X Lives of Wolverine #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #2
by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara & Frank Martin
COVER / PAGE 1. Teenage Logan howling at the moon or something, with the image of Jean Grey (wearing Cerebro) behind him.
PAGES 2-5. Present-day Wolverine jumps into the body of his teenage self.
As with issue #1, this story is non-linear not only in absolute terms, but also in from Logan’s personal perspective. We don’t actually know in what order he visits the various parts of his life yet, but presumably that’ll become apparent in due course.
This scene has teenage Logan fighting a chained bear in a bar in the far north of Canada, with the time given as 1900. This seems to take place in the period between Origin and Origin II where he’s living in the mountain with a bunch of wolves. The people watching don’t seem surprised by his claws, so it’s after Origin #6. That issue is also where he has his first cage fight. And Origin II covers his departure from the wilderness – plus, it’s set in 1907.
Logan’s narrative returns to the subject of time, the general point here being that we are all insignificant on the eternal scale.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits. The hexagons at the top now cover four of Logan’s “lives”. By comparing this and the previous issue, we can figure out that life one is the post-Origin sequence; life five is Jasmine Falls; life six is the scene of Xavier’s birth in the previous issue; life seven is Team X; and life 10 is modern-day Krakoa.
PAGES 7-8. Logan in Jasmine Falls.
Logan’s stay in Jasmine Falls, Japan, originates from the 1996 one-shot Logan: Path of the Warlord, but was seized on by Daniel Way in a number of flashbacks in Wolverine and Wolverine: Origins. During this period of relative bliss, he marries Itsu (seen here) and fathers Daken. Naturally, Itsu promptly gets possessed by the time-travelling Omega Red. If his main object is to try and erase Professor X from history, though, it’s not at all obvious what he’s doing here. Perhaps part of this series is to establish an intertwined history between the two of them, though in life 1, Logan seems to be quite some distance from Xavier and has to embark on a trek to get to him.
PAGES 9-11. Team X in Colombia.
This picks up from the Team X scene in the previous issue. They’re on a black ops mission in Colombia; Charles Xavier is in the area as an environmental campaigner.
Logan describes this version of himself as the part of his life he hates the most; there’s certainly no doubt that the Team X era Wolverine did some appalling things, particularly under the influence of Romulus as shown in Daniel Way’s stories. How far Maverick was implicated in that sort of thing is more dubious, though – Wolverine: Origins was pretty clear that Maverick wasn’t part of Romulus’s conspiracy, but presumably he was still on board with more conventional levels of black ops unpleasantness.
PAGES 12-14. The recent past – X-Force in Moscow.
Omega Red is “on probation” as a potential X-Force agent, presumably after helping against the vampires in Wolverine #11-12.
Maximum Ivanov and the “so-called Moscow Hellfire Club” didn’t ring a bell, but as GN points out in the comments, the Moscow Hellfire Club was previously mentioned in Wolverine #14. Antony Kriev, the Russian criminal who got blown up on the Marauder while trying to pick up a consignment of logic diamonds, at least believed that he was working for the Moscow Hellfire Club.
The guy who confronts Omega Red in the steam room is Mikhail Rasputin, using his reality-warping powers to remove the doctored carbonadium synthesizer that X-Force secretly gave to Omega Red in X-Force #15. As Mikhail says, this was done specifically by killing him and resurrecting him without his knowledge. It’s hardly surprising if this prompts Omega Red to switch sides.
PAGE 15. Data page. Basically Sage’s notes summarising parts of the plot:
- The “recent history” section is basically summarising Omega Red’s plotline in Percy’s Wolverine and X-Force stories. He was indeed a reluctant sleeper agent of Vampire Nation, who were also using the C-synthesizer to control him.
- The “recent movement” section covers last issue. “Egg” is the member of the Five, not just an egg.
- The “Suspected Motive” section returns to the already-mentioned resurrection and wonders how Omega Red found out about it.
- The Cerebro Sword is the ornamental sword thing that Magneto created in X-Force #2 from the remnants of a Cerebro helmet that was shot in X-Force #1. It was stolen by Mikhail’s “nesting doll” soldiers in X-Force #11.
- Apparently the idea is that Mikhail can use the Cerebro Sword to access other Cerebro data and (somehow or other) found out in this way about Omega Red’s secret resurrection, even though it long post-dates the creation of the Sword.
PAGES 16-18. Life 1: Captain Xavier is attacked by Omega Red.
Captain Xavier is new, but obviously he’s meant to be an ancestor of Charles Xavier. Given the sliding timeline this is presumably his grandfather or great-grandfather. In keeping with the theme of the series, he takes the chance to tell us how time can lose some of its meaning in the far north. Anyway, Omega Red possesses the crew and attacks.
PAGE 19. Data page. X-Force have detected signs of Mikhail messing about in the past, and believe that he’s trying to alter history to stop Krakoa from emerging. This prompts Xavier and Marvel Girl to send Wolverine back in time to deal with the problem, as we saw last issue. Presumably, the main reason for using Wolverine is simply that he’s been alive for so long.
PAGES 20-22. Team X Wolverine turns on his team.
Unable to accept re-enacting history as it took place before, Wolverine turns on the group, sabotages the mission, warns Maverick to be better, and makes a break for it to pursue his real mission. There’s a vague suggestion that this incident plays a part in motivating Sabretooth – obviously it can’t be responsible for their overall animus, which happened anyway, but one suspects we’re heading towards a butterfly-effect where Logan’s actions here have other unintended consequences for the timeline. (Thus, perhaps, requiring him to come back and do a bit of slaughtering properly.)
Sabretooth takes orders from someone he calls the Professor. Normally in Wolverine stories that refers to Professor Thorton, the head scientist from Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X arc. But Team X is before that. Thorton does appear in one flashback that takes place during Team X – in Wolverine vol 2 #63 – where he’s exploring potential subjects for his experiments. So the idea that he also had some sort of role in Team X, although new, would have some sort of precedent.
PAGES 23-24. Logan fights Itsu/Omega Red.
Logan’s description of this part of his life is taken directly from Path of the Warlord and the Daniel Way stories. The point here is that while Logan was willing to tear up history in the Team X segment, he wants to preserve it here – though I’m not sure how strong a point that really is, given that altering history would mean killing his wife and erasing his son.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: HUNTED.
The Moscow Hellfire Club was mentioned (but not seen) in Wolverine 14. A Russian criminal named Anthony Kriev was told by a mutant ‘who looked like shadow’ from the Moscow Hellfire Club to go pick up the stolen logic diamonds. Sage scheduled an X-Force investigation into this MHC in her logbook.
This is probably the follow-up to that – X-Force investigates the MHC. Mikhail Rasputin is probably the ‘shadow mutant’ who met Kriev.
You’re right – thanks. I’ll add that.
“Logan seems to be quite some distance from Xavier and has to embark on a trek to get to him.”
Considering the vastness of northern Canada, they’re practically in the same place. The fact that Logan could simply travel 40 miles or whatever to reach this precise place in Hudson Bay (I presume) is really pushing my suspension of disbelief.
Wow, this was… Well. You could argue the incoherence is an intended result of the non-linear storytelling. In which case it would be intentionally rubbish, I guess?
I just lost it at Jean telepathically interrupting Logan mid-coitus.
So far this is worse then Percy’s Wolverine ongoing and I wasn’t fond of that one anyway. Moira as Sarah Connor isn’t cutting it for me as well.
Good thing there’re at least some other x-books coming out during this ‘season break’.
Very much not my piece of cake.
What I like about this is that Paul has been doing Incomplete Wolverine so I can understand exactly how ridiculous some of this is.
Another vote of unintentional humor that Xavier and Jean are sending Wolverine through time to preserve Xavier’s life, and time is of the essence, choices have consequences, yadda yadda yadda…but Logan decides to take a side-quest to relive getting it on.
It’s utterly baffling that they would interrupt the entire line and attempt to superficially mimic HOX/POX with a Wolverine vs. Omega Red Time Travel story.
It is bidding for time. A storyline that supposed to be safe by all perspectives. Nothing of significance happens, so it will not create continuity problems. Yet it has lots of Wolverine fight scenes and pretexts to make claims that it “matters”, so it is supposed to make some money.
Yeah, however the Hickman exit went down, it clearly happened fairly quickly. Marvel has been scrambling for a while to a) present a coherent narrative about his departure and b) rearrange the X-books to maintain some kind of continuity.
But everything post-Hellfire Gala, including the end of X-Factor, the Trial of Magneto, and Inferno seem like they’re just forcing established plans into new shapes. I’m sure editorial was like, “Percy, can you whip up some kind of Wolverine hoo-ha to give us a two-month break to catch our breath?”
The format of the events in the Krakoa era seems to be that each event is mostly rooted in one or two of the satellite series and then some involvement of the core book (mostly X-Men but I’d include Inferno too). X of Swords is basically a payoff to Excalibur and some issues of X-Men. Hellfire Gala is built around Marauders (well, just Emma, really) and SWORD, plus the launch of the new X-Men. And X Lives/Deaths is Percy’s Wolverine and X-Force storylines coming to fruition with some Inferno followup.
I don’t know if X Lives was a Wolverine arc that got expanded into an event or if Percy invented this as a whole to fill the gap. We’ve only had one issue of the Moira stuff so it’s tough to tell at this stage. But without these annotations, god help if you if you haven’t been reading Percy’s Wolverine and X-Force.
Yes, and outside “Inferno”, they did seem to be mostly time killing exercises.
“X of Swords” was mainly Tini Howard’s idea with Hickman playing along. “X of Swords” took place when Hickman said he wanted to end his first act. The other writers (? editors? maybe?) voted that they wanted to continue the Krakoa status quo, so Hickman allowed Howard to come up with a climax for the first chapter. Hickman seemed to have zero interest in Arakko and his only major contribution in “X of Swords” seemed to be a way to write Apocalypse out of the books.
The “Hellfire Gala” was wholly Gerry Duggan’s idea. By that point, it’s pretty obvious that Hickman had decided to leave. The “Hellfire Gala” basically served as a way to kill time until Hickman could complete “Inferno”.
I don’t believe Hickman wanted Krakoa to colonize Mars, at all. At least not that early in the timeline. Duggan was already starting to move ahead with a post-Hickman direction for the X-books.
So, I’d say following through on that line of reasoning, it’s safe to say that X Lives/X Deaths is another event which serves to kill time. “Inferno” ended the second act for the Krakoa era and also the original direction for the line. Percy seems to be following up on “Inferno”, but also telling his story in the same way as “X of Swords” and “Hellfire Gala”.
@ChrisV
Really? Hickman always struck me as the writer most interested in Arakko. (Tini Howard pretty much did nothing with it, her focus on other parts of Otherworld.) Summoner is such a Hickman character it borders on self-parody.
Hickman didn’t touch Arakko after “X of Swords” either. Of course Summoner was created by Hickman. I should amend my comment, I think Hickman intended to write Apocalypse out of the series with Arakko, but didn’t intend to end up with all those Arakkoans coming along with the island of Arakko.
It seems to me that the plan was to send Apocalypse to Amenth in order to find his original Four Horsemen.
We saw in the original Life Ten timeline that after war is declared against the Children of the Vault, Apocalypse and his original Horsemen would return to help the human/mutant alliance defeat the Children.
In an interview, editor Jordan White claimed that X Lives/Deaths was originally conceived during Dawn of X, but wasn’t the right story to tell at these time, and so once they had a gap to fill between Inferno and the relaunch they decided to slot it in here. And so Percy was able to get the Russia / Omega Red plots spinning in the meanwhile.
Arrako seems like a pretty standard Hickman thing in that it’s a shell of an idea based on some kind of simple geometry – symmetry/matching with Krakoa in this case – and pompous flourishes. The names sharing the same letters (as well as with Okkara, despite them predating the Roman alphabet), Quiet Council/Great Ring, etc., topped off with things like “The Locus Vile,” which could’ve come out of a random Jonathan Hickman name generator. But since it isn’t really the main thing he’s interested in, he doesn’t do anything with it.
The problem with Arakko being an island full of mutants on Earth is that it goes directly against his plans. If Moira’s plan is to bring about a genocide of mutants and help humans win the war for survival against mutants one final time, why introduce another island full of Omega-level mutants?
His intent with Moira’s betrayal was to give humans the advantage over mutants by a declining mutant population and an ever increasing human population, until humans were safely the dominant species in the future. Moira’s plan would be defeated, but having all these faceless, characterless Omega-level mutants cluttering up the picture takes away from Hickman’s theme.
Arakko was never mentioned in Moira’s other lifetimes. He never touched on them again after “X of Swords”. Inferno #3’s timeline A shows a sketch of Hickman’s original plans had he not left, and there is zero mention of Arakko or Mars.
As I said, I think Hickman wanted to use Arakko as a way to write Apocalypse out of the titles for a while, but he planned to leave the Arakkoans in Amenth.
Those mutants crossing over to Earth seems like the first time that Hickman’s plans get derailed.
I wonder who Doug’s backup would’ve been if it wasn’t Bei?
I don’t think he needed backup. She just stood there. It seemed like Hickman was playing nice to include Bei. He had Krakoa watching over him.