The Incomplete Wolverine – 1987
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
We left off just after the Mutant Massacre crossover, which ran through to January. That leads us to a string of aftermath issues as the X-Men roster rebuilds.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #214
“With Malice Toward All!”
by Chris Claremont, Barry Windsor-Smith & Glynis Oliver
February 1987
The X-Men investigate Dazzler’s unusually aggressive behaviour, and wind up freeing her from possession by the disembodied psychic Malice (Alice McAllister). Malice then hops between the X-Men until Storm defeats her by sheer force of will. With her reputation wrecked by Malice’s antics, Dazzler reluctantly joins the X-Men.
In a surprising coda, Wolverine wrongly concludes that Storm is still under Malice’s control and attacks, realising at the last moment that he’s got it wrong – the idea is that Malice screws with Wolverine’s usual ability to rely on his senses, inverting the usual trope where he’s the one who can sense the truth.
Charts – 23 April 2021
Another week with only three new entries on the singles chart.
1. Lil Nas X – “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”
Four weeks, and miles ahead of the number 2 single (which is Justin Bieber’s “Peaches”, for the third week). I’ll come back to the climbers – let’s tie up the new entries first.
29. AJ Tracey – “Little More Love”
One for the “filmed that during a pandemic, did you?” file. I know there are protocols for this sort of thing, but for the sake of a three minute video… I don’t know. It’s offputting. Anyway, this is the release-week single from his album “Flu Game”, which enters at number 2. His previous self-titled studio album reached number 3 in 2019; he’s also released a couple of mixtapes which placed significantly lower. “Flu Game” has already produced four top 40 singles – “Dinner Guest”, which got to number 5; “West Ten”, which got to number 5; “Bringing It Back”, which got to number 5; and “Anxious”, which got to … er, number 34. Not sure what happened to that one.
S.W.O.R.D. #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
S.W.O.R.D. #5
“Giallo”
by Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti & Marte Gracia
COVER / PAGE 1. A relaxed-looking Fabian Cortez with Magneto standing behind him, and a dead Snark. One of these two things happens in the issue, and it’s not the one Cortez would prefer.
PAGE 2. Data page, of sorts. These are the thoughts of the We-Plex Supreme Intelligence System, which is the version of the Supreme Intelligence from the home timeline of Noh-Varr (Marvel Boy). The 18th Kree Diplomatic Gestalt was Marvel Boy’s group in his home timeline. I’m not particularly up on Utopian Kree continuity, but basically they’re a more peaceful offshoot of the Kree Empire under Plex’s government.
The top right panel lists a bunch of problems that Plex has been dealing with lately: Knull (from King in Black), the Olympian gods (from Guardians of the Galaxy), the mainstream Kree (just generally), and “the Korvac apotheosis” (presumably referring to the return of cosmic villain Korvac over in Iron Man). But right now, Plex is mainly concerned with the Snarkwar – the war for succession among the Zn’rx, which began over in Guardians of the Galaxy and has already been mentioned in earlier issues.
X-Force #19 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #19
“Dead of Nightmare”
by Benjamin Percy, Garry Brown & Guru-eFX
COVER / PAGE 1. Marvel Girl is plagued by demonic images of X-Force.
PAGE 2. Phoebe calls Jean for help.
Jean is talking about the nightmare vision she had in the previous issue, one of a number of nightmare hallucinations that were presumably caused by XENO’s evil copy of Quentin Quire.
PAGE 3. Recap and credits.
PAGES 4-7. Quentin is pursued through his mindscape.
Last issue, Quentin went to the astral plane to confront the predatory thingy, and found himself in this laboratory setting – which he correctly infers later on to be the XENO lab where his copy was cloned. As in that issue, astral Quentin doesn’t have his regular glasses, but instead has a pink energy shape, the same effect as is used for any psychic weapons that he conjures up. What use a pair of psychic glasses is, it’s not immediately obvious. At any rate, this is clearly meant to be symbolic, because Quentin starts using a similar effect in the real world later in the issue.
Way of X #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WAY OF X #1
“Way of X”
by Si Spurrier, Bob Quinn & Java Tartaglia
COVER / PAGE 1: Nightcrawler, in familiar swashbuckling mode, fighting two of the Orchis soldiers. The stained glass window behind him has the faces of his team from the opening mission: Blink, DJ, Loa and Pixie.
PAGE 2. Recap and credits. The recap sets up the general premise of Krakoa, and the vague disquiet which Kurt expressed in X-Men #7.
PAGE 3. Data page. An excerpt from a book (title redacted) evidently written by Nightcrawler in mock biblical style, but trying to set out the development of his philosophy.
A “florilegium” is a compilation of excerpts from other writings (an anthology, more or less). Literally, it means “gathering of flowers”, which seems quite appropriate for Krakoa.
House to Astonish Episode 191
We’re back, with discussion of Marvel’s distributor changes, John Romita Jr moving from DC back to Marvel, the new X-Men lineup, the upcoming launches of Amazing Fantasy and Moon Knight and Future State: Gotham, and the newly-broken record for sale price of a single comics issue. We’ve also got reviews of Batman: The Detective, Darkhawk: Heart of the Hawk and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is sticking to its story. All this plus Roderick, Duke of Emory, zining villains and the Vantablack of superheroes.
The episode 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 if you want to buy one of our fabulous shirts over at our Redbubble store, then hey, we’re certainly not going to stop you.
Charts – 16 April 2021
The market for Taylor Swift doing Taylor Swift covers is a healthy one.
1. Lil Nas X – “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”
Three weeks, which is longer than “Old Town Road” managed – making it his biggest UK hit. Its sales are also continuing to increase, and so it could be here for a while to come. It holds “Peaches” by Justin Bieber at number 2 for a second week.
3. Polo G – “Rapstar”
This isn’t Polo G’s first UK hit, but you’d struggle to say his previous chart record qualified him as a star – he has a technical number 3 hit by guesting on KSI’s hit “Patience”, and he has co-billing with Lil Tjay and Fivio Foreign on “Headshot”, which scraped a week at number 40.
Children of the Atom #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
CHILDREN OF THE ATOM #2
“Prison Break”
by Vita Ayala, Bernard Chang & Marcelo Maiolo
COVER / PAGE 1: The… let’s call them the Children of the Atom for now, even though they don’t actually use that name in the story. Anyhow, they’re fighting prisoners while the prison seems to be on fire.
PAGE 2 PANELS 1-3. Someone makes a phone call from prison.
She’s unnamed, and not immediately identifiable without her costume, but this is Vague from Hell’s Belles, the minor villain team that our heroes captured last issue. She’s phoning Briquette, the one member of the team who kept her mutant powers, and asking her to come and break them out. Briquette is evidently still loyal to her depowered teammates, which raises the question of why she wasn’t with them in the previous issue. Perhaps we’ll get to that.
PAGE 2 PANEL 4 TO PAGE 4. The Avengers visit the Krakoan Embassy to talk about the kids.
This meeting doesn’t go particularly well. What’s objectionable about the Avengers’ behaviour, really, is that the Avengers seem to have shown up unannounced (or at least uninvited) at the embassy and demanded to see Professor X, who is a foreign head of state and probably has better things to do than worry about a bunch of kids running around in costumes.
Wolverine #11 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #11
“A Confusion of Monsters”
by Benjamin Percy, Scot Eaton, JP Mayer & Matthew Wilson
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine and Louise fighting vampires in, well, a pool of blood or something. Omega Red and Dracula loom behind. Or Omega Red’s attacking and he’s just very big. One or the other.
PAGES 2-5. Wolverine destroys a nest of vampires.
This issue returns to the Vampire Nation storyline, last seen in issue #5. Logan’s narration here is basically a summary of what the vampires were up to in that issue. We did see a group of vampires in that issue who had resisted the group control and were surviving on animal blood; however, those three didn’t ask Wolverine to kill them, and seemed really quite keen that he shouldn’t. On the whole, though, Marvel have tended to present vampires who reject their transformation as being quite keen to be put out of their misery.
The Incomplete Wolverine – 1986
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
When we left off, Professor X had just handed the school over to Magneto and disappeared off to space. Oh, and we’re still in the middle of Secret Wars II.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #201
“Duel”
by Chris Claremont, Rick Leonardi, Whilce Portacio & Glynis Oliver
January 1986
On returning home from Paris, the X-Men meet the newborn Nathan Summers (the future Cable). Magneto takes up his role as the New Mutants’ mentor. And Storm beats Cyclops in a duel, to become the X-Men’s leader again. Wolverine blatantly supports Storm in that argument, arguing that Cyclops’ heart is no longer in it – presumably because of Cyclops’ conflicted feelings about his duty to his family. Wolverine thinks of Scott’s non-combatant family as a liability.
MARVEL FANFARE vol 1 #33
“Shadows on the Soul!”
by Chris Claremont, June Brigman, Terry Austin & Glynis Oliver
February 1987
The X-Men, Magneto and Lee Forrester are holidaying on Island M (despite everyone finding the place a bit creepy) when the statues come to life and attack. This turns out to be the work of the Chief Examiner, who wants to copy Magneto’s powers and use them to save his alien race. Magneto agrees to be scanned. As for Wolverine, he gets turned to stone for most of the issue.
