Wolverine #26 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #26
“The Beast Agenda: The Off Days”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colourist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine, with Beast in the background, and Jeff Bannister and the Merchant in the foreground.
PAGE 2. Obituary for Tom Palmer
PAGES 3-5. Montage: Wolverine has glimpses of normalcy in the middle of fights.
The action sequences are generic and don’t represent any particular story. Page 3 is the late 1970s X-Men fighting robots; page 4 is Wolverine and Spider-Man fighting symbiotes; and page 5 is Wolverine and family (Daken, Laura and Scout) taking on Donald Pierce, Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGES 7-8. Jeff Bannister meets Lacey Shouge.
Jeff Bannister. We last saw Jeff Bannister in issue #18. He’s still with the CIA in Baltimore, working with the “Codex unit”. According to a data page later in the issue, this seems to be a unit that just pores over random stuff in search of patterns to investigate, which seems… weird. Jeff goes out of his way to remind us that he and Delores Ramirez are colleagues, and clearly continues to view her as a villain.
Lacey Shouge is a disguised Merchant, also last seen in issue #18; writer Benjamin Percy likes to cut back and forth between alternating story arcs. His schtick is collecting superhero memorabilia and auctioning it on the black market. Being something of a Silver Age villain, he’s chosen to telegraph his disguise by reading an antiques magazine, and choosing a name which is an anagram of Legacy House, the name of his organisation.
PAGES 9-11. Wolverine visits the Bannisters.
We’ve seen this before; as hinted at in the opening montage, this is Wolverine’s main connection with normalcy at present.
Oddly, Jeff’s daughter still doesn’t have a first name. She’s appeared often enough by this point that you have to wonder if it’s going to be a reveal at some point.
Deadpool’s finger. The girl visited Krakoa in issue #18 when Wolverine got the Bannisters to safety there. The idea that Deadpool’s body parts can be used to get through the gates was established in the recent X-Force Judgment Day arc, where Kraven got through the gates in much the same way. Of course, the normal rule is that non-mutants can only get through the gates if they’re accompanied by a mutant, and Deadpool isn’t a mutant either. But perhaps Krakoa has decided he’s close enough – his powers are derived from Wolverine’s, after all.
PAGE 12. Data page – a weirdly lo-fi note from Bannister, who has stumbled upon a suspicious advert in an antiques magazine.
PAGES 13-16. X-Force train to attack Truant’s Cove.
Truant’s Cove is the place where Sevyr Blackmore’s pirates were holed up in issue #14; I don’t think the ship name “Arak Doom” has come up before, but it was presumably one of the pirate ships.
Obviously, Beast has now moved on to Minority Report and is threatening to kill people who haven’t actually committed any serious crimes yet. Wolverine wants nothing to do with this, though it’s notable that the rest of X-Force just kind of stand around shrugging their shoulders. Domino and Deadpool might have reservations but it’s hard to believe Omega Red cares. Beast’s failure to anticipate this response is another example of his poor judgment, even on his own moral terms.
PAGE 17. Another data page. A pigpen cipher is a fairly basic type of code; Legacy House are apparently a lo-fi organisation.
PAGES 18-20. Wolverine and Jeff are captured by Legacy House.
Quite why Buffalo Bill would have had a holographic image inducer is a bit of a mystery – I don’t think it’s a reference to any story in particular. If you want to cast around for something in Marvel history, then his Wild West Show does appear on panel in 1999’s Blaze of Glory #1, which establishes that Rawhide Kid was a member for a while. Maybe he picked up something from one of the time travellers he’d met…?
PAGES 21-24. Merchant starts auctioning Wolverine’s body parts.
The Beast shows up, so presumably either he was tailing Wolverine or he was taking an interest in Legacy House’s auction anyway – either as a buyer or something he was investigating.
The Masked Raider was a cowboy character from 1939’s Marvel Comics #1, but 2019’s Marvel Comics #1000 retcons his mask into a cosmic artifact. That plotline feeds into Al Ewing’s Defenders stories.
The buyers. Alongside a bunch of generics, there are some recognisable figures:
- The monochrome guy sitting next to the stairs on page 21 is Spider-Man villain Mister Negative.
- The man in front of him with the white facemask is another Spider-Man villain, the Chameleon.
- The woman next to him in the purple and black is Lady Iron Fan, a Shang-Chi villain.
- On page 24 panel 1, Black Ant and Taskmaster are sitting together; they’re a regular duo from the Spider-Man books.
- In the following panel, Iron Man villain Madame Masque is sitting in front of Beast.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
I hope we’re seeing the beginning of Beast’s reckoning here. I’m also worried Percy will make Beast the key to getting Logan out of harm’s way, thus making Wolverine feel he owes him.
I had fun with this issue. Jeff Bannister is a good supporting character, and the Legacy House is the best concept featured in the series to date. I’m no gorehound, but auctioning off Wolverine’s blood and parts live and in-person is effective body horror.
But they’re not really effective as collectibles. You want rare or unique things. Why buy an ear for 10 000 if The Merchant can slice them by the dozen every hour? What you’ve bought immediately turns from ‘Wolverine’s Left Ear’ to ‘one of Wolverine’s left ears’. Loses value as soon as you buy it.
Hey, people bought multiple upon multiple copies of X-Men #1, too. Somebody in the Marvel universe thinks they’re going to put their kids through college by reselling Wolverine’s ears 10 years from now.
Well if Deadpool’s finger can get someone through a gate to Krakoa, Wolverine body parts are (also) basically master keys to the entire mutant world for anyone. Not to mention, body parts taken from the numerous failed X-missions — Orchis must have entire rooms full of those.
Seems like a major security hole.
It is not like there is a direct contradiction that can’t be written around or explained, but I want to point out that these recent issues show the Krakoan gates to be far more lenient than the one that the “Children of the Atom” team repeatedly used a year or so ago.