Laura Kinney: Wolverine #6 annotations
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #6
“My So-Called Perfect Life”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE
This won’t take us long, by the nature of the story.
The previous issue ended with Laura returning home and getting shot by a mysterious hooded figure with a hi-tech gun. We don’t find out who that was, though, because… well, you know the story where the lead character is in a version of the real world, or a psychiatric hospital or something, and everyone tells them that the events of the regular story are a hallucination that they’re being treated for? It’s that one, though with the slightly different approach that Laura is living a happy suburban life with her father and sister and doesn’t even remember her “hallucinations” until she’s reminded about them. The “real” world setting continues for the whole issue, so I’m just going to assume for present purposes that nobody appearing here is real other than Laura herself. It’s possible that some of them might be other characters also trapped in this world, but we have no way of knowing at this stage.
Her “father” is Logan, her biological father, though acting like a normal middle class father. Her “sister” is Gabby, her clone. We haven’t seen the real Gabby since Blood Hunt, when she was still hanging around with Laura – she vanished off panel somewhere before NYX. Although everyone in this world is entirely depowered, Gabby still has the two vertical scars on her face.
Psylocke #7 annotations
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #7
“Loved and Lost”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artists: Vincenzo Carratù & Moisés Hidalgo
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PSYLOCKE
The creature possessing Deathdream (of whom more later) tells her that “You love to hurt people. That’s what you do.” It then gives three examples:
- “Matsu’o – the lover you killed”. This is a little puzzling. Matsu’o died in Psylocke vol 1 #4 (2010), but that story featured Betsy Braddock as Psylocke. Kwannon did try to kill Matsu’o at one point before her body swap, but she didn’t succeed (in fact, she lost the fight, which led to the body swap with Betsy).
- “Himeko – the daughter you abandoned.” Covered extensively in Fallen Angels vol 2 flashbacks, and only in the sense that she allowed the Hand to take the baby away at a time when she was heavily under their thumb.
- “Mitsuki – the friend who trusted you.” Seen in flashbacks throughout this run. Her death was shown in issue #5 and wasn’t really Kwannon’s fault at all – she was killed by Master Hayashi in order to teach Kwannon a lesson, and Kwannon does seem to impotently resist. However, the flashback in this issue has her promising not to let Hayashi hurt her, and Mitsuki replies “I’ll hold you to it.” More of Mitsuki in a bit.
Storm #8 annotations
STORM vol 5 #8
“Sinister Schemes of the Stars and Stripes, part one”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artists: Lucas Werneck & Mario Santoro
Colour artist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
STORM
The issue opens with Storm, in some sort of armour, addressing some sort of … glowing red cloud thing. Judging from the dialogue (“ever since I was a child, you have spoken to me like a mother…”) and the mention that it’s been hurt by the storm gods, this is apparently a manifestation of nature, though not one resembling Gaea’s normal appearance in Marvel. This seems to be Storm somehow sorting out the weather crisis from Brazil from the previous issue.
According to the narrator, Storm is more bothered by having to deal with the FBI than the cosmic threats of Oblivion or the “Thunder War” – presumably because it’s on a scale that she’s more invested in.
The Storm Sanctuary turns out to have been built for her by Iron Man, Moon Girl and Shuri. It emits solar rays so that it doesn’t cast a shadow, which is nice. Storm sees this as evidence of how well she treats the masses, though “not building a giant floating castle over their heads” might have been even nicer. She claims to have “the certifications issued by SHIELD” for its environmental credentials, though quite why they’re doing emissions testing is beyond me. Maybe they have some sort of role for highly sensitive superhero-type stuff.
X-Men #16 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #16
“X-Men”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: Sean Parsons, JP Mayer & Livesay
Colourist: Fer Sifuents-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Cyclops. He immediately recognises the “X-Men” as the Santo Marco Six from issue #1, presumably going by their powers and the fact that there’s six of them.
Magik. On learning that these are the group she fought in issue #10, she attacks without instructions and declares that she’s going to cut off Schwarzchild’s other arm. In issue #1, she somehow managed to lop it off with the Soulsword (which isn’t really meant to affect non-magical things). Schwartzchild was trying to pin her down using his gravity powers, and she teleported behind him. It was still a surprisingly violent move, and to be honest, you can see why Schwartzchild isn’t happy about it. It also plays into 3K’s efforts to tell the Santo Marco Six that the X-Men have turned on their fellow mutants.
Daredevil Villains #52: The Ani-Men II
DAREDEVIL #157-158 (March-May 1979)
“The Ungrateful Dead” / “A Grave Mistake”
Writers: Roger McKenzie (#157-158) with Mary Jo Duffy (#157)
Pencillers: Gene Colan (#157) and Frank Miller (#158)
Inker: Klaus Janson
Colourist: Glynis Wein (#157) and George Roussos (#158)
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Al Milgrom
The second iteration of the Ani-Men only just about merit inclusion in this feature. They’re supporting players in the a Death-Stalker story, and a retread of an idea from the 1960s. But they scrape their way in because the second part is the debut of Frank Miller on art – and because there are only two real candidates for inclusion the whole Roger McKenzie run.
McKenzie takes over with issue #151, and his run offers the Purple Man (#151 and #154), Death-Stalker (#152 and #155-158), Mr Hyde and the Cobra (#153), Bullseye (#159-161) and guest villain Dr Octopus (#165-166). Issue #162 is a fill-in. Issue #163 has no villain – the Hulk guest stars to serve as the antagonist. And issue #164 is mostly a recap of Daredevil’s origin story. And that’s it. That’s the whole run. Bear in mind that the book is bimonthly at this point, so that’s two years of mostly retread villains.
This run does introduce Ben Urich, a genuinely major character who debuts in issue #153. He spends this run figuring out Daredevil’s dual identity and then deciding to keep it secret anyway. The run also introduces Becky Blake, a wheelchair-using lawyer, who promptly disappears into the background.
Charts – 2 May 2025
A decent range of new entries this week…
Seven weeks. And its streams are up this week (a bit). This is the longest run at number 1 since “Stick Season” last year, though “Stick Season” is obviously the more interesting record. It still has a massive lead over the number 2 single “Pink Pony Club” – a margin of over 80%.
11. Lorde – “What Was That”
This is the lead single from her upcoming album, and she’s electropop now. It works, though. Lorde is not a consistent presence in the singles chart – she can usually get a lead single into the top 40 but the follow-ups tend not to. Number 11 is high for her, though – she hasn’t been this high since her debut, “Royals”, reached number 1 in 2013. The flashmob performance in Washington Square Park at the end of the video is apparently legit – those are actual fans turning up for the shoot.
The X-Axis – w/c 28 April 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #19. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. It’s a fairly quiet week for the X-books, with one ongoing title, a couple of minis, and this. Yes, I know the FCBD book is out at the weekend, but we’ll cover that when it reaches Unlimited. This is the first part of “I Have Seen Tomorrow”, and the book continues to alternate between its two creative teams. This time, however, Tim Seeley takes up the baton of Alex Paknadel’s Generation X reunion, and starts setting up a storyline about an influencer platforming anti-mutant types in a “just asking questions” way. For whatever reason, Seeley’s take on these characters clicks a little better for me – he writes more convincing banter, I think – and Audino’s art is a bit more dynamic too. But it also pulls off a nice cliffhanger that I didn’t see coming. Good start.
NYX #10. (Annotations here.) And that’s another cancelled title. Still, never mind, I’m sure they’ll announce another Wolverine team-up book to replace it. Have we tried Wolverine / Wolverine yet? We do have a spare!
NYX #10 annotations
NYX vol 2 #10
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colour artist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
This is the final issue of NYX. The Laura Kinney: Wolverine ongoing series continues, and Ms Marvel’s storyline will be picked up in the upcoming Giant-Size X-Men one-shots.
THE CORE CAST
Ms Marvel. She’s preoccupied about cousin Bilal hunting down Ms Marvel and trying to find out her true identity, back in issue #7. As the only cast member with a dual identity, she offers a traditional superhero argument for keeping a secret identity, i.e. to prevent her family being used against her. But David seems to read her as being at least as concerned about what her family will think, and he seems to be right. He also argues that she’s been too concerned about protecting her family, and not enough about the impact on herself of living a dual life.
Ultimately, she reveals her true identity to Bilal (see below). Later, she tells her family that she’s heard that Ms Marvel is taking a break for a while because she “doesn’t want to live as a mutant”, though she seems to be fishing for them to agree with her that this would be “sad”. In fact, they don’t seem to have very strong feelings on it at all, beyond her father Yusuf musing that Ms Marvel’s parents would probably be relieved if she quit.
Daredevil Villains #51: Smasher
DAREDEVIL #149 (November 1977)
“Catspaw!”
Writer: Jim Shooter
Penciller: Carmine Infantino
Inker, colourist: Klaus Janson
Letterer: Denise Wohl
Editor: Archie Goodwin
Marv Wolfman is gone, and next up is Jim Shooter, whose short run lasts from issues #144 to #151. Even some of those are co-written: the first two are co-credited to Gerry Conway, while the last sees him hand over to incoming writer Roger McKenzie. By this point, Daredevil is floundering. With issue #147, the book is relegated to a bimonthly schedule, and it’s going to stay there until the 1980s.
This is the only Shooter issue that we’ll be covering, since the rest of his run relies on existing villains: the Man-Bull (#144), the Owl (#145), Bullseye (#146), Death-Stalker (#148) and the Purple Man (everything else).
There were reasons for this. For one thing, on Shooter’s own account, he was generally averse to creating new characters on Marvel’s 1970s work-for-hire terms – although he did introduce Paladin as a supporting character in issue #150. But in any event, Shooter’s top priority was to tie up some storylines that had been left unresolved by Marv Wolfman.
Charts – 25 April 2025
Basically a dead week on both the singles and albums charts, but let’s run through them anyway.
That’s six weeks. It’s now two weeks past its peak but retains a massive lead over “Pink Pony Club” at number 2, and the top 3 is static, with “Azizam” at 3.
25. Addison Rae – “Headphones On”
A second top 40 hit to follow “Diet Pepsi”, which reached number 10 last year. Two other singles have missed the top 40 since then, but this charts immediately in its first week out. The Lana Del Rey influence is less pronounced on this one, which is a rather dreamy dance track.
