{"id":7676,"date":"2022-03-09T22:41:29","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T22:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7676"},"modified":"2022-03-09T22:41:29","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T22:41:29","slug":"x-lives-of-wolverine-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7676","title":{"rendered":"X Lives of Wolverine #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Unknown-24.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7677 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Unknown-24.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"181\" height=\"279\" \/><\/a><strong>X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #4<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Writer: Benjamin Percy<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Artists: Joshua Cassara and Federico Vicentini<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Colourist: Frank Martin<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Letterer: Cory Petit<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Editor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong>\u00a0Team X Wolverine, possessed by Omega Red.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 2-4.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Omega Red possesses Dr Cornelius during Weapon X.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Weapon X Facility<\/strong>, as you surely know, is the place which gave Wolverine his adamantium skeleton against his will as part of a scheme to turn him into a soldier. This sequence takes place between the flashback and the main story in part 2 of Barry Windsor-Smith&#8217;s &#8220;Weapon X&#8221; story, from\u00a0<em>Marvel Comics Presents<\/em> vol 1 #73. The images of Wolverine covered in cables are clearly meant to evoke &#8220;Weapon X&#8221;, which had a lot of that sort of thing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abraham Cornelius<\/strong> was one of the three main scientists seen in that story; generally speaking he tends to be presented as having at least some pangs of conscience about what he&#8217;s doing, and it&#8217;s the Professor who tends to be presented as outright evil, but this\u00a0<em>is<\/em> right at the start of the arc from his point of view.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;You&#8217;ll be mindwiped daily.&#8221;<\/strong> There&#8217;s no real basis for that in the original &#8220;Weapon X&#8221; story, where much of the point is that there isn&#8217;t a great deal to wipe. But sure, why not? It would at least explain why he didn&#8217;t remember anything about wiping out Roanoke in\u00a0<em>Weapon X<\/em> vol 2 #24-25.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Some sort of contagion or parasite.&#8221;<\/strong> It&#8217;s a symbiote, but we&#8217;ll come back to that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap and credits. We&#8217;ve now established what all ten phases of Logan&#8217;s life are meant to be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Life 1 is wilderness Logan, from just after\u00a0<em>Origin<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Life 2 is Logan in the old west, circa 1911.<\/li>\n<li>Life 3 is Logan in World War I.<\/li>\n<li>Life 4 is Logan in World War II.<\/li>\n<li>Life 5 is Jasmine Falls.<\/li>\n<li>Life 6 is the phase with the birth of Charles Xavier. Note that while the previous issue&#8217;s recap page gave the location as &#8220;England&#8221;, this has now changed to &#8220;Westchester, New York&#8221; (where the X-Men Mansion is located), so presumably England was a mistake.<\/li>\n<li>Life 7 is Team X.<\/li>\n<li>Life 8 is Weapon X.<\/li>\n<li>Life 9 is Department H (which we&#8217;ve not really seen, but apparently features early Wolverine in the Middle East).<\/li>\n<li>Life 10 is the present day, presumably intended to represent his whole time with the X-Men.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Life 8 Wolverine is shown in red to represent his possession by Omega Red.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 6-8.<\/strong> <em>Logan intervenes to stop Omega Red from killing Lt Xavier.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Lieutenant Xavier<\/strong> is obviously another ancestor, either Professor X&#8217;s father or his grandfather.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kenji Oyama<\/strong>, the kamikaze pilot who Omega Red possesses, is the future super villain Lord Dark Wind. In himself, he&#8217;s a minor figure in Marvel history &#8211; his only significant arc is\u00a0<em>Daredevil<\/em> vol 1 #196-199. Since he&#8217;s still flanked by two regular kamikaze pilots, Omega Red seems to have possessed him solely to make him fly into the target he was going to hit anyway, which seems&#8230; pointless?<\/p>\n<p>Oyama&#8217;s origin story involves him being a kamikaze pilot who is motivated by shame after he crashes into an American aircraft carrier and, somehow, survives when the bombs fail to go off. This story is related in a one-panel flashback in\u00a0<em>Daredevil<\/em> #197 (which might just be her version of events), and a\u00a0<em>very<\/em> slightly expanded version appears in\u00a0<em>Alpha Flight<\/em> vol 1 #34. In those flashbacks, he crashes onto the aircraft carrier deck, which isn&#8217;t what we see here. But that isn&#8217;t an outright error, since both flashbacks are narrated by people who weren&#8217;t actually there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 9.<\/strong> Data page. Basically, Professor X and Jean Grey agree that due to the butterfly effect, people in the past can&#8217;t be allowed to remember any of this, but&#8230; mindwiping everyone in a one mile radius will be&#8230; better somehow&#8230;? Nor does this really explain what happens to all the Omega Red tentacles that some characters grow. Maybe it&#8217;s supposed to fade away after he leaves.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 10-11.<\/strong> <em>Team X Sabretooth stops Omega Red killing Professor X.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Helpfully for the plot, Omega Red has chosen the worst possible life in which to try possessing Wolverine directly &#8211; the one where Sabretooth quite naturally assumes Wolverine is deserting and goes after him. Omega Red argues that Creed should help him kill Xavier, presumably to avoid being stuck in the Pit underneath Krakoa back in <em>House of X<\/em> #6, but of course Creed has no idea what Omega Red is talking about.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 12-13.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Weapon X Omega Red accidentally triggers a latent symbiote.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Omega Red makes the fairly standard argument for Wolverine villains that he&#8217;s no more of a monster than Wolverine himself, given at least some of the phases of Wolverine&#8217;s history.<\/p>\n<p>The parasite from the earlier scene is revealed as a latent symbiote; the spiral on Logan&#8217;s forehead here is the symbol of the symbiote god Knull from Donny Cates&#8217;\u00a0<em>Venom<\/em> run. As a later footnote clarifies, all of this is calling back to the 2018 one-shot\u00a0<em>Web of Venom: Ve&#8217;Nam<\/em>, which is currently missing from the Incomplete Wolverine, and I&#8217;ll be adding it (along with all this time travel stuff) once the series is over. Logan was indeed briefly bonded to a symbiote in that story, which apparently leaves these parasites behind. This\u00a0<em>isn&#8217;t<\/em> the same symbiote, though, which went on to become\u00a0<em>Venom\u00a0<\/em>supporting character Rex Strickland.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 14.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>More of World War II.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 15.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Team X era Xavier is evacuated.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Xavier finds Logan &#8220;familiar&#8221;, but it&#8217;s not obvious why, since (aside from Xavier&#8217;s birth) he won&#8217;t meet Logan until\u00a0<em>First X-Men<\/em>, which hasn&#8217;t happened yet.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 16-20.<\/strong> <em>A montage of multiple lives.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In the Weapon X panels, Omega Red jumps away to escape the symbiote, and Cornelius manages to escape the room and (somehow or other) purge Logan of the symbiote. Apparently this prompts Cornelius to try adamantium instead, though the original &#8220;Weapon X&#8221; story has them going straight to adamantium on day one, so they must have had it around. Or you can make the point that at least some of &#8220;Weapon X&#8221; is clearly mind games.\u00a0In the Team X panels, Sabretooth kills Wolverine, who evidently heals from this fatal wound in the normal way. In the World War II section, Kenji Oyama&#8217;s origin story plays out more or less as normal. Logan&#8217;s narration seems to be making the point that thus far at least, destiny is reasserting itself. (Or, if you prefer, the timeline is resisting major changes &#8211; or these events were already factored into it.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 21-23.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Professor X tries to regain contact with Wolverine.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This, apparently, is the fundamental error that completes some sort of parallel between Xavier and Wolverine on the one hand, and Mikhail Rasputin and Omega Red on the other.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 24.<\/strong> Data page. The closing quote is from Omega Wolverine (the Phalanx Wolverine from the future who appears in\u00a0<em>X Deaths of Wolverine<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: HOMECOMING.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #4 Writer: Benjamin Percy Artists: Joshua Cassara and Federico Vicentini Colourist: Frank Martin Letterer: Cory Petit Editor: Mark Basso COVER \/ PAGE 1:\u00a0Team X Wolverine, possessed by Omega Red. PAGES 2-4.\u00a0Omega Red possesses Dr Cornelius during Weapon [&hellip;]<\/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-7676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7676","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=7676"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7679,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7676\/revisions\/7679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}