The Incomplete Wolverine – 2007
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 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
2004 |2005 | 2006
Welcome to 2007. We’re in the middle of Civil War. But the X-Men are on the margins of that crossover, and Wolverine’s already had his tie-in arc. In Civil War #6, we’re told that Wolverine declined to join Captain America’s rebel forces because he wasn’t ultimately willing to break ranks with the X-Men. Instead…
BLADE vol 5 #5
“Vendetta’s Echo”
by Marc Guggenheim, Howard Chaykin & Edgar Delgado
January 2007
Despite the fact that Wolverine isn’t actually an unregistered hero, SHIELD want to hunt him down in this story. Blade agrees to do the job in exchange for SHIELD’s help against vampires. But when he realises that Wolverine saved him from vampires decades ago, Blade abandons the mission and tells SHIELD to leave Wolverine alone. As for Wolverine, he doesn’t recognise Blade at all and is baffled by the whole thing. Officially this is a Civil War tie-in, but nothing turns on it. For some reason Wolverine is shown living in an apartment in Brooklyn.
The rest of Civil War plays out without Wolverine’s involvement, and Captain America is assassinated at the end. Don’t worry, kids, he’ll be fine.
In a flashback in Fantastic Four #543, Wolverine appears briefly as an interviewee in a documentary about the Fantastic Four, and criticises Reed’s choice of side during Civil War.
FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA – WOLVERINE
One-shot
by Jeph Loeb, Leinil Francis Yu & Dave McCaig
April 2007
Wolverine persuades Daredevil and Doctor Strange to break into the Helicarrier with him, and verify that Cap is really dead. It’s strongly implied that Wolverine really wants to confront the apparent assassin, Crossbones (Brock Rumlow), who is already in SHIELD custody, and find an excuse to kill him – but Crossbones seems to be innocent. Wolverine verifies that the dead body really is Cap, then persuades Iron Man to let him confirm the news to the heroes who are still on the run after Civil War.
FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA – AVENGERS
One-shot
by Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness, Dexter Vines & Jason Keith
April 2007
Wolverine duly confirms Cap’s death to the New Avengers. Spider-Man refuses to believe it and storms out; Wolverine goes after him. We skip the next chapter (which rejoices in the title Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America – Captain America) and pick up again with…
FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA – SPIDER-MAN
One-shot
by Jeph Loeb, David Finch, Danny Miki & Frank D’Armata
June 2007
At Uncle Ben’s grave, Wolverine tries to cheer up Spider-Man by inventing a story about how much Cap believed in him. Spider-Man sees right through it, so Wolverine offers advice about coming to terms with grief instead. There’s also a fight with the Rhino, but Wolverine’s not involved in that.
FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA – IRON MAN
One-shot
by Jeph Loeb, John Cassaday & Laura Martin
July 2007
A cameo of the New Avengers watching Captain America’s funeral on television, regretting the fact that, as outlaws, they can’t go. There’s a fundamental problem in the next year or so, where New Avengers wants Wolverine to be part of an outlaw team on the run from the authorities, but the X-books have him living at the Mansion, which is monitored by O*N*E around the clock. You can square this somewhat by claiming that nobody ever manages to prove that he’s hanging out with the New Avengers, but it really is getting close to parallel tracks of continuity in a way we haven’t quite seen before.
X-MEN: PHOENIX – WARSONG
5-issue miniseries
by Greg Pak, Tyler Kirkham, Sal Regla & John Starr
September 2006 to February 2007
The sequel to X-Men: Phoenix – Endsong. That mini was better than I remembered; this one is not.
The Stepford Cuckoos turn out to be escapees from a batch of flawed Emma Frost clones created by John Sublime. An A.I. copy of Sublime plans to trap the Cuckoos’ fragment of the Phoenix force within their organic diamond bodies, and then use that fragment to access the Phoenix’s infinite power. The Cuckoos thwart his plan, but have to stay in their emotionless diamond forms in order to contain the Phoenix. The X-Men chase around after them, during which they meet SHIELD agent Jake Oh. Mediocre.
X-MEN vol 2 #200-203
“Blinded by the Light”
by Mike Carey, Chris Bachalo, Humberto Ramos, Carlos Cuevas, Tim Townsend, Edgar Delgado & Antonio Fabela
June to September 2007
The X-Men fight a new Marauders team; Wolverine is there, among the guests from other X-Men titles. Not much more to it, as far as he’s concerned.
A flashback in the third story in Wolverine vol 6 #12 appears here on the MCP timeline: Detective Chikeko Tomomaatsu takes Logan to the Guernica bar, newly popular wihth the superhero community. Wolverine meets the current writer of his comic, Marcus Harold, and they argue. If the bar owner is to be believed, “Logan and some of the guys who’ve written his comic, they go back a long way. They’re close like brothers, but damn they fight.” Does Wolverine really have the profile to have a long-running solo title within the Marvel Universe? Apparently so.
NEW X-MEN vol 2 #38-39 and #41
“The Quest for Magik, parts 1, 2 and 4”
by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, Skottie Young, Sean Parsons & Jean-Francois Beaulieu
May to August 2007
Belasco captures the X-Men while searching for Magik; they get freed at the end just in time to get teleported back home by the Darkchylde, a soulless version of Magik. Little more than cameos.
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS vol 2 #8 (Cyclops & Wolverine story)
“The Rabbit Hunt”
by Andy Schmidt, Marco Turini & Chris Sotomayor
April 2008
Prompted by the death of his father (which happened in July 2007, hence the placement of this story), Scott Summers decides to brush up his survival skills, claiming that it’s a response to mutants’ current predicament of near extinction. Logan shares some tips. They discuss Xavier’s dream and realise that Scott comes to the wilderness to vent, while Logan goes there for calm. Logan’s advice prompts Scott to talk properly with Alex about the death of their father. This is a nice little story, the subtext being that Scott is turning to Logan as a possible replacement father figure.
X-MEN: ENDANGERED SPECIES
One-shot
by Mike Carey, Scot Eaton, John Dell & Frank D’Armata
June 2007
The X-Men attend the funeral of a mutant boy who retained his powers only to get run over by a truck; the boy’s father is furious at what he sees as an intrusion into the family’s private grief by a bunch of mutants mourning a kid they never met, solely because he was another mutant. It’s basically a collection of character vignettes. Logan reflects on how it’s taken the near wipeout of mutants to make the X-Men truly value every life, and says that they will fight on because they don’t know how to do anything else.
In a flashback in the backup strip in X-Men vol 2 #201, the X-Men ask Wolverine for information about the Neverland death camp (from Weapon X) and he gives them some fairly uninformative answers.
SHE-HULK vol 2 #16
“Planet Without a Hulk, part 2”
by Dan Slott, Rick Burchett, Cliff Rathburn & Dave Kemp
February 2007
Wolverine and the She-Hulk team up to capture a new Wendigo. He lets SHIELD’s Hulkbuster Unit take the Wendigo into custody – this group includes Clay Quartermain, Agent Cheesecake and Agent Crimson – but privately tells She-Hulk that he doesn’t trust them in the slightest.
SUB-MARINER vol 2 #2-3
“Revolution, parts 2-3”
by Matt Cherniss, Peter Johnson, Phil Briones & Paul Mounts
July & August 2007
Namor shows up at the X-Men Mansion, looking for Professor X’s help in dealing with Atlantean terrorists who have destroyed a Kansas town. Wolverine tries to drive Namor off, on the curious pretext that his presence will provoke Sentinel Squad O*N*E and endanger the remaining students. It’s a very gratuitous fight scene, in other words. Professor X eventually calms the situation but ultimately refuses to help anyway.
PENANCE: RELENTLESS #3 and #5
5-issue miniseries
by Paul Jenkins, Paul Gulacy & Rain Beredo
November 2007 and March 2008
This is from the desperately stupid period where sad Speedball was wandering around in a BDSM suit and calling himself Penance. He steals nuclear launch codes as part of a convoluted scheme to get his hands on Nitro, currently a prisoner in Latveria. Wolverine tries to deal with that, but winds up diverting the new Thunderbolts – Moonstone (Karla Sofen), Songbird (Melissa Gold), the Swordsman (Andreas Strucker, formerly of Fenris), the Radioactive Man (Chen Lu) and Venom (Mac Gargan) – so that Penance can steal their plane for his actual plan. Later, Wolverine helps him escape after he’s finished torturing and killing Nitro. Cheerful!
NEW AVENGERS vol 1 #27-31
“Revolution”
by Brian Michael Bendis, Leinil Yu & Dave McCaig
February to June 2007
The “New” Avengers are now hanging out at Dr Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, which is magically disguised to look abandoned. Following a tip-off that Captain America is alive after all, they try to rescue him from the Raft, but it’s a trap set by Iron Man’s official Avengers – himself, Wasp, Ms Marvel, Sentry, Wonder Man, Black Widow and Ares. Fortunately, Iron Man’s team aren’t prepared for Dr Strange’s magic, so the New Avengers escape. The next day, the official Avengers show up at the Sanctum with Brother Voodoo (Jericho Drumm) to have another go, but they can’t get in.
The New Avengers discuss whether there’s any real point in staying together, and Luke Cage continues to insist that there’s an alien invasion they need to deal with. Clint Barton joins as the new Ronin, and they all head to Japan in answer to a distress call from Echo, who has been investigating the Hand. (Wolverine claims later that he only sticks around at this point to make sure Echo gets rescued.)
The Avengers fight the Hand and Elektra – who gets killed and turns out to be a Skrull impostor. Despite the fact that the Hand are Wolverine villains, he doesn’t get much to do here. A flashback in Daredevil vol 2 #112 shows the New Avengers reacting to the Skrull body, and the MCP has a generic fight with ninjas, from a flashback in Punisher vol 8 #3, placed as taking place during the fight.
NEW AVENGERS vol 1 #32-34 and #36-37
“The Trust”
by Brian Michael Bendis, Leinil Yu & Dave McCaig
July to December 2007
The New Avengers fly back to the USA on Iron Fist’s private jet, bring the body of “Elektra” with them. Wolverine blithely points out that if there are Skrull infiltrators around, none of them can be trusted, including himself – someone who “is everywhere at once”. Because of an EMP taking place over in Mighty Avengers, the plane crashes. “Spider-Woman” (still a Skrull impostor) takes the opportunity to escape with the corpse. Wolverine notices, but wrongly concludes that she’s taking the body to Iron Man.
Once he’s back in New York, Logan goes looking for Skrulls, but winds up fighting the Hood (Parker Robbins) and his sidekick John King. He learns that the Hood is planning to attack Avengers Tower using a Deathlok cyborg. The New Avengers decide to warn the official team, but wind up getting stuck in a team-up against a horde of symbiotes instead. “Spider-Woman” switches teams and joins the official Avengers; Wolverine confronts her about it, but gets fobbed off again. Later, the New Avengers take down the Hood and his army of villains, who include the Wizard (Bentley Whitman), the Wrecking Crew, Madame Masque (Whitney Frost) and Chemistro (Calvin Carr). Wolverine gets a couple of nice moments in this arc, but there’s still no particularly good reason for him to be here at all.
CABLE & DEADPOOL #43-44
“With Friends Like These–?” / “Head Games”
by Fabian Nicieza, Ron Lim, Jeremy Freeman & Gotham
July & August 2007
We’re in the dying days of Cable & Deadpool here, where Cable had been written out and the book was limping on as a Deadpool team-up series.
Wolverine travels to Benghazi to investigate contraband shipments of hi-tech materials. Deadpool’s old sidekick Weasel, currently a reluctant ally of HYDRA, is gathering these materials in order to make his “Penetrator” teleporting armour. Deadpool and his new sidekick Bob, Agent of HYDRA try to rescue Weasel before Wolverine can get to him and kill him. But Weasel has talked the HYDRA agents into accepting him as their new sector commander, and outfits them all with his new teleporter devices – which take them all directly to Guantanamo Bay.
Wolverine is basically a foil here, playing the unstoppable force that Deadpool has to try and rein in. He does come across as a bit dim, since he fails to figure out a twist that even Deadpool anticipates.
NEW WARRIORS vol 4 #2-3
“Defiant, parts 2-3”
by Kevin Grevioux, Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco & Marte Gracia
July & August 2007
New heroine Wondra, from the latest incarnation New Warriors, is actually the de-powered Jubilee, using tech to fake new superpowers. Wolverine warns her that it’s dangerous to try to replace lost powers, and reminds her that when he lost his adamantium, he had to learn that he was still himself.
WORLD WAR HULK: X-MEN
3-issue miniseries
by Christos Gage, Andrea DiVito & Laura Villari
June to August 2007
The Hulk has returned to Earth after being fired into space by the Illuminati, and shows up at the Mansion to confront Professor X. Even though he wasn’t actually there for the meeting in question, Hulk wants to know how he would have voted. Much fighting ensues, until the Hulk sees the graves of all the mutants who have died recently, concludes that the X-Men are already in hell, and wanders off to get back to the main plot of his crossover event. Wolverine is just a face in the crowd.
WORLD WAR HULK: AFTERSMASH! – DAMAGE CONTROL #2-3
3-issue miniseries
by Dwayne McDuffie, Salva Espin & Guru eFX
February and March 2008
Just two cameos in the crowd – one among the heroes helping to rebuild after World War Hulk, and one among the heroes who fight the Chrysler Building when it briefly comes to life. (Literally, his hand is in one panel.) Wolverine ticks a few minor names off his list here: Black Goliath (Tom Foster), Monstro (Frank Johnson), Visioneer (Abby Dunton), Slapstick (Steve Harmon), Komodo of the Initiative, a Skrull impostor Thor Girl, and Damage Control intern Bart Rozum.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #50-55
“Evolution”
by Jeph Loeb, Simone Bianchi, Andrea Silvestri, Simone Peruzzi & Frank D’Armata
January to June 2007
Oh dear. This.
Brace yourself, because this is really bad.
Ever since regaining his memories, Logan has been plagued by visions of a werewolf-like race, the Lupine, who have existed since the dawn of time with a repeated cycle of conflict between warriors who resemble himself and Creed, while a shadowy villain watches from above. By this point, Sabretooth is living at the Mansion again, and Wolverine fights him for no particular reason. He asks Sabretooth what he meant when he said “quod sum eris” after killing Silver Fox years ago, and after more pointless fighting, Sabretooth explains that it’s Latin for “I am what you will be” – in other words, one day Wolverine will become like Sabretooth. After yet more pointless fighting, the story randomly heads off to an archaeological dig in Wakanda which has apparently discovered Lupine skeletons. Wolverine’s visions reveal the Lupine’s leader as Romulus.
The Black Panther and Storm then explain a bizarre pseudoscientific theory: the Lupine are a split evolutionary strand evolved from wolves, who somehow became part of mutantkind. This supposedly explains the number of mutants who have lupine components, and Sabretooth indicates that all Lupine degenerate into murderers like him in the end. When Wolverine asks directly about Romulus, Sabretooth is shaken and won’t answer. Soon after that, Wolverine has an encounter with Wild Child, and winds up pursuing him to the Weapon X facility alongside Sasquatch, Wolfsbane, Feral and Thornn (who are all presented as somehow linked to the Lupine, even though Sasquatch isn’t a mutant, and Feral and Thornn are cats). Logan now recalls seeing Romulus in Weapon X when he was a prisoner there. Finally, all this builds to Wolverine confronting Sabretooth at the old cabin that he used to share with Silver Fox, and beheading him with the Muramasa Blade. Romulus briefly puts in an appearance in person, to tell Wolverine that everything he has learned is true, before moving on.
“Evolution” is incoherent drivel, and its attempt to tie Wolverine and Sabretooth to some sort of hidden race never took off – in fact, Loeb’s own sequel will brush it aside as mind games by Romulus. It’s particularly bizarre that this idea was introduced at the same time that Daniel Way’s Wolverine: Origins was already under way, initially set up as a straightforward story of Wolverine hunting down the black ops conspiracy that had exploited him in the past. Romulus gets plugged in to the Origins conspiracy as the head of a shadowy criminal organisation, but even that book didn’t touch the Lupine nonsense.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #50 (second story)
“Puny Little Man”
by Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness, Dexter Vines & Dave McCaig
January 2007
Weird meta story in which Wolverine dreams about his first fight with the Hulk, and it then segues into the version from Ultimate Wolverine vs Hulk (which at the time was the most recent version of the fight). I suppose the idea is meant to be that the story keeps being re-told, but so what?
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS ANNUAL #1
“Return to Madripoor”
by Daniel Way, Kaare Andrews & Shannon Blanchard
July 2007
Logan returns to Madripoor in search of a box kept by his old partner Seraph, which supposedly contained secrets that she would take to the grave. Police officer Tai turns out to be part of Romulus’s conspiracy and commits suicide; Seraph’s coffin contains no box of secrets, but does have Romulus’s name written inside.
Largely a framing sequence for a flashback story set in 1942, but very pretty at least.
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #16-20
“Our War”
by Daniel Way, Steve Dillon & Matt Milla
August to December 2007
Wolverine reminisces about his encounters with Captain America and Bucky during World War II, in a private wake for the late superhero. Just a framing sequence for a story we covered back in the World War II chapter.
NEW X-MEN vol 2 #43
“Children of X-Men, part 2”
by Christopher Yost, Craig Kyle, Skottie Young & Jean-Francois Beaulieu
October 2007
The X-Men discuss the traumatised state of their remaining pupils, but get them back to training regardless.
WOLVERINE ANNUAL vol 2 #1
“The Death Song of J Patrick Smitty”
by Gregg Hurwitz & Marcelo Frusin
October 2007
Logan has a pleasant encounter on the streets with an old woman, only for her to be killed by crossfire in a bank robbery soon after. He hunts down the robbers, but leaves one of them – the titular J Patrick Smitty – alive in order to send a message of fear to the others, promising to return and kill him last. And in the end, that’s exactly what happens.
It’s really Smitty’s story, the point being that he spent his whole life telling himself that there was still time to change, and that he left it too late. Quite good, though it does veer towards the Punisher interpretation of Wolverine.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #56
“The Man in the Pit”
by Jason Aaron, Howard Chaykin & Edgar Delgado
August 2007
A mystery villain (identified in the epilogue as Romulus) keeps Wolverine in a pit for eight weeks, with guards paid to keep shooting at him in order to keep him subdued. Over several weeks, Wolverine drives one of the guards to madness and convinces the guy to let him out in an act of attempted suicide.
It’s a banality-of-evil story told from the point of view of the guard, along with a Sherlock Holmes routine based on Wolverine picking up details about the guard’s life through his enhanced senses. A lot better than the over-the-top high concept makes it sound.
BREAKING INTO COMICS THE MARVEL WAY #1 (New Avengers story)
“Modern Love”
by Brian Michael Bendis, Christian Nauck, Terry Austin & Matt Wilson
March 2010
The New Avengers have a brief cameo, reacting to a whirlwind romance between Iron Fist and Spider-Woman.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #57-61
“Logan Dies”
by Marc Guggenheim, Howard Chaykin & Edgar Delgado
September 2007 to January 2008
And now, back for the last chunk of Marc Guggenheim’s run. Remember Amir, the Atlantean spy from the Civil War arc last year? Well, she and Wolverine head to Iraq to fight the mercenary group Scimitar. But Amir is killed, and Scimitar agent Shogun kills Wolverine. When he heads to his regular fight with Lazaer, he loses – meaning that his body heals but he remains comatose.
Dr Strange sets out to retrieve Wolverine’s soul from Purgatory. He shows Wolverine how he’s been fighting Lazaer every time he dies, and theorises that Wolverine lost this time because he was so upset about, er, the death of Amir. If you say so. Strange then takes Logan on a tour through his history, and Logan finally figures out that he’s been struggling in his battles with Lazaer ever since being resurrected by the Hand during “Enemy of the State”.
Somehow or other, this realisation allows Logan to return to his body. He then hunts down Phaedra, the woman who resurrected him for the Hand. After fighting a resurrected Shingen Yashida (and re-killing him), Wolverine learns that Phaedra and Lazaer are taking revenge on him for escaping death so many times. If that’s their objection, then one might have thought that a good plan would be not to resurrect him during “Enemy of the State” in the first place. But instead, their more ornate plan was to resurrect him with only part of his soul; the other part of his soul is now Shogun. Wolverine kills Shogun, then offers to kill Phaedra in exchange for Lazaer fully restoring him (since Lazaer doesn’t like any resurrectionists running around). Lazaer agrees, on condition that Wolverine will never be able to return from the dead again. Phaedra tries to buy him off by offering to resurrect Mariko, but Wolverine refuses to have her sullied. He then kills Phaedra and all the Scimitar members, and leaves contentedly.
Presumably, this whole arc was supposed to provide an explanation for Wolverine’s more extreme healing stunts, and then rein in his powers to put a stop to that sort of thing. It didn’t stick in the slightest, but the idea had some merit. This arc also features Howard Chaykin drawing Wolverine in a chainmail T-shirt and combat trousers, for absolutely no reason other than that’s what Chaykin thinks he wears.
NEW AVENGERS ANNUAL vol 1 #2
by Brian Michael Bendis, Carlo Pagulayan, Jeff Huet & Justin Ponsor
January 2008
The Hood and his army of supervillains attack the New Avengers; they get driven off, but Dr Strange declares that he needs to leave the team and rebuild his strength.
Among the random villains, Wolverine ticks off the Living Laser (Arthur Parks), one of the Blood Brothers, Centurius (Noah Black), the Corruptor (Jackson Day), the Answer (Aaron Nicholson), Cutthroat (Daniel Leightoon), one of the Brothers Grimm, the Purple Man (Zebediah Killgrave), Dr Demonicus (Douglas Birely), the Griffin (Johnny Horton), Crossfire (William Cross), Jigsaw (Billy Russo), the Slug (Ulysses Lugman) and Shockwave (Lancaster Sneed). Oh, and Night Nurse (Linda Carter) is at the Sanctum too.
WOLVERINE: FIREBREAK
One-shot
by Mike Carey, Scott Kolins & Moose Baumann
December 2007
When a HYDRA chemical warfare test goes wrong and starts a forest fire, a blinded Wolverine helps a squabbling family to escape. It’s a gimmick story but it’s done well.
WOLVERINE: FIREBREAK (second story)
“Little White Lies”
by Macon Blair, Vasilis Lolos & Nestor Pereyra
December 2007
Psychotic criminal Carmelo SS (Carmelo de lo Santo Silva) abducts Samuel Lacey. Samuel is the estranged son of White House drug czar William Lacey, who asks Wolverine to sort it out discreetly. Unfortunately, by the time Wolverine reaches Samuel, he’s been infected with a slow-acting fatal poison, to which there is no antidote. Satisfied that the boy’s condition really is terminal, Wolverine puts him out of his misery (at his own request). He falsely tells the father that the boy died instantly and painlessly, but Lacey is most hurt by the truthful news that his son died bravely. This is quite good, aside from a baffling diversion to fight some circus performers.
Next time, Jason Aaron writes his first arc in a lengthy stint as Wolverine’s regular writer; and the X-Men head to San Francisco.
A.X.E.: Judgment Day
A.X.E.: JUDGMENT DAY #1-6
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Valerio Schiti
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
There are a number of ways of doing a line wide crossover. You can try and give every book something to do that contributes meaningfully to the plot, but beyond a certain point that’s insane. You can throw in a bunch of side quests to provide busy work for the tie-ins, but that has its limits too. Generally the best approach is to have a high concept that everyone can use as a springboard for their own story in the margins, without having to worry too much about the core plot. That’s the Judgment Day approach: a day of the Progenitor judging literally everyone on Earth, which naturally includes the cast of every other title that might want to do a tie-in. This can go wrong if it turns out that there’s really only one story to be told with the concept, in which case things get painfully repetitive – that’s what happened with Secret Invasion – but since Judgment Day functions as a hook for whatever character work a book feels like doing, it avoided that problem.
So, it works as an event concept. What about the actual story?
Although it’s billed as an Avengers, X-Men and Eternals crossover, Judgment Day is principally the final act of Kieron Gillen’s Eternals run. That’s the book where all the big changes take place, and the storyline of Ajak and her relationship with her programmed religion comes to a climax. The Eternals have their status quo changed, the secret of their immortality exposed, and a new ruler put in place. It’s very much their story.
Charts – 2 December 2022
It’s the first chart of December, what did you think was going to happen?
That’s six weeks. Still two weeks to go until it matches LF System’s “Afraid to Feel” – in fact, three number ones this year have had longer runs than six weeks.
18. Brenda Lee – “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
Right, then, here we go. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was recorded in 1958, and reached number 6 in the UK at Christmas 1962. It did nothing in the early years of the streaming era, but it’s charted every year since 2016. Last year, it made its all time peak of number 5.
Charts – 25 November 2022
From the look of it, we’re now in the holding pattern where it’s too near to Christmas for anyone to bother releasing big singles, but the Christmas takeover hasn’t hit yet. Which means…
1. Taylor Swift – “Anti-Hero”
Five weeks. The previous number 1, “Unholy” by Sam Smith & Kim Petras, spends its fifth week at number 2. You get the idea. The only new record in the top 10 is…
9. Clavish featuring D-Block Europe – “Rocket Science”
This is the debut hit for North London rapper Clavish, though he’s placed a few tracks in the lower reaches of the top 75. Obviously having D-Block Europe on the track helps, but it’s not as if they routinely get into the top 10 either – in fact, their only previous top 10 hit was “Overseas”, which reached number 6 last year. It’s familiar musical territory if you’re heard DBE before, but it’s one of the good ones.
X-Force #34 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #34
“Blackout”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Chris Allen
Colourist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: Domino, Wolverine, Deadpool and Maverick in space, with the face of Sevyr Blackmore behind, and Beast’s hidden prison moon in the background.
PAGES 2-4. Sage monologues about her drinking.
A montage sequence in which Sage basically tells us that relentless exposure to trauma in her work is driving her to drink.
There’s a lot of apparently Krakoan text on these pages:
- In page 2 panel 3, the word by her left thumb is DATASET.
- The message scrolling over her left hand is DATASET MASTER followed by a third word that doesn’t seem to be Krakoan at all.
- The word to the right of the caption seems to be ARCHIVE, but with the A represented by the symbol that was used in Excalibur to represent The Artist Formerly Known As Apocalypse.
- To the right of that, ARCHIVE again, but with the correct Krakoan.
- The symbols on the far right aren’t Krakoan, but seem to match the third word from the message above.
- In page 3 panel 2, both words just say DATASET again.
- In page 4 panel 1, the word on the screen seems to be just random symbols, while the symbols floating around Sage don’t seem to be actual Krakoan text at all. I guess they’re intended to represent generic text and information overload.
X-Men #17 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #17
“Size Matters”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colourist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Magik leads the team into action, in a generic action shot with no particular relevance to the issue.
PAGE 2. Data page. Forge’s opening quote comes from his scene with Caliban on page 23. Obviously, given what we already saw Forge do to Caliban in the previous issue, the correct answer to this question is “absolutely not”.
PAGE 3. Synch is summoned from the Treehouse.
Synch wasn’t with the rest of the team for this mission, presumably because he already spent centuries of subjective time there (ending in vol 5 #19) and finds it too upsetting. Arguably he’d have vital intelligence for anyone going into the Vault but (a) they can always get that information from him telepathically, (b) it will have changed beyond recognition since he was last there, and (c) the X-Men are not monsters. With the possible exception of Forge.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #59: “The Fall of the House of X”
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #59
“The Fall of the House of X”
Writer: Alex Paknadel
Artist: Nick Roche
Colourist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Lauren Amaro
This issue came out on Hallowe’en, and it has a rather charming approach to that theme: it’s basically an old fashioned horror anthology story, framed by campfire scenes where Cypher acts as the storyteller.
It’s not just a random anthology story, though; it’s Tales from the Hidden Past of Krakoa. According to Cypher, after the island was separated from Arakko, it spend most of its time dormant. Unless it was disturbed. This story is about 19th century mutant Silas Ellerby, heading to the Americas with his wife to make their fortune when their boat sinks. Silas winds up on Krakoa, and since he’s a mutant, the island perks up a bit and takes notice.
Unfortunately for Krakoa, Silas’s powers just happen to be control over the Earth (at least the bit around him), which includes Krakoa. So instead of Krakoa being able to eat him, he sets about tearing Krakoa apart in order to build rafts (which don’t work) and a mansion in tribute to his late wife (which does, but that doesn’t resolve the lack of food problem). And without him realising what’s happening, Krakoa tries to find ways to calm him down, get rid of him, or at least placate him. Which, of course, ultimately involves Krakoa hunting for the shipwreck.
It’s a nice little idea – a pleasantly traditional story concept from the House of Mystery style, and a more inventive way of approaching the Hallowe’en remit than just chucking some zombies at the page. Nick Roche, best known for his Transformers work, is a very good storyteller and his design for the makeshift mansion gets the right mix of impressive and wonky.
The last panel misfires – I know the original genre often involved the narrator spelling out the moral for everyone’s benefit, but it feels too much here. Something a bit more ambiguous would have been more effective, I think. On the whole, though, a nice little holiday issue.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #56-58: “X-Friends”
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #56-58
“X-Friends”
Writer & artist: Jason Loo
Colourist: Antonio Fabela
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Lauren Amaro
This is a sequel to the three-part “Downtime” arc featuring Madrox and Strong Guy, also by Jason Loo, which ran in issues #21, #27 and #34 (because X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic is a weird book).
As in the previous arc, Strong Guy wants to hang out with his old pal Madrox, while Madrox is more preoccupied with his responsibilities as a father, leaving Guido stuck with the duplicates. They’re off in the Shi’ar galaxy for the equivalent of a weekend in Vegas, and manage to lose their ship as well as a bunch of dupes.
It turns out, of course, that the dupes took the ship, and for some reason a night on the town has convinced them to… go off and become pirates? I’m not sure that’s how it’s meant to work. Somehow or other there’s meant to be an angle in here where Madrox decides that he needs to solve his problems for himself rather than palming them off on dupes, but since that’s not really what he did wrong in the first place, it doesn’t quite land. And it’s not really a Guido story at all.
So they track down the renegade dupes, Madrox absorbs most of them, and one of them just gets handed over to the authorities to take the fall for everything. It’s pretty lightweight stuff, even for Unlimited, with the highlight being the character work in Loo’s art. As for the story, it just doesn’t click.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #50-55: “Secret X-Men 2022”
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #50-55
“Secret X-Men 2022”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist: Alan Robinson
Colourist: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Jordan D White
Continuing our run through the recent X-Men Unlimited arcs, here’s something a bit more typical of the book – which is to say, a bit more marginal. Remember last year’s Secret X-Men one-shot, featuring all the losing candidates from the fan vote that decided the last place on the team? Well, it’s that, but with the 2022 line-up.
I didn’t think this really worked last year, since the characters weren’t selected to be the natural cast of a story in the first place, and it winds up being a bit of an exercise in pulling some elements out of a hat and seeing if you can get a story out of them. And this year… yeah, not dissimilar, if we’re being honest. This is a Hellfire Gala tie-in story, though I’m not reviewing it quite as late as that makes it sound. It ran from the last week of August to the first week of September; the actual Hellfire Gala one-shot shipped in mid July. I suppose that probably means they waited to see who had won the vote before they started work on this, which would be fair enough.
So who have we got here? Well, we’ve got Penance, who is unexpectedly at a loose end after X-Corp suffered early cancellation. We’ve got Siryn, who also counts as a reasonably big name. We’ve got a whole bunch of teen characters who aren’t doing much – Gentle, Armor, Surge and Bling!. I guess Bling! was in the Sabretooth miniseries, but this must be the most prominent appearance Armor has made outside Marvel Snap in several years. We’ve got Avalanche, the member of Freedom Force who never comes up, even though Mystique, Destiny and Pyro are big names. And we’ve got Micromax, who was very, very briefly a member of Excalibur at the tail end of Alan Davis’s run, treated here as a bit of a joke character.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #44-49: X-Men Green III
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #44-49
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Emilio Laiso
Colourist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Jordan D White
For those of you who aren’t subscribed to Marvel Unlimited – or who just aren’t interested in reading all six or so Infinity Comics that come out each week – X-Men Unlimited remains the closest the line comes to a core title. There are Unlimited titles for the Avengers and Spider-Man books too, but they’re peripheral – the Spider-Man one is quite keen on doing Spider-Verse stories, for example. X-Men Unlimited is like that about half of the time, but also has running stories that it returns to, the main one being “X-Men Green”.
The tone of these stories has noticeably shifted from the first arc with Gerry Duggan. By accident or design, that arc winds up trying to have its cake and eat it, by being half-heartedly disapproving of Nature Girl’s eco-terrorism, but with a definite overtone of “yeah but corporations amirite”. We’re meant to basically agree with Krakoa letting them escape, after all. Over the following arcs – this is the third – the tone has shifted emphatically to “dangerous lunatics”. Of the group, only Nature Girl is really even motivated by environmentalism, and even she has lost touch with reality, allowing her to be manipulated by Hordeculture (who, for the most part, are played as straight villains in this story). Sauron has weird obsessions about avenging the dinosaurs, and Curse just likes having an excuse to destroy stuff.
