{"id":6810,"date":"2021-06-23T22:24:50","date_gmt":"2021-06-23T21:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6810"},"modified":"2021-06-23T23:55:02","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T22:55:02","slug":"wolverine-13-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6810","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine #13 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE vol 7 #13
\n“What They Did in the Shadows”
\nby Benjamin Percy, Scot Eaton, Oren Junior & Matthew Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE<\/strong>\u00a01:\u00a0<\/strong>Wolverine fights Deadpool, unnoticed by the Hellfire Gala guests. Not remotely the central focus of this issue, but if the cover had shown the real main action, it would have spoiled the plot of\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #20. This issue is effectively the second half of that story, and more of a bonus issue of\u00a0X-Force<\/em> than a\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> comic. Wolverine is in it for five pages, and has five lines of dialogue.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> The John Paul Leon tribute page.<\/p>\n

PAGES 3-7.<\/strong>\u00a0Wolverine stops a Terra Verdan from attacking a partygoer.<\/em><\/p>\n

In\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #20, we learned that after X-Force stopped the telefloronic plant creatures from taking over Terra Verde in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #10, the Beast used the plants to take complete control of the entire country. The Beast brought a bunch of zombified Terra Verdean diplomats to the Hellfire Gala with the intention of having them mingle and sing the praises of Krakoa to anyone who would listen. At the end of the issue, Sage discovered that the diplomats’ coding had been hacked (by someone unknown). As we see in this issue, the result is a bunch of diplomats who now have plant powers, and are understandably very angry indeed. Why they’re attacking an innocent guest is less clear.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wolverine doesn’t know any of this, as later scenes make clear, and so he’s just doing the regular superhero thing and stepping in to save the innocent guest.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.<\/strong> Recap and credits, with the now-familiar Hellfire Gala alternate layout.<\/p>\n

PAGE 9.<\/strong>\u00a0The Beast looks for the Terra Verdeans.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the background, Nightcrawler is talking to Loa and Mercury, and spills his drink on Loa. This scene also appears (briefly) in\u00a0Way of X<\/em> #3, although in that version the Beast is much more obviously shouldering his way through the crowd to get to Gabriella Gomez. In this version, Kurt seems to spill his drink for no reason at all.<\/p>\n

Again, it’s never explicitly made clear what the Terra Verdeans are trying to achieve by attacking non-Krakoan party guests. If they just wanted to undermine the Krakoans, you’d have thought that a much easier way would be to run over to the Avengers and yell “help!” If they’re trying to put pressure on the Krakoans to strike a deal, as suggested on page 17, then (a) when did they come up with this plan, and (b) how does attacking randoms play into it?<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-11.<\/strong>\u00a0The Beast fights Gabriella Gomez.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kid Omega helps to cover up the incident, no doubt because the Beast has told him to, and it serves the interests of Krakoa to hush this up. Considering that he’s been considerably humanised in recent issues, it’s notable that he’s written here as the Beast’s most loyal and unquestioning soldier.<\/p>\n

Gomez describes the Krakoans as “the worst kind of colonialists”. It’s a slightly odd use of “colony”, which normally connotes actually moving in and living there. Really, what the Beast has done here is to simply conquer the place.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-13.<\/strong>\u00a0Wolverine fights the other ambassador.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I didn’t do nothing but till the garden when your country got overrun by weeds.”<\/strong> In\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #9-10. Wolverine doesn’t know what happened after that story.<\/p>\n

PAGES 14-15.<\/strong>\u00a0Christian Frost is attacked.<\/em><\/p>\n

Christian is sailing the\u00a0Marauder<\/em>, because his usual vessel,\u00a0the\u00a0Mercury<\/em>, is otherwise engaged in the terraforming of Mars over in\u00a0Planet-Size X-Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As seen in\u00a0Marauders<\/em> #21 and\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #20, the\u00a0Marauder<\/em> is carrying a cargo of Shi’ar logic diamonds, the memory devices that are used to store back-up minds for Cerebro. The Shi’ar who delivered them believed that Emma Frost had ordered them, which she knew nothing about. An obvious possibility is that Christian’s attacker is\u00a0Mystique, who presumably has a plan involving the resurrection of Destiny (perhaps by getting a copy of her back-up that she can take elsewhere). But the fact that the hijacked vessel is taken to Madripoor at the end of the issue might suggest that Homines Verendi are involved somewhere.<\/p>\n

PAGES 16-17.<\/strong>\u00a0Deadpool and Domino fight another Terra Verdean.<\/em><\/p>\n

Deadpool arrived on the island in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #20. Let’s assume that he already landed on the island before that and planted a cache of gear – after all, he can’t\u00a0really<\/em> have swam to the Gala while wearing a rubber ring.<\/p>\n

PAGES 18.<\/strong> The Beast and Sage argue.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Beast wants to just re-enslave everyone, which Sage vetoes. Clearly, this is meant to be a turning point where key players start rejecting the Beast’s increasingly insane plans. In Sage’s case that could easily be for pragmatic rather than moral reasons.<\/p>\n

Nothing in the story sheds any real light on who hacked the Terra Verdeans and freed them. The Beast essentially accuses Sage of doing it. That seems unlikely – while she might plausibly have decided to put a stop to the Beast’s plan herself, it’s unlikely that she would have done it in the middle of a high-profile diplomatic event.<\/p>\n

PAGE 19.<\/strong> Data page – the heads of terms that Sage agrees with the Terra Verdeans. And this is… rather silly, to be honest.<\/p>\n

The main thing that the Terra Verdeans get out of this – other than not being mind-controlled any more, obviously – is that they can continue pursuing their telefloronic technology without Krakoan objection. While the Beast claims later that this is a tremendous diplomatic triumph, this is exactly what he was trying to stop in the first place – a rival, non-Krakoan, source of plant-based technology. The Beast (in this interpretation) rationalises everything into a victory, but logically he ought to see this as a disaster.<\/p>\n

They also get a billion dollars. That feels a bit Dr Evil to me, if we’re supposed to think this is a massive amount of money. Mind you, it’s nearly twice the annual budget of Belize, and Terra Verde is meant to be a micro-state, so… maybe.<\/p>\n

Extraordinarily, we’re asked to believe that the entire population of Terra Verde agree not to “speak to the media about the coup”. Seriously? Not one person is going to leave the country or post on the internet about it? They’re never going to mention it on national TV? Come on. That’s just stupid.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-21.<\/strong> Wolverine has a drink with one of the Terra Verdens.<\/em><\/p>\n

These guys are\u00a0insanely<\/em> forgiving. Again, we seem to be asked to believe that Wolverine sees this as a learning experience about humans, rather than an alarming discovery that he’s working for an outfit that commits crimes against humanity. It’s… just wildly misjudged, this whole story.<\/p>\n

PAGES 22-24.<\/strong>\u00a0Emma and the Beast talk.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Beast is arguing here that Krakoa needs to spy on everyone and know everything in order to maintain its dominance. The \u00a0premise which is supposed to give this argument moral weight is “or else the humans will destroy us”, and it’s the (understandable) paranoia about the human world that leads Emma to see this as even vaguely arguable. Even so, his bizarre suggestion that mind-controlling thousands of people (and there\u00a0must<\/em> be thousands of people in Terra Verde) is comparable to the terraforming of a dead world in\u00a0Planet-Size X-Men<\/em> is simply insane, and shows a complete failure to grasp what the moral problem is.<\/p>\n

“As Voltaire said, “There is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night.””<\/strong>\u00a0Voltaire was the Enlightenment writer Fran\u00e7ois-Marie Arouet (1694-1778). This quote seems to have been misattributed to him by the Israeli philosopher Yuval Noah Harari in his book\u00a0Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind<\/em> (2011). In fact, Voltaire wasn’t an atheist, and he was always pretty clear that he believed the existence of God to be self-evidently true. The idea that he was an atheist seems to have come from people taking some of his quotes out of context, and from allegations made against him by his rivals.<\/p>\n

However, Voltaire\u00a0would<\/em> have agreed with the basic point being made in the second half of the quote:\u00a0that without the fear of God, people would feel free to do whatever they felt they could get away with. He did indeed argue that, for this reason, atheism was not merely incorrect, but socially dangerous.\u00a0As he wrote in his Philosophical Dictionary<\/em>, <\/a><\/p>\n

I would not wish to have to deal with an atheist prince, who would find it to his interest to have me ground to powder in a mortar: I should be quite sure of being ground to powder. If I were a sovereign, I would not wish to have to deal with atheist courtiers, whose interest it would be to poison me: I should have to be taking antidotes every day. It is therefore absolutely necessary for princes and for peoples, that the idea of a Supreme Being, creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger, shall be deeply engraved in people’s minds.<\/p>\n

This is also what he was getting at when he said that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong>\u00a0A comically over-extended quote from Deadpool, begging to be allowed to join the cast.<\/p>\n

PAGE<\/strong> 26.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: SOLEM.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. WOLVERINE vol 7 #13 “What They Did in the Shadows” by Benjamin Percy, Scot Eaton, Oren Junior & Matthew Wilson COVER \/ PAGE\u00a01:\u00a0Wolverine fights Deadpool, unnoticed by the Hellfire Gala guests. Not remotely the central focus of this issue, but if […]<\/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":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6810","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=6810"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6813,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6810\/revisions\/6813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}