{"id":6709,"date":"2021-05-19T22:03:22","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T21:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6709"},"modified":"2021-05-19T22:03:22","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T21:03:22","slug":"wolverine-12-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6709","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine #12 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE vol 7 #12
\n“Penumbra”
\nby Benjamin Percy, Scot Eaton, JP Mayer & Matthew Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE<\/strong>\u00a01.\u00a0<\/strong>Dracula and the Vampire Nation hook themselves up to a captive Wolverine in order to get his blood. The image is upside down, so that the vampires look like bats.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.<\/strong>\u00a0Logan and Louise in Paris.<\/em><\/p>\n

All fairly straightforward in terms of plot. Louise wonders if fighting on against her vampirism is heroic or just hypocritical; Logan tells her to fight on. We\u00a0have<\/em> been here before with Wolverine, in\u00a0X-Men Annual<\/em> vol 1 #6, with Rachel van Helsing. She was a former vampire hunter turned into a vampire, and she asked Logan to kill her. That time, he did.<\/p>\n

Penumbra.<\/strong> A more mundane definition would simply be that it’s an area of partial shadow. The bit at the edge of a shadow where it fades out instead of ending abruptly. But the point works as well.<\/p>\n

“Those vampire kids…”<\/strong> Wolverine is referring to the vampire kids he met in issue #5, who were indeed successfully resisting Dracula’s control. Perhaps they’ve had an impact on his thinking, but in the next scene his main point is that all his own losses of control have only made him more determined to do the right thing – not simply take himself off the board.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Father Cole<\/strong> was the “guiding priest” of the Nightguard until he got turned into a vampire and betrayed the group, all as seen in the previous issue. He seems to still have a version of a crucifix on his costume, which sounds unwise. But Marvel Universe rules are that symbols of religious faith only hurt vampires if wielded by true believers; maybe he doesn’t believe any more.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap \/ credits.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Data page. This is described as an X-Force “evidence log”, but it appears to be intended as an extract from the notebook of Dr James Boggs. It doesn’t really read like notebook text – maybe a transcript of dictated notes?<\/p>\n

We saw Boggs in the previous issue, when he was being forced by Dracula to develop something based on Wolverine’s blood. As this series has repeatedly told us, Wolverine’s blood has properties that let vampires do things like resist daylight. Nothing Boggs tells us about the blood itself is particularly new.<\/p>\n

Timothy\u00a0<\/strong>is Boggs’ innocent assistant from the previous issue, who got turned into a vampire by Dracula after he stumbled into their meeting.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-9.<\/strong>\u00a0Logan and Louise fight Cole.<\/em><\/p>\n

Self-explanatory.<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-12.<\/strong>\u00a0Omega Red visits Boggs.<\/em><\/p>\n

Omega Red is meant to be a double agent on Krakoa for the vampire nation (and has been since issue #1). He’s been increasingly depressed about not fitting in in either group; he’s being coerced by the vampires, and the other mutants won’t accept him. Which is pretty harsh considering they put Mister Sinister on the ruling council. Unknown to Omega Red, he’s been rumbled by X-Force and bugged by them.<\/p>\n

Last issue, Dracula told Omega Red to earn the mutants’ trust by offering them something – “like Russia.” It’s not clear whether Omega Red is following Dracula’s plan in this story or genuinely turning against Dracula in an attempt to free himself. That’s doubtless intentional. It’s out of character for Omega Red to be as constructive as he is in this issue, but he\u00a0does<\/em> have a motivation. And he doesn’t give up Russia in this story – he gives up the Vampire Nation, which is in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-14.<\/strong>\u00a0Forge gives Louise a new costume.<\/i><\/p>\n

Completely straightforward. The diving suits hanging in the background of the first panel are the ones that were worn for the undersea mission in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #16.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-16.<\/strong>\u00a0Omega Red pitches his idea to X-Force.<\/em><\/p>\n

As we’ll see, Omega Red actually has a perfectly sensible plan: knock up a clone, sabotage it so it’s poisonous. As already noted, he may well genuinely want to get rid of Dracula in this way. But his spiel about wanting to give something back to Krakoa is ridiculously implausible. You have to wonder why he’s bothering with it when more plausible motivations are available.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-21.<\/strong> The Vampire Nation try to use the fake Wolverine.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a Wolverine clone created by the Five, and modified so that its cells produce … well, something that counts as sunlight for the purposes of the rules of vampirism, I guess. Beast is very keen on this idea. Wolverine is rather less keen, perhaps because it’s another copy Wolverine running around, however non-sentient. We saw a duplicate Wolverine hand in issue #9, which hasn’t been explained yet. More generally, having Wolverine show up to say “Are you sure this is a good idea?” is normally a pretty good indication that there’s something here we shouldn’t be trusting – Dracula\u00a0does<\/em> get defeated awfully easily here, so maybe this is indeed all part of the plan.<\/p>\n

PAGE 22.<\/strong> Data page, with just a quote from Wolverine of the sort we normally get as an epigraph. Obviously, the joke is giving such a grandiose presentation to that line of dialogue.<\/p>\n

PAGES 23-24.<\/strong>\u00a0Wolverine takes Louise to Sevalith.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the vampire realm from “X of Swords”. From what we’ve seen of it, both in that crossover and subsequently in\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #17, the vampires of Sevalith are indeed a pretty reasonable, non-homicidal bunch. Wolverine suggests here that they’re the parent race, and the vampires of Earth are mad and desperate because they’re separated from the main group and have become desperately inbred. From the look of it, they also have access to more than enough “blood” to keep their hunger sated. If so, it’s reasonable enough to think they might be able to help Louise – quite aside from any willingness to help get rid of Dracula.<\/p>\n

The suggestion seems to be that the vampires of Sevalith have not previously been aware of Dracula. This seems odd considering that they have ties to places like Avalon. But I suppose we haven’t encountered them until relatively recently, so maybe they just don’t take a great deal of interest in foreign news.<\/p>\n

Death<\/strong> has been in Sevalith since being defeated by Storm in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #14. In\u00a0X of Swords: Destruction<\/em> he was said to have been captured, but from the look of this scene, he’s improved his station somewhat.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads (as you’d expect) NEXT: HELLFIRE GALA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. WOLVERINE vol 7 #12 “Penumbra” by Benjamin Percy, Scot Eaton, JP Mayer & Matthew Wilson COVER \/ PAGE\u00a01.\u00a0Dracula and the Vampire Nation hook themselves up to a captive Wolverine in order to get his blood. The image is upside down, so […]<\/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-6709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6709","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=6709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6712,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6709\/revisions\/6712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}