{"id":10858,"date":"2025-03-08T15:32:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T15:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10858"},"modified":"2025-03-08T15:32:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T15:32:50","slug":"wolverine-7-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10858","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine #7 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE vol 8 #7<\/strong>
\n“Ancient History”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Saladin Ahmed<\/strong>
\nArtist: Mart\u00edn C\u00f3ccolo<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Bryan Valenza<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nEditor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n

WOLVERINE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not much to say, really. He fights some people, listens to Romulus rant, and vouches for some of what Romulus says so that we know that there’s a core we should take seriously.<\/p>\n

GUEST STAR<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wolverine (Laura Kinney).<\/strong> She’s there in the fight scene but doesn’t contribute much to the plot beyond that.<\/p>\n

VILLAINS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Romulus.<\/strong> The story cuts through his garbled and confusing history by having Laura describe him as “the guy who claims to have founded Rome” and “to be the origin of our bloodline”, and immediately having Logan say that “Most of it’s lies and head games.” In other words, all that really matters for present purposes is that he makes these grandiose and self-mythologising claims about himself, which are probably (but not definitively) false. The story does seem to want us to accept that he’s been around since the classical era but it doesn’t greatly matter whether we believe his claim to be the mythological Romulus, co-founder and first king of Rome. Wolverine certainly believes that he’s been around since “before Jesus was born”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Romulus claims to have been aware of the Adamantine from legends since his days ruling Rome, but says he never managed to find it before. Generally speaking, his agenda seems to be to bring back an “age of myth” and to clear away the pale imitations of mythological originals to that end. Essentially, he’s presenting himself as the mythological prototype of Wolverine in the same way that the Adamantine is the mythological template for adamantium. He also claims that he wants to become a “deity”, and implies that he needs to kill Wolverine (his imitation) in order to become a mythical figure himself.<\/p>\n

In line with that theme, Romulus claims that he stayed in the Raft for so long, not because he couldn’t get out, but because he’s an “ancient emperor” who thought that the Raft was no worse than anywhere else “in this pathetic modern world”. He could, of course, be making excuses. If not, it’s a reversion to the Jeph Loeb concept of the character – with the details booted into touch – rather than Daniel Way’s backstage manipulator. (Romulus was created just as Way’s run was starting, and at times feels like he’s been plugged into a story role that would originally have gone to a more conventional shadowy black ops mastermind.) For what it’s worth, though, Romulus is exaggerating the history on any view. The original Romulus (if he existed) was never emperor of Rome – the city had been around for hundreds of years before they started using that title.<\/p>\n

Romulus claims that the Adamantine has a different effect on him because he’s it’s “regent and its champion”. He certainly retains his own personality, but it’s not clear that he’s entirely uninfluenced by the Adamantine. He certainly goes into raptures about it while talking to Wolverine, and talks about being “summoned” by it.<\/p>\n

The Adamantine.<\/strong> Presumably it’s the Adamantine, rather than Romulus, that opens the sinkhole during this story. Romulus gives us an account of the Adamantine’s origins, which is apparently what he experiences through his bond with it, and which he evidently expects Wolverine to feel as well. On this account, the Adamantine is “the spirit of metal itself”, which was created as the planet cooled. It simply existed until being given meaning by the god Hephaestus as he shaped it into mythical objects. The spirit was apparently happy to sleep after the age of mythology was over, but was woken over the course of years by the increasing use of false adamantine in the form of adamantium.<\/p>\n

It can completely coat Romulus and serve as de facto battle armour.<\/p>\n

The Constrictor, Cyber, Lady Deathstrike<\/strong> and Donald Pierce.<\/strong> Under the Adamantine’s control for most of the story, but according to Romulus it abandons them off panel towards the end of the issue. Romulus describes them as “sad little thralls”.<\/p>\n

FOOTNOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Page 6: Romulus was packed off to the Raft after his defeat in Wolverine<\/em> #313.<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 1: The Adamantine was woken by the fight between Cyber and Wolverine in issue #1; Romulus is deliberately downplaying Cyber’s role in it. It’s not entirely clear how Romulus knows this, but presumably the Adamantine could have figured it out after possessing Cyber.<\/p>\n

Page 21: The first panel shows an adamantium factory; the second is Wolverine in the Weapon X project. The third panel has his adamantium armour from the “Sabretooth War” storyline in the foreground, with body parts of Laura, Lady Deathstrike and Ultron in the background. The final panel is Wolverine fighting Cyber in issue #1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. WOLVERINE vol 8 #7 “Ancient History” Writer: Saladin Ahmed Artist: Mart\u00edn C\u00f3ccolo Colour artist: Bryan Valenza Letterer: Cory Petit Editor: Mark Basso WOLVERINE Not much to say, really. He fights some people, listens to Romulus rant, and vouches for some of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10858"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10863,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10858\/revisions\/10863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}