{"id":5859,"date":"2020-11-13T21:08:23","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T21:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5859"},"modified":"2020-11-15T15:15:15","modified_gmt":"2020-11-15T15:15:15","slug":"wolverine-7-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5859","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine #7 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

WOLVERINE vol 7 #7<\/strong>
“X of Swords, Chapter 16”<\/strong>
by Benjamin Percy, Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara & Guru-eFX<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Symbolic image of Wolverine impales by loads of swords, with images of the Arakki champions arranged in an X behind him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE<\/strong> 2.<\/strong> An epigraph from Saturnyne, alluding to all the tarot cards we keep seeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 3-6.<\/strong> Magik battles Pogg Ur-Pogg<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This involves going through Merlin’s Holy Republic of Fae to Roma’s “Floating Kingdom” – initially shown upside down, as it was in X of Swords: Stasis<\/em>. As far as I’m aware, the pseudo tarot card has no significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Obviously, by choosing the pairings and the contests, Saturnyne can rig the results however she wants, and she’s doing precisely that. Thus far, the swords that everyone spent the first half of the story chasing have turned out to be irrelevant – which was kind of foreshadowed in Stasis<\/em>, when they were described as more of a key to qualify for the tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 7-8.<\/strong> Credits and recap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 9-14.<\/strong> Wolverine and Summoner fight in Blightspoke.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tarot card at the start is the same one that Wolverine received in X of Swords: Stasis<\/em>. There’s a data page in the middle of this, but it’s just a description of the scene itself – a surreal battle sequence where the nature of the world changes from panel to panel (so there’s a cave painting panel, and a chessboard, and so forth).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolverine kills Summoner by impaling him through the eye. In X-Men<\/em> #12, Rockslide identified that Summoner’s mutant power was invulnerability, and that his eyes were his only weak spot. As for how the sword gets out the back of his head… well, let’s assume that’s how his powers work(ed)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since we’re now in cosmic WCW, Saturnyne then cheerfully announces that the winning stipulation was to get killed<\/em>, and declares the late Summoner the winner. Again, it’s perfectly obvious at this point that Saturnyne is simply rigging all the contests to get to the result she wants – which is why Wolverine asks in the next scene what the point of any of these battles even is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However… let’s not lose sight of the fact that if Wolverine’s vision in Marauders<\/em> is to be believed, the Arakkii would have simply overrun Earth without Saturnyne’s intervention. And while this “tournament” increasingly looks like arbitrary Alice-in-Wonderland nonsense, a series of swordfights against the hardened Arakkii warriors didn’t exactly look like a promising outcome for the Krakoans either. Even so, you’d think more characters (on both sides) would be pushing back harder about being suckered into this fiasco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 15-17.<\/strong> Wolverine and Storm’s drinking contest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storm is entirely out of character throughout this scene, which I’d assume was deliberate if it wasn’t for the fact that Wolverine doesn’t seem to query it. Admittedly, he’s too busy querying the whole insane situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Page of Cups isn’t one of the tarot cards we saw in Stasis<\/em>, and its relevance isn’t immediately obvious – it’s generally associated with emotion, imagination and creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaspers leaves during the scene to take delivery of some sort of valuable scarab from Death. The implication seems to be that Death bribes him to poison Wolverine – but that would suggest that this is something separate from Saturnyne’s plan, and she certainly seems aware. Death’s also shown an interest in Storm in Marauders<\/em> #14, so the other possibility is that this is meant to be the real Storm and his interest lies in whatever Saturnyne has planned for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 18-21.<\/strong> Wolverine is teleported directly into the three-way fight between Solem and War.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We established in the previous issue that War hates Solem for killing her husband ages ago, and that the charming Solem has run rings around her attempt to punish him. Solem teleports Wolverine in to the fight to call up the unspecified favour that Wolverine promised him at the end of the previous issue, which was apparently that he “owes me a fight”. Solem takes that to mean that he can sub in Wolverine for one of his own fights, since he has no particular interest in winning or in the outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Three of Swords symbolises sorrowful experiences, though it’s obviously just being used here to indicate that it’s a three-way fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 22.<\/strong> Data page simply elaborating on last issue’s promise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 23-26.<\/strong> Wolverine defeats War.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Saturnyne is supposedly rigging this particular contest to punish Wolverine for trying to kill her in Marauders<\/em> #14, there are oddities. For one thing, it means Saturnyne must have known in advance that Solem was going to teleport Wolverine in. For another, she selects a stipulation – first person to sever a body part of their opponent – which Wolverine is bound to win because of his adamantium skeleton. Under that rule, War never has a chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 27.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan says NEXT: DEATHBLOW.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. WOLVERINE vol 7 #7“X of Swords, Chapter 16”by Benjamin Percy, Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara & Guru-eFX COVER \/ PAGE 1. Symbolic image of Wolverine impales by loads of swords, with images of the Arakki champions arranged in an X behind him. […]<\/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-5859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859","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=5859"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5881,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859\/revisions\/5881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}