Wolverine #13 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #13
“What They Did in the Shadows”
by Benjamin Percy, Scot Eaton, Oren Junior & Matthew Wilson
COVER / PAGE 1: Wolverine fights Deadpool, unnoticed by the Hellfire Gala guests. Not remotely the central focus of this issue, but if the cover had shown the real main action, it would have spoiled the plot of X-Force #20. This issue is effectively the second half of that story, and more of a bonus issue of X-Force than a Wolverine comic. Wolverine is in it for five pages, and has five lines of dialogue.
PAGE 2. The John Paul Leon tribute page.
PAGES 3-7. Wolverine stops a Terra Verdan from attacking a partygoer.
In X-Force #20, we learned that after X-Force stopped the telefloronic plant creatures from taking over Terra Verde in X-Force #10, the Beast used the plants to take complete control of the entire country. The Beast brought a bunch of zombified Terra Verdean diplomats to the Hellfire Gala with the intention of having them mingle and sing the praises of Krakoa to anyone who would listen. At the end of the issue, Sage discovered that the diplomats’ coding had been hacked (by someone unknown). As we see in this issue, the result is a bunch of diplomats who now have plant powers, and are understandably very angry indeed. Why they’re attacking an innocent guest is less clear.
Wolverine doesn’t know any of this, as later scenes make clear, and so he’s just doing the regular superhero thing and stepping in to save the innocent guest.
PAGE 8. Recap and credits, with the now-familiar Hellfire Gala alternate layout.
PAGE 9. The Beast looks for the Terra Verdeans.
In the background, Nightcrawler is talking to Loa and Mercury, and spills his drink on Loa. This scene also appears (briefly) in Way of X #3, although in that version the Beast is much more obviously shouldering his way through the crowd to get to Gabriella Gomez. In this version, Kurt seems to spill his drink for no reason at all.
Again, it’s never explicitly made clear what the Terra Verdeans are trying to achieve by attacking non-Krakoan party guests. If they just wanted to undermine the Krakoans, you’d have thought that a much easier way would be to run over to the Avengers and yell “help!” If they’re trying to put pressure on the Krakoans to strike a deal, as suggested on page 17, then (a) when did they come up with this plan, and (b) how does attacking randoms play into it?
PAGES 10-11. The Beast fights Gabriella Gomez.
Kid Omega helps to cover up the incident, no doubt because the Beast has told him to, and it serves the interests of Krakoa to hush this up. Considering that he’s been considerably humanised in recent issues, it’s notable that he’s written here as the Beast’s most loyal and unquestioning soldier.
Gomez describes the Krakoans as “the worst kind of colonialists”. It’s a slightly odd use of “colony”, which normally connotes actually moving in and living there. Really, what the Beast has done here is to simply conquer the place.
PAGES 12-13. Wolverine fights the other ambassador.
“I didn’t do nothing but till the garden when your country got overrun by weeds.” In X-Force #9-10. Wolverine doesn’t know what happened after that story.
PAGES 14-15. Christian Frost is attacked.
Christian is sailing the Marauder, because his usual vessel, the Mercury, is otherwise engaged in the terraforming of Mars over in Planet-Size X-Men.
As seen in Marauders #21 and X-Force #20, the Marauder is carrying a cargo of Shi’ar logic diamonds, the memory devices that are used to store back-up minds for Cerebro. The Shi’ar who delivered them believed that Emma Frost had ordered them, which she knew nothing about. An obvious possibility is that Christian’s attacker is Mystique, who presumably has a plan involving the resurrection of Destiny (perhaps by getting a copy of her back-up that she can take elsewhere). But the fact that the hijacked vessel is taken to Madripoor at the end of the issue might suggest that Homines Verendi are involved somewhere.
PAGES 16-17. Deadpool and Domino fight another Terra Verdean.
Deadpool arrived on the island in X-Force #20. Let’s assume that he already landed on the island before that and planted a cache of gear – after all, he can’t really have swam to the Gala while wearing a rubber ring.
PAGES 18. The Beast and Sage argue.
The Beast wants to just re-enslave everyone, which Sage vetoes. Clearly, this is meant to be a turning point where key players start rejecting the Beast’s increasingly insane plans. In Sage’s case that could easily be for pragmatic rather than moral reasons.
Nothing in the story sheds any real light on who hacked the Terra Verdeans and freed them. The Beast essentially accuses Sage of doing it. That seems unlikely – while she might plausibly have decided to put a stop to the Beast’s plan herself, it’s unlikely that she would have done it in the middle of a high-profile diplomatic event.
PAGE 19. Data page – the heads of terms that Sage agrees with the Terra Verdeans. And this is… rather silly, to be honest.
The main thing that the Terra Verdeans get out of this – other than not being mind-controlled any more, obviously – is that they can continue pursuing their telefloronic technology without Krakoan objection. While the Beast claims later that this is a tremendous diplomatic triumph, this is exactly what he was trying to stop in the first place – a rival, non-Krakoan, source of plant-based technology. The Beast (in this interpretation) rationalises everything into a victory, but logically he ought to see this as a disaster.
They also get a billion dollars. That feels a bit Dr Evil to me, if we’re supposed to think this is a massive amount of money. Mind you, it’s nearly twice the annual budget of Belize, and Terra Verde is meant to be a micro-state, so… maybe.
Extraordinarily, we’re asked to believe that the entire population of Terra Verde agree not to “speak to the media about the coup”. Seriously? Not one person is going to leave the country or post on the internet about it? They’re never going to mention it on national TV? Come on. That’s just stupid.
PAGES 20-21. Wolverine has a drink with one of the Terra Verdens.
These guys are insanely forgiving. Again, we seem to be asked to believe that Wolverine sees this as a learning experience about humans, rather than an alarming discovery that he’s working for an outfit that commits crimes against humanity. It’s… just wildly misjudged, this whole story.
PAGES 22-24. Emma and the Beast talk.
The Beast is arguing here that Krakoa needs to spy on everyone and know everything in order to maintain its dominance. The premise which is supposed to give this argument moral weight is “or else the humans will destroy us”, and it’s the (understandable) paranoia about the human world that leads Emma to see this as even vaguely arguable. Even so, his bizarre suggestion that mind-controlling thousands of people (and there must be thousands of people in Terra Verde) is comparable to the terraforming of a dead world in Planet-Size X-Men is simply insane, and shows a complete failure to grasp what the moral problem is.
“As Voltaire said, “There is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night.”” Voltaire was the Enlightenment writer François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778). This quote seems to have been misattributed to him by the Israeli philosopher Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011). In fact, Voltaire wasn’t an atheist, and he was always pretty clear that he believed the existence of God to be self-evidently true. The idea that he was an atheist seems to have come from people taking some of his quotes out of context, and from allegations made against him by his rivals.
However, Voltaire would have agreed with the basic point being made in the second half of the quote: that without the fear of God, people would feel free to do whatever they felt they could get away with. He did indeed argue that, for this reason, atheism was not merely incorrect, but socially dangerous. As he wrote in his Philosophical Dictionary,
I would not wish to have to deal with an atheist prince, who would find it to his interest to have me ground to powder in a mortar: I should be quite sure of being ground to powder. If I were a sovereign, I would not wish to have to deal with atheist courtiers, whose interest it would be to poison me: I should have to be taking antidotes every day. It is therefore absolutely necessary for princes and for peoples, that the idea of a Supreme Being, creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger, shall be deeply engraved in people’s minds.
This is also what he was getting at when he said that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
PAGE 25. A comically over-extended quote from Deadpool, begging to be allowed to join the cast.
PAGE 26. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: SOLEM.
It should probably be pointed out that Voltaire was a deist and that his view of Christianity wasn’t anymore positive than his view of atheism, and that he became an ardent supporter of both “separation of Church and State” as well as “freedom of religion”.
Which is all neither here nor there on a comic forum.
So, back to the guy with the claws!
Er, that’s clearly Emma Frost, not Sage, that the Beast is talking with in pages 22-24. He even says “I’m with Emma” ! (And Sage can be seen in her HQ in one panel.)
Percy’s Wolverine book could have been anything. That anecdote in PSXM about Arakii taking over a section of Japan because they liked the whiskey? Could have been a Wolverine story. Wolverine doing solo missions supported by Sage, Beast, Forge? Sounds awesome. Wolverine spending time with Daken, X-23 and Gabby? Would buy. Wolverine awkwardly teaming up with Cap and having to justify Krakoa’s actions? Would love it.
Instead it’s either “vampires” or “X-Force leftovers.” I hate that the one book of Percy’s whole run I’ve liked was the Maverick auction, because it at least felt like a proper Wolverine book.
Yes, that’s Emma. I’ll fix that.
Oh. Oh dear. I thought the point of the Terra Verde story was that the plants ate everybody’s brain and Beast was making lemonade out of genocide melons, programming braindead plant zombies.
This is so very much worse than that.
Melons? Why, phone, why?
Melonaide is probably delicious.
Melonade is sure to be a hit. Perhaps a melonade and him cocktail with a prosciutto garnish? No?
Anyway, Percy did sell this book as “the mutant CIA,” so glad to see he has delivered.
Oh right, this is Wolverine, not X-Force. Well, Wolverine did commandeer an issue of X-Force during X of Swords, so I suppose they’re even. I hope they move both titles into their end game soon, make room for other writers.
Gin* cocktail dammit
Does no one in Terra Verde have family or friends who live outside the country? None of them notice that Beast has killed everyone and replaced them with plant zombies?
This is quite possibly the worst thing Beast – or any mutant – has ever done, and it gets swept up under the rug remarkably quickly.
But that’s just it – he didn’t kill everyone, he enslaved the population that was already there.
As Paul notes, it’s ridiculous that the situation gets amiably solved in this issue. They should be out for blood.
What an utterly stupid story, from start to finish. First Beast has been mind controlling an entire country for several issues, which is the sort of thing that really should have been mentioned earlier. Somehow no one noticed.
Then they’re freed and start attacking random humans. They have no reason for this, the story just needs an excuse for our heroes to do something heroic.
They talk about how angry they are about suffering a fate frequently considered worse than death. Then they become incredibly reasonable and forgiving. Suddenly, the people who were attacking innocent humans are the most mild, rational beings you can imagine. Again, there’s no reason for this – Percy just needs a solution, so if that requires rewriting the Terra Verdens mid-story, so be it.
Mind controlling a country is so evil and idiotic it makes the Krakoans look like morons for leaving Beast where he is. Guys, he nearly gave humanity a strong reason to declare war. Throw him in the Pit so he stops making decisions.
On a more general subject, Marvel started solicitating Septemver comics and it looks like Way of X might be ending with the final act published as a oneshot titled X-Men: The Onslaught Revelation.
Considering The Trial of Magneto is supposed to use the X-Factor cast (I hope it will just be an X-Factor investigation published under a more marketable title but we’ll See)
[continued] …I wonder if this is a new strategy for the x-office – that titles that might have been ongoings but are disappointing sales-wise will be given second chances as rebranded miniseries? Spurrier says Way of X is ‘season 1’, The Onslaught Revelation the ‘season finale’ and there’s a ‘season 2’ in the works in some way.
Which on the one hand is nice – I want this X-Factor crew to stick around and tell stories about these characters, or even just one more story if that what the Magneto Trial will be. On the other hand following comic book storylines is already difficult for people who are not a 100% invested all the time and this would make it probably even harder.
I really need to stop typing these on my phone.
On an unrelated note, Paul, will you review the Marvel Voices: Pride one-shot? While not technically an x-book, about half the stories are about x-characters, unsurprisingly. There’s even a Hellfire Gala tie-in.
Some of the books may need to end or change due to the overall plan by Hickman.
Based on Spurrier’s comment, it sounds like the decision with Way of X may be based on changes to the direction after “Inferno”.
I’m especially looking forward to what Logan and Scott’s opinions are when they discover what Beast has been up to. I want another Planet Sized issue to concentrate entirely on what they think.
Beast has been headed for the Pit since long before the Pit existed. The moment he pulled the Original Six X-Men into the future, he has been irredeemable.
Which is funny, since just a few years earlier he was the principled one leaving the X-Men in opposition to Cyclops’s decisions, shortly after Utopia…