{"id":12112,"date":"2026-06-27T22:40:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T21:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12112"},"modified":"2026-06-27T22:40:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T21:40:27","slug":"wolverine-22-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12112","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine #22 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE vol 8 #22<\/strong>
\n“Doctor’s Orders”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Saladin Ahmed<\/strong>
\nArtist: Julius Ohta<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Jesus Aburtov<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nEditor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER:<\/strong> Wolverine is sad about his broken claws.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we established at the end of the previous issue, his healing factor isn’t working, although his senses are still fine. We’re essentially told that Wolverine will die without his healing factor. The reasons for that aren’t explained here, but various earlier stories have said that Wolverine would die of adamantium poisoning without his healing factor – this was a major plot point in Paul Cornell’s Wolverine<\/em> run in 2013-4, for example. It doesn’t really make any sense, because if adamantium is totally indestructible then it ought to be inert. And Bullseye gets by just fine with an adamantium skeleton and no healing factor. But… it is<\/em> the established way this works.<\/p>\n

Wolverine has grudgingly agreed to see a doctor, and he’s reluctant to have Nightcrawler hanging around for the process. He seems to have intermittent bouts of weakness – Cecilia has to help him down the hallway, but he seems basically okay later in the issue when he’s fighting Taskmaster.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Eventually we establish that Wolverine has been infected with nanites which have slowed his healing factor to normal human levels, and which are somehow transferring that power to their hired gun Taskmaster. Wolverine jumps to the conclusion that this was done in issues #15-16 when Department H tagged him with their cardiac arrest machine. That’s certainly\u00a0possible,<\/em> but it begs the question of why Department H would wait another four issues to shut down his healing factor. (As I pointed out last issue, presumably his healing factor dealt with his other wounds from fighting the Adamantine in a more or less normal way, or else he’d have realised the problem more quickly.)<\/p>\n

When he calls Puck, he learns that a Department H scientist has gone on the run with stolen nanites, so perhaps the idea is that someone in Department H has gone rogue and this wasn’t an official plan. He doesn’t really have a chance to act on this information before Taskmaster shows up to attack him. Taskmaster refers to having employers who are responsible for what’s happening, but never actually identifies them.<\/p>\n

He inflicts a\u00a0lot\u00a0<\/em>of damage on Taskmaster with his remaining adamantium claws before learning that Taskmaster has gained healing powers – he does seem to be trying to kill the guy.<\/p>\n

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

Nightcrawler.\u00a0<\/strong>He’s dragged Wolverine to see a doctor, but reluctantly accepts Wolverine’s instruction to leave – he doesn’t entirely trust Wolverine to act sensibly, but can’t really take issue with Wolverine’s stated desire for privacy with his doctor.<\/p>\n

Cecilia Reyes.\u00a0<\/strong>She’s back working at Our Mother of Mercy Hospital in the South Bronx, which is where she was working in her earliest appearances. (There was, at least at one point, an actual hospital called Our Lady of Mercy in the Bronx.) While this might seem an unlikely place for a superhero to go for treatment, this particular hospital has been heavily kitted out with cutting edge equipment by Sunspot, and offers “genetic counselling” to civilian mutants from around New York. For some reason, she also has access to a wristband that will let her “monitor your condition remotely and contact you once I’ve learned more” (rather than, you know, using the mobile phone that Wolverine pulls out on the next page).<\/p>\n

Cecilia is able to figure out what’s wrong with Wolverine pretty quickly, which she says is because she’s had the advantage of examining him without his healing factor in the past. There’s no footnote to this, but Ahmed is presumably thinking of the Paul Cornell run mentioned above – Cecilia doesn’t appear in that run, but she was the X-Men’s in-house medic at the time, and she’s shown treating him during this period in Nightcrawler\u00a0<\/em>vol 4 #1.<\/p>\n

Puck.\u00a0<\/strong>Because Wolverine already suspects Department H are to blame for his condition, he calls Puck to find out more – apparently just taking the view that it doesn’t matter if the call is monitored. Puck was among the Alpha Flight members who agreed to fight Wolverine in issues #15-16, but Wolverine doesn’t hold that against him. After a small amount of dithering, Puck obligingly advances the plot by telling Wolverine about the runaway Department H scientist.<\/p>\n

VILLAIN:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Taskmaster.\u00a0<\/strong>After a stint in\u00a0Deadpool<\/em>‘s supporting cast, he seems to have gone back to being just a regular gun for hire (which, to be fair, is basically what he was doing in\u00a0Deadpool\u00a0<\/em>too). His unnamed employers have used nanites to give him Wolverine’s healing factor. It’s not actually clear\u00a0why<\/em> he attacks Wolverine in this story – he could test the healing factor more safely just by cutting himself, and he’s clearly not trying to kill Wolverine, because he attacks in the first instance with tranquiliser darts. (Then again, he does also take a swipe at Wolverine with a sword…)<\/p>\n

Another unanswered question is how he knew that Wolverine would be at the hospital in the first place – it’s not even in his home city, and we’re specifically told at the start of the issue that Nightcrawler teleported them into the building to avoid drawing attention.<\/p>\n

Taskmaster’s whole thing is that he can copy the moves of the best martial artists in the world, but for whatever reason he puts up a fairly dismal performance once Wolverine brings out his remaining claws – if it wasn’t for his new healing factor, he’d be dead.\u00a0Maybe\u00a0<\/em>he’s allowing some sort of point to be made about his healing factor, but this really wouldn’t be in character for Taskmaster, who isn’t a masochist. A more charitable reading would be that when he sees the state of Wolverine’s claws, he assumes that the guy is going to be a pushover and lets his guard down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WOLVERINE vol 8 #22 “Doctor’s Orders” Writer: Saladin Ahmed Artist: Julius Ohta Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov Letterer: Cory Petit Editor: Mark Basso COVER: Wolverine is sad about his broken claws. WOLVERINE:\u00a0 As we established at the end of the previous issue, his healing factor isn’t working, although his senses are still fine. We’re essentially told […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12112","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=12112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12117,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12112\/revisions\/12117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}