X Deaths of Wolverine #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #2
by Benjamin Percy, Federico Vicentini & Dijjo Lima
COVER / PAGE 1. Moira caught between the techno-organic Wolverine and Mystique. In the solicitations, Moira was shown as a blanked-out silhouette, to avoid spoiling the plot. Ironically, in the final version, she’s still got brown hair (which she dyed blonde last issue) in order to make her more recognisable.
PAGES 2-4. Moira robs a convenience store and calls Jane Foster.
Presumably Moira is picking up the things she needs for her home surgery later in the issue. (But if she’s relying on theft for everything, how did she get to America?)
Moira has special Krakoan cancer, interwoven with “floronic matter”. “Floronic” isn’t actually a real word – the DC villain Floronic Man was named after his home dimension – but apparently it means something to people in the Marvel Universe. Let’s assume it’s come to be understood as the sort of stuff Krakoan technology uses.
“The No-Place biome.” Moira concludes that she picked up the cancer from the hidden biome within Krakoa, where she was living throughout the Hickman era, and that “[t]hey” did this on purpose. This begs questions. Moira presumably isn’t suggesting that Xavier and Magneto were trying to poison her all along. Mystique and Destiny can’t have used the biome to do this. Is she suggesting that Cypher and Krakoa were always planning this, at least once they found out what she was up to? That doesn’t really make sense either, given that Cypher let her escape. But the idea that Krakoa was doing it makes a bit more sense.
The Incomplete Wolverine – 1997
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996
Last time Wolverine turned into an animal and then Marvel backtracked from the whole plot at tremendous speed. And so the search is on for a new direction.
WOLVERINE vol 2 #110
“Lesser Beasts”
by Tom DeFalco, Joe Bennett, Joe Pimentel, Joe Andreani & Paul Becton
February 1997
The January 1997 issue was the end of a storyline, and we covered it last time. So we kick off with… a fill-in issue. Wolverine and Shaman team up to deal with a couple of murderous robbers who have accidentally released one of the Great Beasts.
WOLVERINE vol 2 #111
“Restoration”
by Larry Hama, Anthony Winn, Dan Green & Dana Moreshead
March 1997
Logan returns home from his jaunt to Japan and Canada, in time for Iceman’s leaving party – though he leaves early to go and drink on his own and mourn his supporting cast. A package arrives for Logan from Zoe Culloden, asking him to look after an “artefact” whose “nature and origin are not necessary for you to know at the present time”. Zoe’s message says that a dark time is coming, and malevolent energies are converging on him. Seems like a bad idea to give him an important artefact to look after, then. It’s a box with something glowing inside, but we never find out what it is, beyond that it has some sort of connection with both Ogun and Lady Deathstrike.
Charts – 4 February 2022
The Disney era continues.
Three weeks. The top 4 is static, which means “Surface Pressure” by Jessica Darrow gets a second week at number 4. And “The Family Madrigal” by Stephanie Beatriz, Olga Merediz & The Cast of Encanto climbs 11-7, giving Disney three top ten hits. It’s not the first time that the top 10 has contained three songs from the same soundtrack, but you have to go back to the late 70s (Grease and Saturday Night Fever).
As for new entries… yeah, it’s quiet.
25. Central Cee – “Cold Shoulder”
Already on to his third hit single of 2022, and it’s only the start of February. In fact, if you count his appearance on “Overseas” by D-Block Europe it’s four – that song entered at 8 just before Christmas, returned to the top 10 after the festive glut, and finally reaches a new peak of number 6 this week. Central Cee’s own 2022 hits have all peaked outside the top 20, but boy there’s a lot of them.
Sabretooth #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
SABRETOOTH vol 4 #1
“The Adversary”
by Victor LaValle, Leonard Kirk & Rain Beredo
SABRETOOTH. If you’re wondering, volume 1 was the 1993 miniseries, vol 2 was a 1998 one-shot, and vol 3 was a 2004 miniseries. This is another five-issue miniseries.
COVER / PAGE 1. A grinning Sabretooth in hell, with Krakoa visible behind him.
PAGES 2-5. Sabretooth is consigned to the Pit.
This is a reprise of Sabretooth’s “trial” and banishment at the hands of the Quiet Council in House of X #6. Sabretooth’s narration is new and replaces most of the spoken dialogue. But what remains is taken directly from that issue, except for Sabretooth’s final line: “No prison can hold me. I’ll be free before you even notice.” In fact, that issue came out in October 2019 and we haven’t seen him since.
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.
Charts – 28 January 2022
It’s a very quiet week on the singles chart.
Two weeks, and currently on course for a third. We have one new entry in the … er, top 38.
9. Digga D & Still Brickin’ – “Pump 101”
The sort of drill record that would be very radio friendly if it weren’t for… well, pretty much all the lyrics. Which is partly because it’s not really drill; it’s close to being a cover of G-Unit’s “Stunt 101” (number 25 in 2003). It’s Digga D’s third top ten hit, and the debut hit for Still Brickin’, whose motivation for choosing that name eludes me. He’s a Liverpool rapper who seems to be pretty obscure – no bio on Genius, no other tracks on Spotify. Maybe he feels strongly about vaccine disinformation.
Marauders Annual #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS ANNUAL #1
“Hellfire & Brimstone”
by Steve Orlando, Creees Lee & Rain Beredo
MARAUDERS ANNUAL. This is the first Marauders Annual, and something of an odd release in the Krakoan era, when the X-books haven’t generally been doing annuals at all. It seems to exist as a one-shot serving as the launch for the upcoming Marauders vol 2 – billing it as Marauders Annual #1 rather than as Marauders vol 2 #1 allows it to ship during the season break.
COVER / PAGE 1. Daken, Kate and Psylocke fight Brimstone Love.
PAGES 2-4. Daken is ambushed while investigating a mass grave.
Greenwich, Connecticut. It’s a wealthy, largely white area, something that Daken also notes on page 12.
Daken. Wolverine’s son is joining the cast of Marauders in vol 2, and this is his introduction. He was previously a member of X-Factor, which is why he’s looking for proof of death – his main job is to find evidence that mutants have really died, so that they can be safely resurrected without awkward doppelgangers resulting. Although he repeatedly calls himself “Akihiro” in this scene (his surname), the recap page still calls him Daken. However, he’s dumped his X-Factor outfit in favour of a variant of his costume from his Dark Wolverine days. To be precise, the opening panel seems to be loosely based on the cover of Daken: Dark Wolverine #1.
We see on page 12 that Daken specifically asked the telepaths he mentions to look out for his mental signals.
X-Men #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #7
“The Secret Origin of Captain Krakoa”
by Gerry Duggan, Pepe Larraz & Marte Gracia
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fly into action, with Cyclops as “Captain Krakoa”.
PAGES 2-4. Dr Stasis drugs his chimeras before sending them to battle the X-Men.
Stasis’ use of animal chimeras sets him up as a parallel to the High Evolutionary and his New Men, who we saw in issue #3. It also echoes the references in House of X and Hellions to Mr Sinister developing “chimera” mutants as a way forward.
Bornan is the same aide we saw with Stasis in issue #2.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGES 6-7. Cyclops is resurrected.
This storyline isn’t told in chronological order, so this scene shows Scott being resurrected after his death at the hands of Dr Stasis (which he see later in the issue). Emma really just tells us what we already knew from last issue: Scott died in a way that was so public that he can’t simply go back to the X-Men in New York without giving away the secret of Krakoan resurrection.
X Deaths of Wolverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #1
by Benjamin Percy, Federico Vicentini, Dijjo Lima & Frank Martin
X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE. This is the companion miniseries to X Lives of Wolverine, which started last week. The structure is obviously intended to echo House of X and Powers of X, the two parallel miniseries that launched the Krakoan era. As with that series, the first book is the relatively straightforward one, while this one seems to have a wider agenda. It also makes it rather clearer why these books were promoted as major stories for the line, something which wasn’t exactly apparent from Lives #1.
COVER / PAGE 1. A techno-organic version of Wolverine. We’ll see him later in the issue.
PAGES 2-6. Moira MacTaggert flees to Scotland.
This is a direct continuation from page 41 of Inferno #4, where Cypher and (very reluctantly) Mystique and Destiny depowered Moira, gave her the techno-organic arm we see here, and allowed her to flee Krakoa through the gate. Moira’s opening narration is just recapping the premise of her role in Hickman’s stories: she lived multiple past lives, she told Xavier and Magneto what she’d learned, and they were keeping her hidden beneath Krakoa until she was discovered and driven into exile.
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 7
It’s time for another adventure with the Marvel Universe’s most neurotic super… er… heroes? Villains? Something along one of those lines, or possibly both. Anyway! We’ve got Graviton, Charcoal, and the addition of a crucial element of the Tbolts mythos, plus: A pug in a hoodie! Some French! An old lady from Elgin! It’s all go around here.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And since it’s not yet the done thing to walk around without a shirt on, why not let us help you avoid that scenario by buying one of our great tees?
