{"id":11076,"date":"2025-05-17T15:50:37","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T14:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11076"},"modified":"2025-05-17T15:50:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T14:50:37","slug":"wolverine-9-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11076","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine #9 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE vol 8 #9<\/strong>
\n“The Long Road Home”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Saladin Ahmed<\/strong>
\nArtist: Javier Pina<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Bryan Valenza<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nEditor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

The previous issue ended with Logan in a motel room receiving a mysterious letter supposedly from his mother, apologising for rejecting him (in Origin<\/em>) and asking for his help. According to Logan, that was “[a] couple of days ago”. He also claims that he’s rejoined the X-Men and that “I left the wilderness weeks ago”.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, if we take everything in the series so far at face value, there is no time for that to have happened. The series began with him hiding out in the wilderness and Nightcrawler trying to persuade him to come back. Also, footnotes explicitly had it taking place before X-Men<\/em> #1. The only gaps in the action since then have involved Logan hiding out in remote cabins trying to train Leonard the Wendigo, and also take place at a time when Nightcrawler still somehow has access to the Blackbird, which isn’t around in Uncanny X-Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There’s a gap of sorts between the first and second stories in issue #8, but Logan says at the start of the second story that the last thing he remembers is the first story. There’s a break of “a few days” between the main story and epilogue in that story, and then the narration clearly conveys that Logan returns from that scene to the motel room where he gets the letter. There is absolutely no opportunity for him to appear in X-Men<\/em> #1, quit, head to Mexico, join the cast of\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em>, and then appear here in the earliest break in the action in that series (which isn’t until after “Raid on Graymalkin”, due to the injuries he suffers).<\/p>\n

So there are two options here: either rejoining the X-Men means that he’s accepted Cyclops’ intention to go to Alaska and he’ll be heading there next, or there’s a massive hidden gap between the epilogue and the motel room scene in the previous issue, despite the clear intention that they take place within hours of one another.<\/p>\n

As in previous issues, Logan is still concerned that his violent tendencies are much closer to the surface than usual. This hasn’t subsided, despite his return to civilisation.<\/p>\n

He is not receptive to Mehta’s appeal to his sense of patriotism, saying “My country’s already taken lifetimes from me” – evidently, any sense of nationalism he might have does not extend to goodwill to the Canadian authorities.<\/p>\n

In narration, he acknowledges that growing up without a mother ought to be trivial compared to the other traumas that he’s suffered in his life, but implies that it isn’t.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mira Mehta. <\/strong>The token competent Department H agent in issues #2-3. Remarkably, this has actually earned her a promotion, and she is now responsible for keeping track on Wolverine. Unfortunately, the agents under her control are no better than they were last time round. Mind you, at least to some extent, she seems to have decided that approaching Logan without warning with a bunch of heavily armed thugs would be a good way of introducing herself, so what reaction was she expecting?<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, her basic approach to her mission is more sensible: if her job is to keep tabs on Wolverine, then the best way to do that is simply to be reasonable with him and try to build some sort of working relationship. Logan seems willing to take this at face value as a show of goodwill, but still tells her to stay out of his way.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Howlett.<\/strong> She doesn’t appear further. Logan’s narration explains that her letter (which was saw in its entirety last issue) also enclosed a Victorian calling card with instructions to meet at the Howlett Estate.<\/p>\n

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

Department H.<\/strong>\u00a0Not exactly villains here, but the soldiers under Mehta’s command are still a bunch of violent morons.<\/p>\n

Harpoon<\/strong> and Vertigo.\u00a0<\/strong>Both show up at the Howlett Estate to ambush Wolverine, with predictable lack of success. Both, of course, were members of the classic Marauders team from the 1980s. Harpoon was last seen in Hellions<\/em> #4, when he was killed and put in the resurrection queue.\u00a0Vertigo was last seen in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 5 #18 (2019), part of the pre-Krakoa Matthew Rosenberg run, where she died. She might have been resurrected on Krakoa at some point, but it’s unlikely because she isn’t a mutant – she’s a Savage Land native who was given powers by Brainchild using technology, somewhere prior to Marvel Fanfare<\/em> #1 (1982). Perhaps this is just another of the many Vertigo clones to have appeared over the years, or perhaps we’re retconning her into a latent mutant whose powers were activated by Brainchild.<\/p>\n

Wolverine regards Harpoon as a “glass cannon”, and Vertigo’s powers only have a temporary effect on him before his healing factor adjusts.<\/p>\n

Sabretooth. <\/strong>He doesn’t appear, but Wolverine concludes that only he would know about the emotional significance of the Howlett Estate and have connections with two random members of the Marauders. Of course, Sabretooth died at the end of the previous volume, in Wolverine <\/em>vol 7 #50. But Logan claims to pick up his scent. That said, if whoever is behind this is able to synthesise Elizabeth’s scent and knows about the significance of the estate, why wouldn’t they also be able to fake Sabretooth’s scent?<\/p>\n

LOCATIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Howlett Estate.<\/strong> According to Logan, it’s been “abandoned and falling apart for years”, and certainly the gates seem damaged. There is a continuity problem here: in Wolverine<\/em> vol 5 #10 (2013), the building had been knocked down and a shopping mall had been built on the site. Nonetheless, this problem doesn’t originate with Saladin Ahmed – other stories have shown the Estate intact, such as Wolverine<\/em> vol 7 #38 (2023). Unfortunately, it’s probably the 2013 story that has to be retconned to take place somewhere in the general vicinity instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WOLVERINE vol 8 #9 “The Long Road Home” Writer: Saladin Ahmed Artist: Javier Pina Colour artist: Bryan Valenza Letterer: Cory Petit Editor: Mark Basso WOLVERINE The previous issue ended with Logan in a motel room receiving a mysterious letter supposedly from his mother, apologising for rejecting him (in Origin) and asking for his help. According […]<\/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-11076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076","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=11076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11078,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076\/revisions\/11078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}