{"id":7711,"date":"2022-03-23T23:10:19","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T23:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7711"},"modified":"2022-03-23T23:10:19","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T23:10:19","slug":"x-deaths-of-wolverine-5-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7711","title":{"rendered":"X Deaths of Wolverine #5 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-29.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7712 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Unknown-29.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"182\" height=\"276\" \/><\/a><strong>X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #5<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Writer: Benjamin Percy<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Artist: Federico Vicentini<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Colourist: Dijjo Lima<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Letterer: Cory Petit<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Editor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Wolverine fights Omega Wolverine. This is the other half of the image from the cover of\u00a0<em>X Lives of Wolverine<\/em> #5, with elements of a fight between Wolverine and Omega Red spreading onto the page.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 2-4.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Moira&#8217;s life flashes before her eyes as she dies.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s inside a sort of Krakoan battle suit thingy that she stole last issue.<\/p>\n<p>Page 2, and the bench panels on page 3, are a parody of the flashback from\u00a0<em>Powers of X\u00a0<\/em>#1 in which Moira approaches Charles Xavier and reveals her previous lives to him.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Page 4 shows all of Moira&#8217;s deaths from her previous nine lives (with her death in this life shown in the foreground). They&#8217;re in sequence, running clockwise from the top left:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Moira I dies at the age of 74 in her sleep. This is an original appearance, but it was described in narration on page 3 of\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2.<\/li>\n<li>Moira II dies when her plane crashed into the ocean. Again, this was described in\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2 rather than actually shown, and takes place between pages 9-10.<\/li>\n<li>Moira III is set alight by Pyro, as shown in a scene in\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2 which has been revisited many times since.<\/li>\n<li>Moira IV is killed by Sentinels. Again, this is technically an original appearance, since the\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2 scene ends with the Sentinel arriving. It takes place between pages 17-18 of\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2.<\/li>\n<li>Moira V is a little odd. This is the world shown only on page 18 of\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2, where she and Xavier built an isolated city of mutants, Farway, only for the Sentinels to show up and kill everyone. A data page in\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2 says that she had been in a coma for a year before she actually died, which is why she&#8217;s shown here in a hospital bed while the city is destroyed behind her (though it doesn&#8217;t really make sense for her to\u00a0<em>remember<\/em> this, but okay).<\/li>\n<li>Moira VI is killed by Wolverine in the far future, from page 23 of\u00a0<em>Powers of X<\/em> #6, in a deliberate attempt to send her back in time armed with new knowledge.<\/li>\n<li>Moira VII is killed by a spontaneously-emerging Sentinel &#8211; a &#8220;wild Master Mold facility&#8221; &#8211; moments after page 20 of\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2.<\/li>\n<li>Moira VIII is from the world where she aligned with an extremist Magneto, who was defeated by the superheroes. The panel shows her dying in a failed prison escape, something not shown on panel but mentioned in a\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2 data page.<\/li>\n<li>Moira IX is again killed by Wolverine in a deliberate attempt to send her back in time with new knowledge, this time from\u00a0<em>Powers of X<\/em> #3.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 6-13.<\/strong> <em>Everyone fights Omega Wolverine, while Sage and Beast make plans.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Cradle.<\/strong> The Cradles are the locations where Cerebro units are kept. The suggestion seems to be that Omega Wolverine (under Phalanx influence) intends to use the Cradle as an access point through which to infect Krakoan biotech itself and Phalanx-ise it. Quite why he doesn&#8217;t just infect Krakoa as he&#8217;s running, I don&#8217;t really get &#8211; after all, the premise of Omega Wolverine is that Moira was able to casually infect him when she killed him, no?<\/p>\n<p>Sage claims that the Phalanx will be unstoppable if it gets into the Cradle, which is not easy to follow &#8211; and not really supported by the data page which follows this scene. That said, it would presumably make Cerebro unusable and put a stop to resurrection, which seems pretty bad.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Cerebro Sword.<\/strong> Sage&#8217;s plan involves using the nebulously-powerful, plot-convenient Cerebro Sword, an artefact made by Magneto from a damaged Cerebro unit which is apparently nonetheless very important for reasons that have never been terribly clearly explained. Wolverine retrieved it from Mikhail Rasputin in\u00a0<em>X Lives of Wolverine<\/em> #5.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Omega Wolverine<\/strong>. As he succumbs to Phalanx control, the future Wolverine symbolically burns down to just the adamantium skeleton, losing his humanity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The pocket watch.<\/strong> Wolverine got it from Benedict Xavier as a teenager in 1900, as revealed in\u00a0<em>X Lives of Wolverine<\/em> #5. It&#8217;s meant to be symbolic, I guess &#8211; something to do with Wolverine&#8217;s timeline not entirely making sense and hanging together, but still ultimately giving him the direction and sense of purpose he needs, is probably meant to be the idea.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;I&#8217;m a living computer, aren&#8217;t I?&#8221;<\/strong> Sage used to make this claim a lot in later Chris Claremont stories.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>14.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page. From dissecting the pod in which Omega Wolverine manifested in issue #1, Forge has somehow found a memory drive and learned a bit about what happened to the X-Men in his timeline.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jean Grey is poisoned on the eve of an attack on Krakoa (which obviously had to be taken out at some point in order to stop everyone just being resurrected). Gorgeous George, who poisons her, is a minor background villain best known as a member of the Nasty Boys from Peter David \/ Larry Stroman <em>X-Factor<\/em> in the early 1990s.<\/li>\n<li>Nightcrawler actually seems to live to a reasonable age until the Sentinels finally catch up with him.<\/li>\n<li>Magneto is taken out by nanites.<\/li>\n<li>Professor X is apparently imprisoned psychically when the Cerebro network is compromised &#8211; presumably the same stunt that Omega Wolverine is trying to repeat here. In this timeline Moira seems to remain aligned with Xavier until the point where she mercy kills him (which arguably parallels what she seemed to be trying to do in this life with Krakoa).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The &#8220;Scottish folk song&#8221; is &#8220;The Bonnie Banks o&#8217; Loch Lomond&#8221;, which is a standard in Scotland but for all I know is less familiar \u00a0 to Americans. It&#8217;s the &#8220;you take the high road and I&#8217;ll take the low road&#8221; one. Forge hasn&#8217;t properly understood it &#8211; it&#8217;s not about them being separated by the loch itself, even on a literal reading. There are various interpretations of it but in one way or another they tend to agree that it&#8217;s a soldier from the failed Jacobite rebellion of 1746 anticipating his death and thinking of home.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 15-19.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Wolverine defeats Omega Wolverine by stabbing him with the Cerebro Sword.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Mmm. This doesn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n<p>What we have here is something vaguely ending-shaped. The Cerebro Sword is set up as a big symbol, and since it was the cause of the trouble in\u00a0<em>X Lives<\/em> it gets to be the resolution in\u00a0<em>X Deaths<\/em> &#8211; all of which seems structurally sound enough. The trouble is that the Cerebro Sword doesn&#8217;t work either as a plot element (because it&#8217;s totally unclear what it is or what it does or how it&#8217;s contributing to this) or as a symbol (because it&#8217;s totally unclear what it&#8217;s supposed to symbolise). So&#8230; vaguely ending-shaped.<\/p>\n<p>Somewhere in here, Wolverine&#8217;s telling us that he feels a need to atone for things he may have done in the past or the future, which again, doesn&#8217;t really feel like it&#8217;s emerged very clearly from anything in either miniseries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 20.<\/strong> Data page. Wolverine remembers a child unburdened by the weight of history; his own role, in contrast, is to have a life that stretches over a longer period so that he has to see the bigger picture. Basically, we&#8217;re trying to define Wolverine&#8217;s lifespan and his long and unusually varied back story as the thing that really marks him out from other characters.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 21.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Wolverine and family celebrate in the Green Lagoon.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Professor X&#8217;s arm is in a sling because Wolverine (under Omega Red&#8217;s influence) stabbed him in\u00a0<em>X Lives of Wolverine<\/em> #4. Wolverine is simply bracing himself for the inevitable next fight, and the final panel shows Sabretooth down in the Pit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 22.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>The Beast and Sage discuss the story.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;I guess it turns out the mutants don&#8217;t always lose.&#8221;<\/strong> Sage is alluding to Moira&#8217;s prediction that the mutants always wind up getting wiped out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Beast\u00a0<\/strong>sees Wolverine&#8217;s success as a vindication of his own morally flexible behaviour over in\u00a0<em>X-Force<\/em>. Sage rightly points out to him that he&#8217;s being selective in focussing only on Wolverine&#8217;s contribution.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 23-24.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Moira rises from the grave.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Note that the graveyard overlooks what seems to be the headquarters of Epiphany Platforms, whose technology she used to build this body. Apparently, her plan all along was that if she was killed in Krakoa, she would be brought back to life as a robot based on a back-up of her personality. This is her &#8220;eleventh life&#8221; as foreshadowed by Destiny in\u00a0<em>House of X<\/em> #2. Obviously, Moira has now become posthuman &#8211; something she never attempted in any of her previous lives. This is essentially what Xavier and Magneto were asking her about in\u00a0<em>Inferno<\/em>, and she was warning them off it &#8211; but then her plan according to\u00a0<em>Inferno<\/em> was basically to sideline while posthumanity got on with everything.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reaads NEXT: WADE IN.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 26.<\/strong> The back cover.<\/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 DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #5 Writer: Benjamin Percy Artist: Federico Vicentini Colourist: Dijjo Lima Letterer: Cory Petit Editor: Mark Basso COVER \/ PAGE 1. Wolverine fights Omega Wolverine. This is the other half of the image from the cover of\u00a0X Lives [&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-7711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711","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=7711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7713,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions\/7713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}