{"id":7559,"date":"2022-02-03T20:57:16","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T20:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7559"},"modified":"2022-02-03T22:47:09","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T22:47:09","slug":"x-lives-of-wolverine-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7559","title":{"rendered":"X Lives of Wolverine #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #2<\/strong>
\nby Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara & Frank Martin<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Teenage Logan howling at the moon or something, with the image of Jean Grey (wearing Cerebro) behind him.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-5.<\/strong> Present-day Wolverine jumps into the body of his teenage<\/em> self.<\/p>\n

As with issue #1, this story is non-linear not only in absolute terms, but also in from Logan’s personal perspective. We don’t actually know in what\u00a0order<\/em> he visits the various parts of his life yet, but presumably that’ll become apparent in due course.<\/p>\n

This scene has teenage Logan fighting a chained bear in a bar in the far north of Canada, with the time given as 1900. This seems to take place in the period between Origin\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Origin II\u00a0<\/em>where he’s living in the mountain with a bunch of wolves. The people watching don’t seem surprised by his claws, so it’s after Origin\u00a0<\/em>#6. That issue is also where he has his first cage fight. And Origin II\u00a0<\/em>covers\u00a0his departure from the wilderness – plus, it’s set in 1907.<\/p>\n

Logan’s narrative returns to the subject of time, the general point here being that we are all insignificant on the eternal scale.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Recap and credits. The hexagons at the top now cover four of Logan’s “lives”. By comparing this and the previous issue, we can figure out that life one is the post-Origin<\/em> sequence; life five is Jasmine Falls; life six is the scene of Xavier’s birth in the previous issue; life seven is Team X; and life 10 is modern-day Krakoa.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-8.<\/strong> Logan in Jasmine Falls.<\/em><\/p>\n

Logan’s stay in Jasmine Falls, Japan, originates from the 1996 one-shot\u00a0Logan: Path of the Warlord<\/em>, but was seized on by Daniel Way in a number of flashbacks in\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> and\u00a0Wolverine: Origins<\/em>. During this period of relative bliss, he marries Itsu (seen here) and fathers Daken. Naturally, Itsu promptly gets possessed by the time-travelling Omega Red. If his main object is to try and erase Professor X from history, though, it’s not at all obvious what he’s doing here. Perhaps part of this series is to establish an intertwined history between the two of them, though in life 1, Logan seems to be quite some distance from Xavier and has to embark on a trek to get to him.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-11.<\/strong>\u00a0Team X in Colombia.<\/em><\/p>\n

This picks up from the Team X scene in the previous issue. They’re on a black ops mission in Colombia; Charles Xavier is in the area as an environmental campaigner.<\/p>\n

Logan describes this version of himself as the part of his life he hates the most; there’s certainly no doubt that the Team X era Wolverine did some appalling things, particularly under the influence of Romulus as shown in Daniel Way’s stories. How far Maverick was implicated in that sort of thing is more dubious, though – Wolverine: Origins<\/i> was pretty clear that Maverick wasn’t part of Romulus’s conspiracy, but presumably he was still on board with more conventional levels of black ops unpleasantness.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-14.<\/strong>\u00a0The recent past – X-Force in Moscow.<\/em><\/p>\n

Omega Red<\/strong> is “on probation” as a potential X-Force agent, presumably after helping against the vampires in\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #11-12.<\/p>\n

Maximum Ivanov<\/strong> and the “so-called Moscow Hellfire Club” didn’t ring a bell, but as GN points out in the comments, the Moscow Hellfire Club was previously mentioned in Wolverine<\/em> #14. Antony Kriev, the Russian criminal who got blown up on the Marauder while trying to pick up a consignment of logic diamonds, at least believed that he was working for the Moscow Hellfire Club.<\/p>\n

The guy who confronts Omega Red in the steam room is\u00a0Mikhail Rasputin<\/strong>, using his reality-warping powers to remove the doctored carbonadium synthesizer that X-Force secretly gave to Omega Red in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #15. As Mikhail says, this was done specifically by killing him and resurrecting him without his knowledge. It’s hardly surprising if this prompts Omega Red to switch sides.<\/p>\n

PAGE 15.<\/strong> Data page. Basically Sage’s notes summarising parts of the plot:<\/p>\n