X Lives of Wolverine #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #4
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artists: Joshua Cassara and Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: Team X Wolverine, possessed by Omega Red.
PAGES 2-4. Omega Red possesses Dr Cornelius during Weapon X.
The Weapon X Facility, as you surely know, is the place which gave Wolverine his adamantium skeleton against his will as part of a scheme to turn him into a soldier. This sequence takes place between the flashback and the main story in part 2 of Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X” story, from Marvel Comics Presents vol 1 #73. The images of Wolverine covered in cables are clearly meant to evoke “Weapon X”, which had a lot of that sort of thing.
Abraham Cornelius was one of the three main scientists seen in that story; generally speaking he tends to be presented as having at least some pangs of conscience about what he’s doing, and it’s the Professor who tends to be presented as outright evil, but this is right at the start of the arc from his point of view.
“You’ll be mindwiped daily.” There’s no real basis for that in the original “Weapon X” story, where much of the point is that there isn’t a great deal to wipe. But sure, why not? It would at least explain why he didn’t remember anything about wiping out Roanoke in Weapon X vol 2 #24-25.
“Some sort of contagion or parasite.” It’s a symbiote, but we’ll come back to that.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits. We’ve now established what all ten phases of Logan’s life are meant to be:
- Life 1 is wilderness Logan, from just after Origin.
- Life 2 is Logan in the old west, circa 1911.
- Life 3 is Logan in World War I.
- Life 4 is Logan in World War II.
- Life 5 is Jasmine Falls.
- Life 6 is the phase with the birth of Charles Xavier. Note that while the previous issue’s recap page gave the location as “England”, this has now changed to “Westchester, New York” (where the X-Men Mansion is located), so presumably England was a mistake.
- Life 7 is Team X.
- Life 8 is Weapon X.
- Life 9 is Department H (which we’ve not really seen, but apparently features early Wolverine in the Middle East).
- Life 10 is the present day, presumably intended to represent his whole time with the X-Men.
Life 8 Wolverine is shown in red to represent his possession by Omega Red.
PAGES 6-8. Logan intervenes to stop Omega Red from killing Lt Xavier.
Lieutenant Xavier is obviously another ancestor, either Professor X’s father or his grandfather.
Kenji Oyama, the kamikaze pilot who Omega Red possesses, is the future super villain Lord Dark Wind. In himself, he’s a minor figure in Marvel history – his only significant arc is Daredevil vol 1 #196-199. Since he’s still flanked by two regular kamikaze pilots, Omega Red seems to have possessed him solely to make him fly into the target he was going to hit anyway, which seems… pointless?
Oyama’s origin story involves him being a kamikaze pilot who is motivated by shame after he crashes into an American aircraft carrier and, somehow, survives when the bombs fail to go off. This story is related in a one-panel flashback in Daredevil #197 (which might just be her version of events), and a very slightly expanded version appears in Alpha Flight vol 1 #34. In those flashbacks, he crashes onto the aircraft carrier deck, which isn’t what we see here. But that isn’t an outright error, since both flashbacks are narrated by people who weren’t actually there.
PAGE 9. Data page. Basically, Professor X and Jean Grey agree that due to the butterfly effect, people in the past can’t be allowed to remember any of this, but… mindwiping everyone in a one mile radius will be… better somehow…? Nor does this really explain what happens to all the Omega Red tentacles that some characters grow. Maybe it’s supposed to fade away after he leaves.
PAGES 10-11. Team X Sabretooth stops Omega Red killing Professor X.
Helpfully for the plot, Omega Red has chosen the worst possible life in which to try possessing Wolverine directly – the one where Sabretooth quite naturally assumes Wolverine is deserting and goes after him. Omega Red argues that Creed should help him kill Xavier, presumably to avoid being stuck in the Pit underneath Krakoa back in House of X #6, but of course Creed has no idea what Omega Red is talking about.
PAGES 12-13. Weapon X Omega Red accidentally triggers a latent symbiote.
Omega Red makes the fairly standard argument for Wolverine villains that he’s no more of a monster than Wolverine himself, given at least some of the phases of Wolverine’s history.
The parasite from the earlier scene is revealed as a latent symbiote; the spiral on Logan’s forehead here is the symbol of the symbiote god Knull from Donny Cates’ Venom run. As a later footnote clarifies, all of this is calling back to the 2018 one-shot Web of Venom: Ve’Nam, which is currently missing from the Incomplete Wolverine, and I’ll be adding it (along with all this time travel stuff) once the series is over. Logan was indeed briefly bonded to a symbiote in that story, which apparently leaves these parasites behind. This isn’t the same symbiote, though, which went on to become Venom supporting character Rex Strickland.
PAGE 14. More of World War II.
PAGE 15. Team X era Xavier is evacuated.
Xavier finds Logan “familiar”, but it’s not obvious why, since (aside from Xavier’s birth) he won’t meet Logan until First X-Men, which hasn’t happened yet.
PAGES 16-20. A montage of multiple lives.
In the Weapon X panels, Omega Red jumps away to escape the symbiote, and Cornelius manages to escape the room and (somehow or other) purge Logan of the symbiote. Apparently this prompts Cornelius to try adamantium instead, though the original “Weapon X” story has them going straight to adamantium on day one, so they must have had it around. Or you can make the point that at least some of “Weapon X” is clearly mind games. In the Team X panels, Sabretooth kills Wolverine, who evidently heals from this fatal wound in the normal way. In the World War II section, Kenji Oyama’s origin story plays out more or less as normal. Logan’s narration seems to be making the point that thus far at least, destiny is reasserting itself. (Or, if you prefer, the timeline is resisting major changes – or these events were already factored into it.)
PAGES 21-23. Professor X tries to regain contact with Wolverine.
This, apparently, is the fundamental error that completes some sort of parallel between Xavier and Wolverine on the one hand, and Mikhail Rasputin and Omega Red on the other.
PAGE 24. Data page. The closing quote is from Omega Wolverine (the Phalanx Wolverine from the future who appears in X Deaths of Wolverine).
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: HOMECOMING.
Lieutenant Xavier is obviously another ancestor, either Professor X’s father or his grandfather.
Page 14 has Logan call him “Xavier’s father”, and presumably he knows what he’s talking about.
The plane Lt. Xavier identifies as Canadian has a mirrored French flag for some reason. Canadian armed forces during WWII used the Canadian Red Ensign, which is the sort of thing that only takes a quick Google search.
Clearly, Brian Xavier had the minor mutant power to detect people’s nationalities.
Then again, WWII Wolverine also appears to have metal claws, so who the hell knows?
“This story is related in a one-panel flashback in Daredevil #197 (which might just be her version of events)”.
Of course we all know who ‘she’ is, but you haven’t actually mentioned it.
Thinking about it, I’m surprised they didn’t go with Wolverine’s first appearance for the Department H life, with Omega Red possessing Hulk and Wendigo.
X Lives has so far coasted on off the wall zanyness – aside from the art it was the only redeeming feature I found. Unfortunately, this issue is tame in comparison? Adding a venomized Wolverine to Weapon X, well… adds nothing. And it’s not even a cool visual – venomized heroes have become so commonplace in the last decade. I’ve actually lost count how many events / crossovers / miniseries and/or story arcs used that concept. A lot. Lots and lots.
I’ve never seen an omegaredified whale before. I’ve seen venomized Wolverine and Wolverine-lites plenty of times before.
So the only redeeming feature, aside from the art, was missing this issue, and all that was left was… time travel nonsense and lots of snikting. Boring.
I just decided that Mikhail’s reality-warping is the cause of people growing Omega Red tentacles when possessed. Is that stupid? Yes, but I’m not the one who decided people possessed by Omega Red grow tentacles. Which is stupid. On the plus side, I think I finally understand Forest Gump when he said “stupid is as stupid does.”
Honestly I’m unfazed by any dumb thing that happens in this book cause the shocking twist in X Deaths this week really takes the cake. It’s hilarious.
Very fun that readers of this post-Hickman lead line get to experience the same level of retcons that Marvel did post-Morrison X-Men in real time.
(retcons is probably putting it too nicely)
I think it’s great that Marvel decided to turn the post-Hickman direction in to a farce. That’s a different decision than one would expect.
At the same time, the Sabretooth series is the best and most complex book of the Krakoa-era since House/Powers.
It’s as if Marvel is offering a compare-contrast between X Lives/X Death and Sabretooth.
Jenny: “ Very fun that readers of this post-Hickman lead line get to experience the same level of retcons that Marvel did post-Morrison X-Men in real time.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but… AAARGH IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN!!!
Coming in X-Deaths #5: Oops, Xorn Did It Again
Sabertooth is awesome, it’s really not pulling any punches. Last issue almost felt too short.
Honestly I’m totally unfazed by whatever is happening with Lives/Deaths. It’s clear the x-office needed to buy time for whatever reason, but you can’t make this kind of stuff too obvious to readers so they decided to squeeze a little more from Moira before phasing her out of the line. Must suck for the most dedicated fans of the character though.
Sabertooth is, admittedly, good. Nevertheless everything that’s happening in this makes me think the exact same type of thoughts that I thought 15 or so years ago-“Did they not realize Morrison was giving them an out by having Magneto being manipulated by Sublime? Did they not realize that Ernst was meant to be Cassandra Nova? Were they even reading the book?”
(For the record I was largely ambivalent on Hickman’s X-Men but I respected it for pushing it’s own way, I feel bad for the big fans of it. I remember what it was like going from Morrison to Austen.)
Most of the editorial decisions post-Morrison were totally bizarre. Honestly, I still don’t understand how we ended up with two Xorns at the end of the retconning, but whatever.
As one of the fans of Hickman’s original direction, I can say that I’m glad I didn’t invest too heavily in the HoX/PoX spin-offs. I don’t feel like I wasted too much money.
I was saying a few weeks ago that the Moira plotting now was reminiscent of Magneto turning up again immediately after Planet X.
“Did they not realize Morrison was giving them an out by having Magneto being manipulated by Sublime? Did they not realize that Ernst was meant to be Cassandra Nova? Were they even reading the book?”
Yeah, when you put it this way the retcons feel even more depressing. no need to make everything so convoluted.
But re: Hickman era, I was very skeptical of the concept itself at first and prepared to not see his whole story play out. Been burned by X-men books way too many times at this point to believe things will be different someday.
At the same time though, I’m… not too frustrated? I got some very enjoyable books out of it, some new favorite c-list characters and even some long-time favorites got neat moments. Plus the concept should live for at least a few years more and even without Hickman’s narrative it still is fertile ground for new ideas. If I can found at least two or three enjoyable books in the line, I’m already satisfied.
I can sort of forgive them missing the Magneto thing since it is one of those Morrison reveals where twists are related in a dense amount towards the end of the run, though the two Xorns thing is still stupid as hell. But the Ernst thing is just straight up said clearly. I’m still annoyed about that to this day.
>> “Did they not realize Morrison was giving them an out by having Magneto being manipulated by Sublime? Did they not realize that Ernst was meant to be Cassandra Nova? Were they even reading the book?”
It was reading the post-Morrison books where Austen was devoting time to plots that were very clearly stated on-panel and on-page that I became convinced that the X-Editors don’t actually read the books they edit. I’ve never seen anything to disabuse me of this notion, either.
X Deaths is at least advancing the overall post-Hickman story, like it or not. Is there any point to this series? Are both series going to converge together at some point to justify the existence of this series? Is there something I am missing?
Also, why wasn’t Rachel brought into this, seeing as how one of her specialties is sending a person’s consciousness through time?