars; it briefly turned Volstagg into the War Thor during the Jane Foster Thor storylinel and was then crushed into pieces by the Mangog.
…and was then turned into Undrjarn, the weapon she uses as Valkyrie.
In regards to Wolverine owning things, in Matt Fraction’s X-men he is said to own property where he has erected a cemetary––I think this is where the sisterhood steals Psylocke’s body from in that storyline.
In the two-page fight scene spread toward the beginning, there are a bunch of artifacts floating around in bubbles – is the little one in the upper right a tooth on a pillow?
All that stuff, and the best personal protective equipment the Merchant thought to carry is a trick pistol and a dagger? He’s never heard of X-Cutioner I guess.
To be fair, who has heard of X-Cutioner? They had an entire crossover called X-Cutioner’s Song without him showing up, since it’s just that easy to forget he exists.
He wasn’t even invented when the cross-over took place.
He’s such insignificant a character, he didn’t even exist yet at the time of his big break!
Lobdell just reused the name. I guess he thought it was so cool that he couldn’t let the name just die away, so he created a new character with that moniker.
It’s really not anywhere near as clever as Lobdell seemed to think.
I wonder if Marvel will ever get around to making a Maverick epic collection. There’s a lot of uncollected stuff there
Chris V: Huh, you’re right. I was a kid reading X-comics by scrounging through bargain bins at the time, so my sense of timing for ’90s is a bit out of whack.
Should Maverick even know about Krakoa ? The previous issue said he was mindwiped, but I don’t know for how long.
His memories come back in this issue. He says something along the lines of ‘getting shot helped’.
My suspicion is that Delores is secretly allied with Homines Verendi. The poisoned drugs plot (which wouldn’t have accomplished much) was so she could tip off the Marauders and gain their confidence.