{"id":5383,"date":"2020-07-16T21:04:38","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T20:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5383"},"modified":"2020-07-16T21:04:38","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T20:04:38","slug":"iwolverine-2020-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5383","title":{"rendered":"iWolverine 2020 #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

iWOLVERINE 2020: <\/strong>This is a two-issue miniseries ostensibly tying in to the Iron Man 2020<\/em> event. Albert debuted in Wolverine<\/em> vol 2 #37, by Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri, and he was a recurring character throughout Hama’s Wolverine<\/em> run alongside his partner Elsie-Dee. The back story is that Donald Pierce came up with a convoluted scheme to assassinate Wolverine which involved making a robot duplicate of Wolverine, and a little girl robot with a bomb inside. The girl was accidentally given superhuman intelligence, broke her programming, and upgraded the Wolverine doppelganger at the same time, naming him Alfred. Since then, they’ve basically been wandering adventurers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Prior to this crossover, Albert was last seen in Hunt for Wolverine: Weapon Lost<\/em> #2-3, where he was hunting for the missing Elsie-Dee. This miniseries picks up on that thread. On the strength of this issue, it appears to be a red-skies tie-in, linked to the wider event only by the fact that the lead character is an artificial intelligence, and a scene where somebody mentions the pro-AI movement in Iron Man 2020<\/em>, and he replies that he’s not interested. (In fact, Albert was<\/em> shown as a member of the AI Army in Iron Man 2020<\/em> vol 2 #1, but that doesn’t seem to feed into this story at all.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This issue is listed on Comixology as 2020 iWolverine<\/em> #1, and appears in the crossover reading order as just iWolverine <\/em>#1. But I’ll go with the logo, since it matches the name format of the other tie-in issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1: <\/strong>Albert fights some of the Reavers in a snowbound landscape. This isn’t a scene from the story. The four Reavers seen here are all from the 90s line-up – Donald Pierce on the left, Cylla to the top, Bonebreaker on the right, and Pretty Boy at the front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2: <\/strong>The recap page. This refers to the AI Army as “the Artificial Life Army”, which isn’t actually the name it’s given in Iron Man 2020<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 3: <\/strong>Yakuza boss Kimura learns that “Patch” is back in Madripoor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madripoor<\/strong> is a standard setting for Wolverine stories; Patch<\/strong> is a cover identity he often uses there; and the Princess Bar<\/strong> is a bar that Wolverine’s commonly associated with. Tyger Tiger<\/strong> is a Madripoor crimelord, sometime ruler of the island, and occasional ally of Wolverine. You probably know all that, but hey, just in case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dai Kumo<\/strong> was a Yakuza crimelord from who appeared in a single storyline in Wolverine<\/em> vol 2 #31-33. Despite what these characters say, he wasn’t killed by Wolverine, but by his reluctant aide Reiko. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-9: <\/strong>Albert meets Tyger Tiger in the Princess Bar<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“One Juliet and Romeo”<\/strong>. Lime, gin and cucumber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I always knew you couldn’t possibly be dead.”<\/strong> This seems to be a continuity error, since Wolverine isn’t publicly dead at this point in continuity (and this story certainly takes place during the Krakoan era, since Homines Verendi are mentioned later).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was there the first time you were exhumed.”<\/strong> That’s not ringing any bells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was … made<\/strong> in his image…<\/strong>” Albert gives a basically straightforwad recap of his origin story from the early 90s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Since he and his friends, the Verendi, have taken over the Madripoor government…”<\/strong> Referring to current storylines in Marauders<\/em>. Since Pierce is<\/em> part of the government, and Tyger isn’t, it’s less than clear what she means by “We’ve had no official problem with him” – presumably she just means that they’re letting her get on with business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Reavers Universal Robotics.”<\/strong> The Reavers are Pierce’s well-established cyborg henchmen. As Albert notes on the next page, this is a reference to the play R.U.R.<\/em> (1920) by Czech playwright Karel \u010capek, which coined the term “robot”. In the play, R.U.R. stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots (“Rossum” being a pun on the Czech word for “reason”). “Robot” comes from the Czech word robota<\/em>, meaning “forced labour”, and with an etymological link to the Czech word for “slave”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 10-14:<\/strong> <\/strong>Albert goes to RUR and finds out where Elsie-Dee’s parts are.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonebreaker<\/strong> has been around in the Reavers since the 80s. He normally has a tank for his lower body, rather than the spider legs seen here – though he was<\/em> complaining about wanting to change them when we last saw him, during Matthew Rosenberg’s Astonishing X-Men<\/em> run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s all done with biological 3D printing these days.”<\/strong> This has parallels to Xeno’s lab-grown soldiers in X-Force<\/em>, but that’s probably just coincidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 15-22.<\/strong> Albert retrieves Elsie-Dee’s parts, and the bad guys gear up for revenge.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of which speaks for itself. The Jade Dragons and the Karamazov Brothers are all new characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. iWOLVERINE 2020: This is a two-issue miniseries ostensibly tying in to the Iron Man 2020 event. Albert debuted in Wolverine vol 2 #37, by Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri, and he was a recurring character throughout Hama’s Wolverine run alongside his […]<\/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-5383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383","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=5383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5385,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions\/5385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}