{"id":5532,"date":"2020-09-13T11:55:54","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T10:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5532"},"modified":"2021-11-28T21:31:36","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T21:31:36","slug":"the-incomplete-wolverine-part-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5532","title":{"rendered":"The Incomplete Wolverine, Part 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Part 1: Origin to Origin II<\/a><\/em>
Part 2: 1907 to 1914<\/a><\/em>
Part 3: 1914 to 1939<\/a><\/em>
Part 4: World War II<\/a><\/em>
Part 5: The postwar era<\/a><\/em>
Part 6: Team X<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This time, we’re covering a somewhat random collection of stories that bridge the gap from Team X through to Weapon X. As we saw last time, Team X seems to be locked to the 1960s, but Weapon X leads into the Department H material and the modern era. So, with sliding time, there’s an ever increasing gap between the two, to be occupied with stories that expressly follow Team X, or obviously aim to lead in to Weapon X, or which predate Department H while being too tied to modern timeframes or continuity to take place before Team X. Oddly, it’s a period that Wolverine: Origins<\/em> entirely ignores, though we have to assume Romulus is hanging around in the background somewhere in all this.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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During this period, Logan first meets Carol Danvers<\/strong> (later Ms Marvel, Binary and Captain Marvel). She’ll show up in Logan: Shadow Society<\/em>, which we’ll come to later on, by which time they’ve known each other for “years. That creates a continuity problem during the Department H period, when they meet again<\/em>, but we’ll come back to that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We kick off with a couple of flashbacks that exist to set up minor present-day stories. Wolverine Annual<\/strong><\/em> vol 2 #1<\/strong> has a brief flashback where Logan is randomly in the “far east”, battling criminal mastermind Chen Yu and his Dragon Warriors. Logan is helped out by immortal adventurer Adam Destine<\/strong> (from Alan Davis’s ClanDestine<\/em>), who will call in the favour in the main story.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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The 2009 one-shot Wolverine: Under the Boardwalk<\/em><\/strong> has a flashback to Logan sharing a night of passion in Atlantic City with waitress Katrina McCann<\/strong>. This brings Logan to the attention of Katrina’s boyfriend, mafia underboss Phil DeBlasio. Logan sees DeBlasio and his men bury a body under the boardwalk in Coney Island; he’ll eventually find the body in the present day. The flashback is placed as “forty years ago”, which was 1969 at the date of publication, but thanks to sliding time (and the inherent vagueness of the timeframe) that puts it shortly after the Team X period ends.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Flashbacks in CLASSIC X-MEN #26<\/a><\/strong>
“So Much in Common” by Tom Orzechowski & John Bolton<\/strong>
October 1988<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“Twenty years ago”, relative to the late 1970s stories that Classic X-Men<\/em> was reprinting at the time. Working on and off for Canadian intelligence, Logan gets into a relationship with “Cracklin’ Rosa”, who runs a bar in Calgary. (This builds on a passing reference in X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #120.) Logan amuses himself in the bar by drinking heavily and scamming people. By improbable coincidence, his antics provide the distraction that lets Interpol agent Sean Cassidy<\/strong> get his man. They won’t interact until they join the X-Men, though.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In flashbacks in Wolverine Annual ’97<\/em><\/strong>, Logan is sent to the USSR to protect nuclear weapons designer Dimitri Suhkarov, who hopes to defect to the west with his daughter Viktoria Suhkarov<\/strong>. The mission goes badly, and the three are pursued for days by Russian soldiers led by a guy called Volk<\/strong>. Volk kills Dimitri, but Logan and Viktoria escape.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN #-1 <\/a><\/strong>
“There’s a Man who Leads a Life of Danger!”<\/strong> by Roger Stern, John Romita Sr & Al Milgrom<\/strong>
July 1997<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This is the “Flashback Month” issue of Untold Tales of Spider-Man. <\/em>Logan is working for the CIA as “Agent 10” (i.e., Agent X), and his involvement in the story is revealed as a cute twist. He’s been captured while investigating a terrorist cell led by wealthy heiress Baroness von Krupp and “the Supreme One”; after four days of torture and interrogation, he’s rescued by the stars of the story, spies Richard and Mary Parker<\/strong>. Back at base, everyone is delighted to learn that Mary is pregnant with the future Spider-Man. (The “Supreme One” is Baron Strucker, and the terrorist cell is presumably a proto-HYDRA outfit, but Logan doesn’t find that out.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In a flashback in Wolverine: Black Rio<\/em><\/strong>, Logan spends about a year in Rio de Janeiro working as a bouncer for the Devil’s Grill, a bar owned by Antonio Vargas<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Flashbacks in WORLD WAR HULKS: CAPTAIN AMERICA VS WOLVERINE #1-2<\/a><\/strong>
by Paul Tobin & Jacopo Carnagni<\/strong>
July 2010<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

(Listed on Marvel Unlimited as World War Hulks: Wolverine & Captain America<\/em>, but I’m going with the cover.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Back as a spy, Logan shadows a woman who’s believed to be the mistress of missing (and probably corrupt) Chicago politician Monte Boscardin. The Winter Soldier, still a brainwashed Soviet assassin at this point, is on loan to Boscardin. Logan has met the Winter Soldier before, but he was barely conscious at the time and understandably doesn’t remember. Even so, Logan instantly recognises him as Bucky. While the two get into a fight, Boscardin and his mistress are killed by Logan’s partner. It’s a weird sort of story to nail on to the World War Hulks<\/em> crossover.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Next, we return to X-Men Origins: Sabretooth<\/em><\/strong> for another five pages. It’s been around ten years since Logan quit Team X, and he finds a quiet bar for his birthday, hoping to have no innocents around when Creed shows up for the annual fight. (He pays off the barmaid to leave.) When Creed arrives, Logan refuses to fight, and instead tries to persuade Creed to stop being a sadist. Creed is not dissuaded, and when he brings up Silver Fox’s name, Logan flies into a rage. Quite what Logan believes about Creed and Silver Fox at this point is less than clear, given the stories that show her involved in Team X. But you get the idea.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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FIRST X-MEN #1-5<\/a><\/strong>
by Neal Adams & Christos Gage<\/strong>
August 2012 to January 2013<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Over a couple of years, Logan has noticed more and more young mutants starting to emerge, and become worried that the government will go after them. When he finds feds taking a dead mutant’s body for inspection, Logan is prompted to act, and enlists Creed to help steal files on mutants from the federal Project Chimera<\/strong>. Creed is unusually sensible and helpful throughout this series, and he’s evidently reconciled with Logan at some point before it starts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As the title might suggest, Creed and Logan then race round recruiting teenage mutants – or rescuing them from the FBI – and attempting to train them. The group eventually consists of Holo, Yeti, Bomb<\/strong>, Forrest Goldendawn, Shadowshift, Scout<\/strong> and Meteor<\/strong>. Fortunately, these proto-X-Men never actually give their team a name in the story.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Logan also tries and fails to recruit some older mutants: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr<\/strong> (the future Magneto) and a mentally ill homeless man in New York (the amnesiac Namor the Sub-Mariner)<\/strong>. Logan shows no signs of remembering these encounters when he meets these characters again, but when it comes to his continuity, memory wipes are the gift that keeps on giving. Logan’s group also come into contact with sympathetic FBI agent Fred Duncan<\/strong>, who goes on to become the X-Men’s rarely-seen liaison in the Silver Age, and tries to form a working relationship with Logan.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Forrest is under the control of Virus<\/strong>, a mutant allied with the FBI. So the FBI and Virus show up at the team’s makeshift base with a bunch of prototype Sentinels<\/strong> in tow. This doesn’t make sense, since the Silver Age is miles off and the prototypes seem far more stable and useful than any of the Sentinels we see in the Silver Age, but that’s First X-Men<\/em> for you. At any rate, Holo is killed during the FBI attack. Logan tries to make a heroic last stand so that the other kids can escape, but winds up believing that they’ve all been killed. (In fact, Scout and Shadowshift are spirited away by Xavier, but Logan never learns that.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Logan concludes that he’s a terrible leader who has achieved nothing mroe than to get some innocents killed. And so he abandons his plan to train a group, and settles for killing the guy in charge of Project Chimera.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In a subplot, Creed falls in love with Holo and blames Logan for her death. The series seems to be trying to make this Creed’s motivation for his vendetta against Logan in the future, which makes absolutely no sense and predictably failed to take. Frankly, First X-Men<\/em> can only be seen as a bizarre anomaly – even on the most charitable reading, it fits poorly with any of the history around it. That said, Logan’s preoccupation with the mutant question is<\/em> mentioned at the start of “Weapon X”, and First X-Men <\/em>is the main story to show anything along those lines. In terms of his personal character arc, it isn’t too problematic – it’s everything else that’s a stretch.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In an epilogue, a drunken Logan stumbles out of an Albertan bar and is approached by two men from the Weapon X Project, who offer him the chance to become a super-soldier. Despite the warning that it could kill him, the dispirited Logan signs up. This is obviously meant to lead in to “Weapon X”, but it doesn’t fit – in that story, Logan is abducted. The scene comes very close to being disqualified from canon as an egregious continuity error, but if you want it to count, evidently Logan changes his mind when he sobers up.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In a flashback in Excalibur<\/em> vol 3 #14<\/strong> – also referenced in a photograph in Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #4<\/strong> – Logan is shown as a soldier alongside US Army Captain Charles Xavier in an unspecified south-east Asian conflict. (Originally Xavier’s military service was in Korea, then Vietnam; sliding time means that it may now be the catch-all Sin-Cong Conflict.) Also serving at this time is Carmen Pryde<\/strong>, the future father of Kitty Pryde. This is a bizarre concept that Claremont was trying to shoehorn into continuity towards the end of his time with the X-books, and it’s difficult to understand how it can possibly work – Carmen shows no signs of recognising them in the present day.\u00a0In\u00a0Wolverine<\/strong><\/em> vol 3 #7<\/strong>, gun dealer\u00a0Sycamore Blaine<\/strong>\u00a0also recounts serving alongside Logan in Vietnam, though he doesn’t add any detail.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In Wolverine<\/em> vol 2 #26<\/strong>, a short flashback shows Logan visiting Bando Saburo once again for rest – which presumably means that he returns to Jasmine Falls. Logan and Bando enjoy tea, and Bando introduces his nephew Weston<\/strong> as his heir.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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LOGAN: SHADOW SOCIETY<\/a><\/strong>
by Howard Mackie & Keith Aiken<\/strong>
February 1997<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This is the canonical lead-in to “Weapon X”, and the other story to do something with the idea of Logan’s mutant obsession. Logan is back with Canadian intelligence. When his partner Neil Langram is murdered and framed as a traitor, Logan concludes that they must have been on the verge of discovering something big, and enlists Carol Danvers to help him investigate.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Together, they steal files from Canada’s secret Department H<\/strong> which point them towards Perry Edwards, an apparent conspiracy theorist who has somehow learned about an entirely genuine secret society of mutants – the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club<\/strong>. Logan tries to visit the Club, but doesn’t get past the front door – though he does cross paths with little Warren Worthington III<\/strong>, tagging along behind his father. This doesn’t make any sense at all – how can Warren be a child when the very same story has the Inner Circle up and running, and Carol Danvers as an adult?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Creed, now in costume as Sabretooth<\/strong>, claims credit for murdering both Perry Edwards and Neil Langram, and tells Logan that Perry’s theory was basically true. Logan defeats Sabretooth, but still isn’t convinced that the whole conspiracy theory is true. A month later, Carol tells Logan that she’s trying to get her government interested in mutants, and hopes to speak to newly elected Senator Robert Kelly<\/strong> about it. But for some reason Logan hopes it’ll all blow over in a few years. Apparently hoping to sit things out until it all blows over, he decides to head to the Yukon for solitude.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

That won’t turn out well.<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Edited on 28 November 2021 to add the reference to Wolverine vol 3 #7.<\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 1: Origin to Origin IIPart 2: 1907 to 1914Part 3: 1914 to 1939Part 4: World War IIPart 5: The postwar eraPart 6: Team X This time, we’re covering a somewhat random collection of stories that bridge the gap from Team X through to Weapon X. As we saw last time, Team X seems to […]<\/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":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wolverine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5532","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=5532"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7354,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5532\/revisions\/7354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}