Wolverine #27 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #27
“The Beast Agenda: Skulls”
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’s control collar around his next.
PAGES 2-4. Wolverine is resurrected.
We left off last issue with Wolverine imprisoned by Legacy House and the Beast bidding for the opportunity to kill him. We pick up that scene later on in a flashback, but for now, this is Logan being resurrected on Krakoa. It’s a routine enough event that only Hope and Tempus show up. When the Krakoa era started, resurrections were a huge deal with a quasi-religious ceremony (admittedly, mostly for the first return from the dead). Mind you, if they made a song and dance about every resurrection of X-Force, then it’d probably look a bit bleak to the mutant in the street.
“That adamantium influx was seriously so hard and annoying.” This is one of the occasional hazy nods to the question of why characters like Wolverine are resurrected with implants intact. The usual indication has been that it’s mostly a matter of replicating the previous body rather than straight cloning, but Gerry Duggan’s explanation over in X-Men for Laura’s adamantium changing (due to a misunderstanding by Proteus) suggests that the Five are getting actively involved somewhere. Maybe they just err on the side of replicating the previous body unless someone has outright asked them to change it.
Hope and Tempus are obviously suspicious of what Beast’s up to, but their attempts to question X-Force haven’t got very far in the past.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGES 6-7. Montage: Wolverine kills people for the Beast.
Obviously, this is a mind control angle. The Beast has decided that Wolverine is getting unacceptably independent-minded, and his solution is to use him as a brainwashed weapon just like Weapon X wanted to do. This is going to go down extremely badly with Wolverine, for all the obvious reasons, and so it seems like the Beast’s storyline is building to a conclusion. Having that happen in this book rather than X-Force is a bit weird (but then I suppose that doing this angle in X-Force rather than in Wolverine’s solo title would also seem weird).
Pollen. The drug derived from stolen Krakoan petals, as introduced way back in issue #1.
PAGES 8-10. Domino and Sage in the Green Lagoon.
What’s left of X-Force’s field team (Domino, Deadpool and Omega Red) have just got back from fighting random serpent people in Marrakesh, which at least gives Juan José Ryp a change to draw a nice market page. Meanwhile, Sage’s alcoholism subplot continues, not very subtly. She seems oblivious to what’s happening with Wolverine, even given her general distrust of the Beast; presumably she has too much trust in Wolverine to take care of himself and stand up to Beast. More generally, Wolverine’s general behaviour means that people just aren’t too suspicious when he vanishes for a while, at least when Beast confirms that he’s still around. Domino, of course, is the exception – and the closest to a straightforward hero left in X-Force, other than Wolverine himself.
The background guests in the Green Lagoon seem to include Bling!, Warlock, Dani Moonstar, Armor and Blink; the blonde in the generic New Mutants uniform doesn’t look very like Magik (who has a personal costume anyway) so perhaps it’s Magma. I’m sure I should recognise the hooded person with the dots instead of a face, but I’m blanking on it.
PAGE 11. Montage: more killing.
PAGES 12-13. Beast feeds Wolverine.
Given the flowers growing on it, and the weird tusk things, this is presumably one of the odd pieces of Krakoan wildlife that have occasionally shown up in Percy’s stories.
PAGES 14-16. Flashback: Beast and Wolverine at Legacy House.
Despite some blather about making sure that Wolverine isn’t compromised, the Beast seems to be looking for an excuse to kill Wolverine and resurrect him. But even that doesn’t seem to fully explain what’s going on here, because the members of X-Force are resurrected really quite a lot. He could have just waited for the next convenient opportunity. So this seems to be more of a descent into sadism.
Wolverine suggests that the eye patch and tuxedo are a knock-off of his own Patch persona, but it’s a bit of a stretch. The Beast actually is missing an eye and the art doesn’t really show a tuxedo so much as a 1920s professor outfit.
PAGE 17. Data page: a memo from the Beast to the members of X-Force convening a meeting to propose a more aggressive approach. Wolverine is included on the distribution list, for show.
PAGES 18-19. X-Force meet.
The Beast has decided that what Krakoa needs is a reign of terror, apparently. He seems to have gone completely off the deep end here, since it’s hard to imagine most of the Quiet Council being indifferent about this – even the pragmatist villains like Mystique and Sebastian Shaw are unlikely to be comfortable with leaving a lunatic in charge of Krakoan intelligence. The Beast’s general attitude throughout the Percy run has been to stay in the shadows so that the Quiet Council can choose to believe what they want about his activities. This is a complete U-turn which appears absolutely self-destructive even by his own standards. So what’s going on?
PAGES 20-21. Flashback: The aftermath of Wolverine’s death.
Unsurprisingly, the assorted villains do eventually go for Beast, who fights them off. Note that Beast has been almost entirely a non-combatant throughout the Krakoan era, and although he’s still capable of defeating a bunch of armed henchmen singlehandedly, he’s out of breath afterwards. We’ll presumably find out next time what happens to Jeff Bannister.
PAGE 22. Data page: a quote from Jeff Bannister. It’s got no direct relevance to the plot, but the suggestion might be (given the following scene) that Beast has somehow been compromised through falling into the trap Bannister describes here.
PAGES 23-24. Beast in his garden.
Standard banality of evil stuff here, really. The Beast’s home is organic, but unlike the normal Krakoan designs, it resembles a traditional cottage.
Apparently, somewhere along the line, the Beast has killed Wolverine, though heaven only knows why.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
“Apparently, somewhere along the line, the Beast has killed Wolverine, though heaven only knows why.”
Didn’t that happen in the preceding scene, where Beast beheaded him? He killed him so that he could be resurrected as a blank slate that Beast could control, I’m assuming. (you’d have to wonder why he needed to die first, instead of just putting the control collar on him though)
This is the issue in which The Beast fights a man by throwing Wolverine’s severed head into his crotch.
Let that sink in.
I’ve said it before and I may say it again, but Percy’s approach to the X-Books is remarkably mean-spirited. Between Wolverine and X-Force, he’s used the Krakoan resurrection process as an excuse to put characters through a meatgrinder. And while Beast has been shady for years, he’s accelerated the process so that Beast has gone full-on villain and the payoff better be some form of severe mindcontrol (or Dark Beast persona)…
…followed by restoring him from the last uncorrupted save point, which at this point might as well be the New X-Men/Grant Morrison era or something. Or else just keep him as a villain forever. I dunno.
It’s telling that apart from Wolverine, the only member of X-Force available to care about things like morals, scruples, ethics and propriety is Domino. Sage has clearly let her alcoholism affect her performance, Deadpool is just happy anyone accepts him, Omega Red doesn’t care, and Black Tom seems unstable most of the time.
Watching this storyline head towards some sort of reckoning is like watching a car crash in slow motion.
Yeah I’m pretty sure the implication is that the skull at the end is Wolverine’s severed head from earlier just with all the meat rotted off.
I am deeply confused by the “Pan-Asian Alliance strike unit” that Wolverine massacres. What, did SEATO never break up in this timeline? Is ASEAN militarized? Do they just need some menacing looking Asian guys and not want to deal with a Bleeding Cool headline about Wolverine massacring some Chinese people?
I wonder if there’s any connection to the Pan-Asian School for the Unusually Gifted we saw in Infinity Hunt, or maybe something stemming out of Agents of Atlas.
But I doubt it.
“the blonde in the generic New Mutants uniform doesn’t look very like Magik (who has a personal costume anyway) so perhaps it’s Magma”
Poor Amara. After 40 years of publication history, she’s a half-recognizable figure in the background about 80% of the time.
And poor Beast, too, from the sound of things. Going full villain at least means that things are coming to a head. Hopefully, his “ethically dubious” arc can end soon. Or maybe he’ll become another evil mutant-hating robot like Moira. Can someone please create a half-decent villain for the X-Men who isn’t a protagonist turned bad?
Amara didn’t even make it into the New Mutants anniversary issue as more than a brief, barely recognizable cameo, which felt somewhat rude.
You know it’s bad when Mister Sinister is a more reliable and desirable choice as resident mad scientist than Beast.
Let’s see. Wolverine eats a handful of fresh intestines. Wolverine’s severed head gets thrown into an old man’s crotch. Beast is a sadist who collects body parts and talks to them.
Are we certain Marvel didn’t accidentally publish an issue of Crossed instead?
its clear now this is dark beast.
Magma was never a particularly useable character. In personality she’s cold, regal and reserved, so it’s hard to bounce her off of other characters. In powers, she can’t really do anything but horribly burn people and destroy property. She’s not even a proper fire guy. Her background is 21st century ancient Roman from Brazil, which sounds cool, but what do you follow that up with?
She’s visually flashy, and that’s about it. So background crowd shots are where she naturally exists.
I love the original New Mutants, but Magma is such a nothing character that I’m ok with her missing any future reunions. It’s telling that writers have worked to make Karma and Cypher interesting but no one’s bothered to do so for Magma.
If we’re seeing the beginning of the Beast’s downfall, I’m more than ready for it. A current X-Force plot resolving- it seems too good to be true, but I’m starting to feel a dangerous amount of hope.
Remember when Beast was so horrified and disgusted by the existence of X-Force that he outed Cyclops to Utopia and refused to have anything to do with him going forward? Good times, good times.
“Magma was never a particularly useable character. In personality she’s cold, regal and reserved, so it’s hard to bounce her off of other characters. In powers, she can’t really do anything but horribly burn people and destroy property.”
To be fair, that was Havok’s status in the Australian era too, until someone realized they couldn’t just have him fight robots and the Brood every issue. 🙂 Then superheated plasma suddenly became essentially force beams.
But I hear you — Magma’s powers ARE tough to write. In theory she’s insanely powerful, but the property and ecological damage and lethality of her powers make them more suited to a supervillain than a hero. Writers almost have to have her taken out quickly in fights to keep her from either winning fights for the New Mutants immediately or accidentally killing people.
I skimmed the X-Men 92 House of X miniseries and a major plot was Dark Beast impersonating Beast, so maybe that plot’s been in the air. Hopefully it’s something interesting like a mind switch in resurrection and not simple impersonation again.
Maybe I’m the last Magma fan in the world, but I think she’s completely workable as a character.
Regal and reserved is one way to describe early Storm and current Emma, and they’ve both been fully developed individually and in relationships with other characters. You just have to drive Magma to a breaking point or show just what she’s trying to protect by not being vulnerable.
And not being able to control your powers for fear of hurting people is what Rogue was all about for two decades. How does one deal with conflict and not lose control or do damage?
Her power set could evolve like Iceman’s. Maybe she can control other forms of earth than just lava, like Avalanche. Maybe she has temperature control powers over earth so she can warm it up or cool it down without creating a volcano.
Anyway, I think there are a bunch of different directions to go with her. I love that one scene in New Mutants #21 where she didn’t fit in at the slumber party and almost started an earthquake. I think everything you need to know is right there.
I’ll save the rest of my rant for my new newsletter on Substack: The Magma Times. I hope you’ll join me!
Heck, show Magma’s regality and pride versus people going WTF at the concept of an ancient Roman civilization in South America. The thing that gives her the core of pride *should* be something that’s weird enough that people maybe give a little side-eye towards it. You can get a lot of personal tension and growth out of that!
First sub to The Magma Times is mine.
I have to agree with @Jenny. This is probably the same skull from earlier scenes, and the implication is that Beast is simply keeping it as a memento, presumably simply because he likes to be reminded that he has Wolverine in his thrall now.
I also agree that a regal personality is hardly an impediment for X-characters to be interesting. If anything, it is something of a tradition.
It’s too bad they’ve gotten rid of the Pit, because that’s where this version of the Beast deserves to be.
For Magma, I’d lean into her aristocratic background which gives her formal manners that would work well as part of Krakoa’s diplomatic corps. Go into her past and bring her former boyfriend Empath in as “the best person to read to room” and you’ve got a very good diplomatic team. She was a member of the original Hellions, so bring them in as part of this diplomatic team; they are criminally underused and also have the background of being taught at the Massachusetts Academy so they can know the diplomatic scene.
Further, you can bring in Emma and Xavier as the two who are ostensibly working together with the diplomatic corps. After 3-ish years, a Krakoa book might give some insight into Xavier! Of course, there would be the usual Quiet Council maneuvering behind the scenes, but hopefully in a non-cackling evil way.
There’s my pitch for a Magma and the Hellions book.
Don’t get me wrong, Magma isn’t *un*useable, she could be made into something quite easily. But the writer has to care, and even Claremont didn’t seem too bothered making anything of her.
She’s actually an ideal character for rehabilitation. She’s had so little development over her entire existence that you could do whatever you wanted with her.
I’m 100% on board for Magma and the Hellions. So many underutilized characters.
I do wonder why Claremont introduced Magma so early on (as Karma’s replacement, more or less) and then basically abandoned her. I guess he realized he could get more mileage out of Magik’s brand of standoffish than Magma’s. His interest in her seemed to revive with the introduction of Selene as a major villain, but by then it was probably too late.
I have always read New Mutants #52 as being intended to be the end of Illyana’s internal struggle. Had he returned after 6 months like he was originally planning to, I would like to think that he would have followed up on some of the seeds he planted in his last story, the connection between Amara and Selene.
She was written off the team by Simonson (maybe with the idea of letting Claremont run with the idea when he returned?) which, frankly, probably ended up being a blessing for her characterization, underdeveloped as it was. Then the book got caught up in Illyana’s struggles again, and I dropped the book when Gossamyr showed up.
I can’t really blame Simonson for running with Illyana because she was probably the most developed of the characters remaining and suffering the loss of Colossus made sense, but it also feels like she found out she was staying on the book and went for the easy story. I just think that Dani would have kicked her butt into behaving.
“Her power set could evolve like Iceman’s. Maybe she can control other forms of earth than just lava”
Iceman is still appropriately named. Amara is Magma. If you’re going to broaden her abilities to include plant/soil manipulation then “Earth” or “Terra” — you know, if the name wasn’t already taken by another blonde woman with a regal background (nice swipe, Claremont) would be more appropriate.
But if you’re going that far to change both the powers and the branding, then you may as well be creating a brand new character which just underscores the fact that Magma sucks.
Nova Roma sucks. Tying Magma to Nova Roma makes her less viable. Karma had a similar problem she was always looking for her perpetually-kidnapped siblings. Writers had to have her do something else to make readers care. Just like Rusty Collins, Magma is a character that fans ignore and no one is the worse for it.
Also: volcanoes can’t just form anywhere. I learned that as a kid, and it bugged me that Magma could just magically form mini-volcanoes. I know, I know – superhero comics are not bastions of scientific knowledge. Still, when you know a thing is outright wrong it gets harder to suspend disbelief.
But that Magma & the Hellions pitch sounds great!
@Sam- the problem was that Illyana’s corruption started BEFORE Peter’s “death”, and was a result of Illyana throwing villains into Limbo for the demons to torture. (Before, whenever a villain wound up in Limbo, Illyana could order the demons not to physically harm them.) Lila Cheney thought that was a good idea and none of the New Mutants told Illyana to stop doing it. I mean- who could have predicted that using demons to torture your enemies would end badly?
I honestly think they could reset the Beast all the way back to the ’90s or even his early Avengers days without losing much. Everything since Morrison’s run (and arguably even that) has been a case study in missing the point of a character. Nightcrawler is the only one who could give him a run for his money there.
I’d be inclined to suspect that Sage knows a lot more about what Beast is up to than he thinks and is both indulging and playing up her alcoholism so as to hide that fact from him if it wasn’t displaying a level of subtlety that Percey generally isn’t aiming for in his run.
I presume Beast had to kill Wolvering rather than just stick the collar on him because he knew it would get damaged at some point and then Wolverine would be coming after him. With his clever person stupidity I guess he really thinks that when current mindless Wolverine has killed enough people he’ll just kill him and then get the Five to bring Wolverine back again with the backup which he’s presumably hoping is far enough back that Wolverine won’t suspect too much about him. I presume Percey is going to ignore Hope being on the Quiet Council and telling them that Beast had them make a partial Wolverine that he’s clearly using for evil because that would derail a Wolverine/X-Force story immediately.
Nova Roma really is the millstone around Magma’s neck. Look at the *other* Nova Roma character, Selene. She was the Black Priestess in Nova Roma for who knows how long, but that gets mentioned as little as possible. Amara doesn’t have that luxury. She’s either from a weirdly static lost Roman city or someone who thought she was a lost Roman city, and that’s too central to her character to ignore.
Magma isn’t an aristocrat. Her father is a plebian. She does have the Roman disdain for barbarians, but all of them did.
I have thought for a long time that having 2 Hanks running around may well messed up the resurrection so the current beast is part of all AOA beast due to a clerical error in cerebro record keeping
To each their own about Magma, I guess, but let’s not pretend that codenames have to 100% accurately represent a character’s power set. Rogue, Gambit, and White Queen all evoke aspects of their characters, but aren’t exactly descriptive of their powers. Otherwise, Emma would be called Mind B*tch.
And Iceman’s powers have been expanded by quite a lot since his early days. He can turn into water or vapor, for example. But we still call him Iceman because that’s just his name now. And no one created a new character called Mistman because mist and ice are close enough, and why not improve a character you’ve already got? Do we really need more mutants with incredibly specific powers?
Finally, I like Nova Roma. When you have mutants who come from Atlantis, space, and alternate futures, why not an ancient Roman city? Is it perfect? No. Could it be improved upon? Certainly.
tl;dr: Sure, Magma and Nova Roma suck now, but the point is they don’t have to if given a little attention.
@Thom H- Yes, Iceman can turn into water or vapor but he USUALLY turns into ice, so his codename still makes sense. He went from a man covered in ice to a man who can turn into ice, so his codename still make sense. Plenty of characters get similar power upgrades and keep the same code name. Living Laser went from a scientist who used lasers to a being of living light. Poison Ivy went from a scientist who used technology to control plants and poisons to a plantwoman with a poisonous touch.Giving Magma the power to control- plants? earth?- would require a new name.
“When you have mutants who come from Atlantis, space, and alternate futures, why not an ancient Roman city?”
Most of those characters are trash and the ones that aren’t (like Namor and Warlock), the fact they’re technically mutants is the least interesting about them. Namor? Great character. Has absolutely nothing to do with him being a mutant, and honestly, I’d be happy if they were to retcon his winged feet as something that the High Evolutionary did to him because the Evolutionary was literally high one day and thought winged feet would be funny.
Warlock, same deal. Does it even matter that he’s a mutant? He’s an alien that’s so alienly-alien that if you were to introduce him to someone and point out that he also happens to be a mutant, it’d be just about as noteworthy as pointing out that he has a mole on his left buttcheek.
I initially read that as, “The Best Agenda: Skulls.” Which is a much more interesting-sounding title.
I don’t really think Nova Roma is all that complicated to clean up, someone just needs to sit down and do it.
You say:
“Nova Roma was a South American ‘Roman Outpost’ created and controlled by Selene so that she had a constant source of food.”
It’s static because she wants it to be static. It had no contact with the outside because she didn’t want it to have contact. It had the Roman cosplay because it was a sustainable level of civilization.
Then you add the “hook” — the colony’s first Omega mutant, Magma was born, and eventually brought about the end of the colony itself and the illusion.
It’s too bad the writers didn’t just let her be indigenous Brazilian. Wasn’t she supposed to have been of Inca descent at one point? That alone would have given her good character beats with Dani and Roberto.
@Moo: We’ll have to collab on a point-counterpoint issue of my Magma newsletter. Have your people call mine.
Can’t someone kill Beast so they can resurrect happy go lucky Hank McCoy again?
Are there really any old silly concepts that just *can’t* be done well in the context of a superhero universe? I’d pay money for a Mark Russell renovation of Nova Roma.
@Mark Coale – it seems we’re all waiting for it. Percy’s aware of it – there was a data page he wrote as Beast’s diary or something where he mentioned Beast’s disdain for the idea that he could go back to being his old self.
All that’s left is speculation whether that will actually happen. And I think it won’t under Percy. In plot terms, Beast is against it. He could be overruled – the Quiet Council could probably vote to restore him to 80s or 90s settings. He could also be sabotaged – Sage could wipe his recent backups, for example.
But I don’t see Percy doing that. It wouldn’t fit with the whole theme he’s given Wolverine how ‘peace makes you soft’ and whatnot – it seems to be the credo of his run on both Wolverine and X-Force. So unless he’s going for a realisation for Wolverine that he was an idiot, wiping Beast’s memory to make him the nice, jovial genius again wouldn’t fit. I think.
Anyway, while I hate the current characterisation of Beast, there was some mileage with the ‘mutant CIA’ concept, with all the ugliness that connotation involves. But we’ve passed realpolitik and political thriller territory, we’re beyond comic book supervillain even, now he’s Skeletor. He has a skull-shaped lair. It’s…
…it’s actually pretty funny, considering how grim and self-serious Percy’s books are.
It depresses me how badly Beast has degraded as a character. I miss him being the funny jovial guy that palled around with Wonder Man while also rocking the super science.
This Beast, I’m PRAYING, is actually Dark Beast and the real Hank’s somewhere else.
@Devin
Playing Amara’s background (real or otherwise) against Dani and Roberto could be interesting if well written, but it would also be very challenging and more than likely divisive.
Inca civilization never came anywhere close to Brazil far as anyone seems to know. There are natural barriers (mountains, rivers and heavy rainforest) that discouraged their expansion in that direction, apparently for good.
Claremont may well never have noticed; he apparently thought that Brazilians speak Spanish, after all.
Even if Amara turned out to be a true inheritor and keeper of Inca legacy, that would create a lot more contrasts than affinities with either Dani or Roberto. Roberto is well established to be from a wealthy family with no discernible ethnic nor cultural ties to native american people of any variety.
In truth, that is an insufficiently explored trait of Brazilian culture. We are fairly racist and fairly delusional on the matter, but our ethnic composition ultimately is… complex, I suppose. Not all that mixed, but not all that segregated either.
And Dani, of course, comes from an even more distant culture.
None of that is meant to imply that it would be a bad thing to have them play against each other; on the contrary, it could make very good stories. But it would require a lot of research and more than a bit of daring risks.
Re: how the mutants are resurrected with their implants intact, it’s definitely been explained. The body is cloned, and then Proteus uses reality manipulation to add (or remove) whatever doesn’t come with cloning. The thing with Laura was a mistake on Dugan’s part, and the explanation given was that Proteus was mistaken and messed up.