{"id":6103,"date":"2021-01-01T22:15:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-01T22:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6103"},"modified":"2021-01-01T22:15:22","modified_gmt":"2021-01-01T22:15:22","slug":"wolverine-8-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6103","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine #8 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 #8<\/strong>
“War Stories” by Benjamin Percy, Viktor Bogdanovic & Matthew Wilson<\/strong>
“The Past Ain’t Dead” by Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert & Antonio Fabela<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Wolverine face to face with Maverick, which doesn’t actually happen in this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Wolverine arrives to visit Jeff Bannister.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We last saw Bannister (and his back garden) in issue #3, when the gate was planted. Evidently it’s become fully grown since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-5.<\/strong> Bannister tells his story.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, there’s no established continuity involved here. Bannister is basically telling us that he became disillusioned as a CIA agent when he found that he’d been sent to kill other Americans in order to stop them from brokering a peace deal. It’s a fairly standard trope about the secret services having their own agenda. Bannister claims to be sticking around to do what he can from within.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-7.<\/strong> Wolverine begins his reply.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I got rotten spots in the memory bank.”<\/strong> Wolverine was supposed to have recovered all of his memories at the end of House of M<\/em>, but evidently we’re back to the idea that there are gaps in his memory. That’s plausible enough, since one of the reasons given over the years for his memory problems (particularly in Origin<\/em>) is that his healing factor tends to obscure traumatic memories for his own protection. There’s no obvious reason why his recovered memories couldn’t be re-suppressed in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flashbacks here are generic scenes of elements from Wolverine’s past in deliberately random ways; the final one, showing Wolverine in his Weapon X gear next to a group of Sentinels, is clearly not showing anything in line with established history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 8-9.<\/strong> Wolverine’s Team X story.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Team X <\/strong>was a US government black ops squad in which Wolverine served for a time before getting his adamantium skeleton. They were introduced in X-Men<\/em> vol 2 #5-7 back in 1991\/2. There were various members, but the three seen here are the most prominent: Wolverine himself, Sabretooth and <\/strong>Maverick (of whom more in a bit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolverine’s story is of Team X being sent to destroy an oil platform, causing great destruction for no apparent good reason. Like Bannister, he seems to take the CIA’s private agenda as being not ideological, but financial; presumably we’re looking at corruption and bribery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 10-11.<\/strong> Bannister offers his support.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bannister’s daughter<\/strong> had cancer in issues #1-3, which was put into remission (apparently not outright cured) by Krakoan drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The X<\/strong>–Desk<\/strong> is the CIA mutant intelligence division mentioned repeatedly in data pages in Marauders<\/em>. The woman in the wheelchair, watching this conversation from a drone camera, is Delores Ramirez<\/strong>. She’s the author of the various memos shown in Marauders<\/em>, but Wolverine<\/em> #3 also has a transcript of Ramirez calling Bannister and asking to talk about Wolverine. We’ve only seen her on panel once before, in Marauders<\/em> #11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bannister has formed the impression that the X-Desk is a threat, and that’s certainly how this scene presents Delores. All she actually told Bannister in issue #3 was that the X-Desk was “a special unit tasked with keeping an eye on the mutants”, which in itself seems like the sort of thing you might expect an intelligence department to be doing. Over in Marauders<\/em>, Delores has been a much more sympathetic figure. She intervened to tip off Krakoa about Homines Verendi’s plan to poison Krakoan drugs, and she apparently has a relative who has been saved by Krakoan drugs (just like Bannister). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read in that light, Bannister’s interpretation of her starts to look a bit paranoid. There’s nothing in this specific story to undercut him, but assuming there hasn’t been a massive communications breakdown between the two books, there’s more going on here than meets the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 12.<\/strong> Recap and credits. The small print in the bottom centre of the page reads “Celebrate 350 solo missions”; on “legacy numbering”, this is Wolverine<\/em> #350. Just to be clear, that’s the number we’d be on if the first Wolverine<\/em> ongoing series had continued its numbering without relaunching – thus, it doesn’t include any of the Wolverine<\/em> minis (even the first one), or Wolverine: Origins<\/em>. The issues that count towards the 350 are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n