{"id":10072,"date":"2024-05-09T20:35:47","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T19:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10072"},"modified":"2024-05-09T20:36:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T19:36:21","slug":"wolverine-49-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10072","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine #49 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE vol 7 #49<\/strong>
\n“Berserker”<\/strong>
\nWriters: Victor LaValle & Benjamin Percy<\/strong>
\nArtist: Geoff Shaw<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Alex Sinclair<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nEditor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Wolverine leaping into battle in his adamantium armour.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2. <\/strong>Flashback: Sabretooth is caught by Cypher’s seed.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a recap of issue #47. We saw Sabretooth emerging from the seed cocoon on page 23 of issue #48, so this issue is going back to fill in what happened in the meantime.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3. <\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 4-5.<\/strong> Sabretooth meets therapist Cypher.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a callback to scenes from the first Sabretooth<\/em> miniseries, where Cypher similarly inserted himself into Sabretooth’s experiences in the Pit, in an attempt to reason with him. (This Cypher is also accompanied by a Warlock, taking the form of his pad.) This isn’t the real Cypher, but a persona programmed into the seed by Cypher before he gave it to Nekra in Sabretooth<\/em> #5. He does, however, claim that the Cypher we saw in Sabretooth<\/em> was the real one.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Cypher” claims to have the real Doug’s “most vital qualities… His belief in fairness and his deep reserves of hope.” As we’ll see, the real Cypher believed that he was programming the seed in a way that would shock Sabretooth into empathising with his victims, albeit in an unavoidably traumatic way. He said in\u00a0Sabretooth\u00a0<\/em>#5 that the seed wouldn’t kill him, but “he’ll wish that’s all it did.” This is him giving Sabretooth one last chance.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-9. <\/strong>Sabretooth relives the murder of Silver Fox.<\/em><\/p>\n

Again, this is a callback to the simulated worlds that Sabretooth was shown experiencing at the start of the Sabretooth<\/em> miniseries. The twist is that Cypher is forcing Sabretooth to relive his killings from the perspective of the victims. This is the murder of Wolverine’s partner Silver Fox, originally shown in flashback in Wolverine<\/em> vol 2 #10. Numerous versions of this story have been told over the years, which don’t all fit together terribly well. This issue is going broadly with the original version, in which Sabretooth at least claims to be killing Silver Fox after she rejects his advances.<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-14. <\/strong>Bad Seed and Camo Sabretooth fight the Stark Sentinels.<\/em><\/p>\n

We saw Bad Seed approaching Krakoa and attacking the Stark Sentinels last issue; he seemed to make light work of them thanks to the extradimensional tech that he had brought back to Earth with him earlier in the series.<\/p>\n

Camo Sabretooth correctly identifies that Sabretooth Prime is obsessed with Wolverine, and that Bad Seed is equally obsessed with Sabretooth (who he was trying to hunt down and murder in all timelines in Sabretooth & The Exiles<\/em>). All of which rather begs the question of why Camo Sabretooth brought the guy back in the first place, since his role in this issue is reduced to lecturing Bad Seed and then getting killed. The original idea, in issue #45, was that the “Savage” and “Camo” Sabretooths brought Bad Seed back in the hope that he would defeat Sabretooth Prime, who they regarded as a dangerously erratic leader. But he’s already been defeated by the time they arrived, making Bad Seed an outright liability and obviating the need for any alliance they might have hammered together. It’s not really clear what the point of this subplot is, since Camo would have been better off just dumping the Creeds altogether and going his own way; he does seem to be Sabretooth without the obsession, but that leaves him rather bland. Still, it’s possible that the idea is to leave a back door for him to return in future.<\/p>\n

PAGE 15. <\/strong>X-Force arrive.<\/em><\/p>\n

Laura hailed X-Force last issue before escaping from the Sabretooth Army’s flying base.<\/p>\n

PAGES 16-17. <\/strong>Sabretooth relives an attack on Birdy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Birdy was Sabretooth’s assistant in early 1990s stories by Larry Hama. Broadly as described here, she was a telepath who he coerced into calming him down with a psychic “glow”. She was also basically a punching bag. She was actually killed by Graydon Creed rather than by Sabretooth, but that’s consistent with the memories shown here.<\/p>\n

PAGE 18.<\/strong> Sabretooth relives a montage of other attacks<\/em><\/p>\n

Some of these flashbacks are generic. The other ones are:<\/p>\n