{"id":8691,"date":"2023-03-05T16:00:28","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8691"},"modified":"2023-04-02T13:23:12","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T12:23:12","slug":"the-incomplete-wolverine-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8691","title":{"rendered":"The Incomplete Wolverine – 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 1: Origin to Origin II<\/a> | <\/a>Part 2: 1907 to 1914<\/a>
\n<\/a>Part 3: 1914 to 1939<\/a> | <\/a>Part 4: World War II<\/a>
\n<\/a>Part 5: The postwar era<\/a> | <\/a>Part 6: Team X<\/a>
\n<\/a>Part 7: Post Team X<\/a> | <\/a>Part 8: Weapon X<\/a>
\n<\/a>Part 9: Department H<\/a> | <\/a>Part 10: The Silver Age<\/a>
\n1974-1975<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<\/a>1976<\/a> | <\/a>1977<\/a> | <\/a>1978<\/a> | <\/a>1979<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>
\n1980<\/a> | <\/a>1981<\/a> | 1982<\/a><\/em>\u00a0| 1983<\/em><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a01984<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>|\u00a01985<\/a>
\n1986<\/a>\u00a0| 1987<\/a> | 1988<\/a><\/em>\u00a0| 1989<\/a> | 1990<\/a><\/em> | 1991<\/em><\/a>
\n1992<\/em><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a01993<\/em><\/a> | 1994<\/em><\/a> | 1995<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a01996<\/a> | 1997 <\/a><\/em>
\n1998<\/a> |<\/em>\u00a01999<\/a><\/em>\u00a0|\u00a02000<\/em><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a02001<\/a> | 2002<\/a><\/em> | 2003<\/em><\/a>
\n2004<\/a><\/em> |2005<\/em><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a02006<\/em><\/a> | 2007<\/a> | 2008<\/a><\/em> | 2009<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

It’s 2010, we’re in the Utopian era, and Jason Aaron’s run is in full swing. The final Wolverine:\u00a0<\/em>Weapon X<\/em> arc of 2009 already took us through to January 2010, so we pick up with…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE: WENDIGO!<\/a><\/strong>
\nOne-shot<\/strong>
\nby Frank Tieri, Paul Gulacy & Thomas Mason<\/strong>
\nJanuary 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wolverine saves a low-rent TV crew from the Wendigo. Despite the title, this is really a story about the TV crew and the Wendigo myth; Wolverine himself only cameos.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE: CARNI-BRAWL<\/strong><\/a>
\nOne-shot<\/strong>
\nby Tom Beland, Miguel Sepulveda & Jorge Maese<\/strong>
\nJanuary 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

After ducking the job for ages, Wolverine grudgingly allows Sunspot to tag along for a solo mission to the Brazilian jungle, where they stop Bloodscream from building an army of zombies. Ultimately, Sunspot impresses Wolverine.<\/p>\n

This is a continuity trainwreck. It’s obviously meant to go during the original\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> run, but it also has Bloodscream as an established Wolverine villain, and he didn’t debut until years later. With a bit of squinting, it can be shoehorned in roughly in publication order, since Sunspot was back in the New Mutants at this point and wearing the same costume. Or you could just disqualify the whole thing as non-canon, which would be perfectly reasonable too.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This was an early digital comic; the only print version is in the\u00a0Amazing Immortal Man<\/em> trade paperback, which collects assorted Wolverine oddments. Despite the title, the story has nothing whatsoever to do with carnivals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE: WEAPON X #10<\/a><\/strong>
\n“Love and the Wolverine”<\/strong>
\nby Jason Aaron & CP Smith<\/strong>
\nFebruary 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Logan settles into his new relationship with Melita Garner, as they talk about their pasts and he brings her to Utopia. He warns her that women who get involved with him have a tendency to wind up dead, but Melita already knows about his past from her investigations, and she isn’t deterred. But she doesn’t want to get sucked into his world and wind up as a sidekick, and plans to carry on her journalism career. This is a good character issue building the idea that Logan is now in a relationship with a civilian, not someone on the fringes of the superhero world or organised crime or whatever. By the end of the issue, Mystique is quietly keeping an eye on Melita.<\/p>\n

Logan’s answer to “You ever been married?” is “Not really”, which at the time was basically a way of kicking Viper into the long grass. An obscure Claremont story has since indicated that he had a wife in Japan decades ago, but we don’t really know much about that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE: SAVAGE<\/a><\/strong>
\nOne-shot<\/strong>
\nby Ryan Dunleavy, Richard Elson & Veronica Gandini<\/strong>
\nFebruary 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

After smashing up a Japanese restaurant while fighting the Lizard, Wolverine helps the struggling chef to complete her order for the night, then rescues her missing father from a sea monster that ate him while he was hunting for a special ingredient. Pretty dreadful.<\/p>\n

DOOMWAR #1-3<\/strong><\/a>
\n6-issue miniseries<\/strong>
\nby Jonathan Maberry, Scot Eaton, Andy Lanning, Robert Campanella & Jean-Francois Beaulieu<\/strong>
\nFebruary to April 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the title, this is a Black Panther miniseries. T’Challa and the Black Panther\u00a0<\/strong>(Shuri, at this point)\u00a0ask for the X-Men’s help against\u00a0the Desturi<\/strong>, a reactionary group aligned with Dr Doom who have taken over Wakanda. Cyclops won’t get officially involved, but he lets Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler go in a personal capacity. They help to put down the insurgency and the plot then moves on without them for the moment. We’ll come back to this mini later.<\/p>\n

Oh, and in the scene on Utopia, Wolverine meets Cipher<\/strong> (Alisa Tager), though he’ll doubtless have been introduced to her off panel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>ASSAULT ON NEW OLYMPUS<\/a><\/strong>
\nAssault on New Olympus\u00a0<\/em>#1 and\u00a0Incredible Hercules<\/em> #138-139 and #141<\/strong>
\nby Greg Pak, Fred van Lante, Rodney Buchemi & Guillem Mari<\/strong>
\nNovember 2009 to February 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wolverine is among the array of allies who help Hercules to stop\u00a0Hera<\/strong> from rebooting creation into something more congenial. Also helping out are\u00a0Amadeus Cho, Hebe, Athena, Zeus, the Wasp<\/strong> (Hank Pym), Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, USAgent, Quicksilver and\u00a0Jocasta<\/strong>. All these allies are really just there to add some scale to the climactic battle at the headquarters of Hera’s\u00a0Olympus Group<\/strong>. The opposing forces include\u00a0Typhon, Huntsman, Argus, Delphyne Gorgon, Thanatos, Eris, Arachne\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Lamia<\/strong>. Eventually, Hercules sacrifices himself to defeat Hera, and the other heroes arrive too late to help. (That bit is also shown in\u00a0the Agents of Atlas story in\u00a0Incredible Hercules<\/em> #141<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

Issue #138 has Athena argue that superheroes are modern myths. She specifically compares Wolverine to Cernunnos, the Celtic Gods’ leader of the Wild Hunt, on the basis that his hairstyle is a bit like Cernunnos’ antlers. Which is a bit of a stretch.<\/p>\n

Wolverine’s also on the cover of Incredible Hercules<\/em> #140, but he’s not in the issue.<\/p>\n

HERCULES: FALL OF AN AVENGER #1<\/strong><\/a>
\n2-issue miniseries<\/strong>
\nby Greg Pak, Fred van Lente & Ariel Olivetti<\/strong>
\nMarch 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A non-speaking cameo at Hercules’ wake. Presumably Wolverine is also off-panel in issue #2, which takes place at the same event.<\/p>\n

AVENGERS VS ATLAS #1 and #4<\/strong><\/a>
\n4-issue miniseries<\/strong>
\nby Jeff Parker, Gabriel Hardman & Elizabeth Breitweiser<\/strong>
\nJanuary and April 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Avengers – yes, Wolverine’s still in the Avengers – fight\u00a0the Growing Man<\/strong>, but a timeline disruption makes them vanish for most of the series. In their absence, the Silver Age Avengers team up with the Agents of Atlas to defeat Kang.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE: WENDIGO!, second story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Wolverine vs Thor”<\/strong>
\nby Frank Tieri, Paco Diaz, Guillermo Ortego & Ulises Arreola<\/strong>
\nJanuary 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Loki makes Wolverine believe that he’s surrounded by villains, so that he lashes out at people; Thor shocks him back to his senses, and they drive Loki off. Loki’s motivations are entirely unclear. From the abrupt ending and the chapter breaks, this one looks a lot like an aborted serial that got dumped somewhere.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>SIEGE<\/a><\/strong>
\nSiege<\/em> #3-4 by Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel, Mark Morales & Laura Marten<\/strong>
\nNew Avengers: Finale<\/em> #1 by Brian Michael Bendis, Bryan Hitch, Butch Guice & Paul Mounts<\/strong>
\nAvengers: The Initiative<\/em> #35 by Christos Gage, Jorg\u00e9 Molina, Andrew Hennessy & Edgar Delgado<\/strong>
\nNew Avengers<\/em> vol 2 #1 (part 1) by Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger & Laura Martin
\n<\/strong>March to June 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Siege<\/em> is the big event that ended “Dark Reign”, with Norman Osborn losing power, and Steve Rogers taking over. Even though it’s principally an Avengers story, Wolverine somehow manages to sit the event out almost entirely – he misses the main plot entirely, and watches the final battle on television with the X-Men in Siege\u00a0<\/em>#3. All the other appearances listed above are part of the epilogue. In\u00a0New Avengers: Finale<\/em> #1, the New Avengers hunt down Madame Masque, the Hood and\u00a0John King<\/strong>. Then, the good news comes down that Steve Rogers is in charge and Everything Is Fine Now. After a bit of reminiscing about their exploits, the New Avengers go for a stroll in Central Park, which is presented as their final victory and vindication after spending so long on the run. Curiously, Wolverine isn’t in that closing moment, despite being a regular throughout the series.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Siege<\/em> #4,\u00a0Initiative<\/em> #35 and the opening of\u00a0New Avengers<\/em> #1, Wolverine is at the post-Dark Reign celebration party at Avengers Tower. Thor arrives with a group of other Asgardians –\u00a0Sif, Balder, Heimdall<\/strong> and\u00a0the Warriors Three<\/strong> (Fandral<\/strong>,\u00a0Hogun<\/strong> and\u00a0Volstagg<\/strong>). Steve decides that there should still be two separate Avengers teams, and assigns Luke Cage’s squad to Avengers Mansion. A cameo in\u00a0Avengers<\/strong><\/em> vol 4 #1\u00a0<\/strong>of Wolverine agreeing to stay on the Avengers presumably takes place here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>INCREDIBLE HULK vol 2 #606-608<\/a><\/strong>
\n“Fall of the Hulks”<\/strong>
\nby Greg Pak, Paul Pelletier, Danny Miki & Frank D’Armata<\/strong>
\nJanuary to March 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bruce Banner recruits Wolverine and others (including Rick Jones as A-Bomb<\/strong>)\u00a0to help him rescue top scientists from\u00a0the Intelligencia<\/strong>. But Banner’s real aim is to rescue Betty Ross – who, unknown to him, is actually working for the Intelligencia as the Red She-Hulk. At any rate, the team \u00a0attack the Intelligencia’s base, and Wolverine gets to fight Klaw and\u00a0the Trapster<\/strong> (Pete Petruski). That fight also appears briefly in\u00a0Fall of the Hulks: Savage She-Hulks<\/strong><\/em> #2<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Intelligencia’s plan is to create an army of Hulks. Banner’s attempt to stop them goes horribly wrong, turning Wolverine and the rest of the team into Hulks themselves.\u00a0Don’t ask how that works with adamantium. For what it’s worth, the Hulked-out Wolverine seems to have bone claws. Anyway, this leads to…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WORLD WAR HULKS<\/a><\/strong>
\nHulk<\/em> vol 2 #22 by Jeff Loeb, Ed McGuinness, Mark Farmer, Morry Hollowell & Chris Sotomayor<\/strong>
\nWorld War Hulks: Wolverine & Captain America<\/em> #1-2 by Paul Tobin, Jacopo Camagni, Chris Sotomayor & Joe Sabino<\/strong>
\nFall of the Hulks: Savage She-Hulks<\/em> #3 by Jeff Parker, Salva Espin & Guru eFX<\/strong>
\nIncredible Hulk\u00a0<\/em>vol 2 #610 by Greg Pak, Paul Pelletier, Danny Miki & Frank D’Armata<\/strong>
\nMay to July 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wolverine and the other Hulked-out heroes really just lumber around in the background of this crossover. There’s also the\u00a0World War Hulks: Wolverine & Captain America<\/em> 2-issue miniseries, which completely contradicts the rest of the storyline by showing Wolverine with his normal personality, supposedly due to his healing factor. The mini is an extended fight between Hulk-Wolverine and Hulk-Captain America (Bucky, at this point), but it’s used as a framing sequence for some lengthy flashbacks which\u00a0do<\/em> tell a proper story, loosely justified on the basis of “hey, here’s another occasion when I met Bucky and our minds were being distorted”. Anyway, because Wolverine has more experience of controlling rage and resisting mind control, he wins the fight. All the Hulks get turned back to normal off panel at the end.<\/p>\n

WEB OF SPIDER-MAN vol 2 #9<\/strong><\/a>
\n“The Extremist, part 2”<\/strong>
\nby Fred Van Lente, Pat Oliffe, Javier Rodriguez, Nick Dragotta & Andres Mossa<\/strong>
\nJune 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just a one-panel cameo at Avengers Tower.<\/p>\n

DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #894<\/strong><\/a>
\n“A Dame to Get Killed For”<\/strong>
\nby Ivan Brandon, Sanford Greene, Nathan Massengill & John Rauch<\/strong>
\nApril 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

This series was numbered backwards starting from #900 – it’s actually issue #7. Wolverine appears right at the end, protecting mob widow Despina Hawthorne from Deadpool and Frank Castle, who is currently the lumbering undead cyborg\u00a0Franken-Castle<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>1 MONTH 2 LIVE #3-4<\/a><\/strong>
\n5-issue miniseries<\/strong>
\n#3 by Stuart Moore, Shane White & John Rauch<\/strong>
\n#4 by John Ostrander, Graham Nolan, Mark Pennington, Ian Hannin & John Rauch<\/strong>
\nSeptember 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A curious miniseries with rotating creative teams. It\u00a0is<\/em> on Marvel Unlimited, but it’s filed under\u00a0Heroic Age: One Month to Live\u00a0<\/em>for some reason.<\/p>\n

Flux<\/strong> (Dennis Sykes) gets superpowers that let him be a superhero very briefly before he dies. When he’s injured helping the Fantastic Four, Wolverine takes him, his wife\u00a0Kelly Sykes<\/strong> and his daughter\u00a0Abbey Sykes\u00a0<\/strong>to the Savage Land in search of a lily that might save his life. They fight mercenaries who are also looking for the flower, Abbey gets hurt, and Dennis gives up the lily to save her life.<\/p>\n

AVENGERS vol 4 #1-6<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Next Avengers”<\/strong>
\nby Brian Michael Bendis, John Romita Jr, Klaus Janson & Dean White<\/strong>
\nMay to August 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The new Avengers team – or rather, the main Avengers team, because of course Wolverine is on both squads – consists of Captain America (Bucky), Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman and Wolverine. Steve Rogers claims to have picked Wolverine for his “ruthlessness and selflessness”. Spider-Woman isn’t sure she belongs, but Wolverine tells her that if Cap has asked her to join, then that proves she earned it – and that if she still doubts it, she should put in the work to earn it now. He kind of implies that this was his experience as an Avenger, though it wasn’t really something we saw on the page.<\/p>\n

On to the actual story, then. I’ll warn you now – what follows is both convoluted and irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Kang shows up at Avengers Tower, claiming that reality is going to come to an end because of the actions of the Avengers’ children in a future timeline where they overthrow Ultron. At Wolverine’s suggestion, the Avengers enlist Noh-Varr, now calling himself\u00a0the Protector<\/strong>, to build a space-time continuum viewer so that they can see this future timeline for themselves. (Wolverine isn’t bothered by the thought of knowing his future: “What difference could it make? Would you live your life any different?”) The viewer shows an image of\u00a0Earth-10071’s Next Avengers<\/strong> –\u00a0Hawkeye<\/strong> (Francis Barton),\u00a0Torunn Thorsd\u00f3ttir, Azari T’Challa, the Wasp<\/strong> (Henry Pym Jr) and\u00a0James Rogers<\/strong> – who kill\u00a0Immortus<\/strong>. After that, an image of\u00a0Earth-10071 Maestro<\/strong> appears before the vision collapses. This apparently means the timestream has broken, but the Avengers still can’t figure out if their kids had anything to do with it.<\/p>\n

Wonder Man shows up briefly to yell at the Avengers for existing – we’ll get back to that later – before\u00a0the timeline breakdown causes a \u00a0baffled\u00a0Earth-10082 Apocalypse<\/strong> and his\u00a0Horsemen<\/strong>\u00a0to appear. The Horsemen comprise\u00a0Earth-10082 Wolverine, Red Hulk, Spider-Man<\/strong> and\u00a0the Scarlet Witch<\/strong>. Everyone fights for no particular reason until the villains suddenly vanish again. While the rest of the Avengers deal with the mounting timeline chaos in New York, Iron Man, Protector, Captain America and Wolverine travel to Earth-10071 to investigate the cause of the problem.<\/p>\n

They arrive in time to catch the end of the climactic battle between Kang and\u00a0Earth-10071 Ultron<\/strong>, but decide not to risk making matters worse by intervening. Instead, they meet the Next Avengers, their mentor Maestro, and an elderly\u00a0Earth-10082\u00a0<\/strong>Iron Man<\/strong> (Tony Stark) and\u00a0Spider-Girl<\/strong>. It turns out that time at this point has been weakened by Kang’s repeated efforts to defeat Ultron by replaying the battle over and over. For some reason, Protector is a new factor who might change the outcome. The heroes then travel back in time to just\u00a0before<\/em> the battle and… um, well, they persuade Ultron to let Kang win, since Ultron doesn’t want the timeline to collapse either. Ultron is terribly unconvincing at throwing the fight, and Kang is disappointed by his anticlimactic victory. You and me both, mate. Kang then tries to betray his allies and gets killed, which is what the Avengers saw in the viewer.<\/p>\n

Back at Avengers Tower, everyone celebrates another victory. A sprawling mess.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>RECKONING<\/a><\/strong>
\nWolverine: Origins<\/em> #46 by Daniel Way, Scot Eaton, Andrew Hennessy & Andy Troy<\/strong>
\nWolverine: Origins<\/em> #47-48 by Daniel Way, Will Conrad & Andy Troy<\/strong>
\nDark Wolverine<\/em> #85-86 by Daniel Way, Marjorie Liu, Stephen Segovia, Cam Smith & Marte Gracia<\/strong>
\nMarch to May 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the purposes of this story, Logan doesn’t seem to live on Utopia, but has a room in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. It also has a cross on the wall, because this is the Jason Aaron period. Maybe he likes having some space for himself; Utopia’s a bit crowded, after all.<\/p>\n

Logan is feeling guilty about Mariko’s death again. Specifically, he thinks he shouldn’t have let her deal with her family’s criminal links alone, despite her wishes. And he’s convinced himself that there must have been a way of saving her from being poisoned – he suggests that maybe he didn’t try hard enough to save her because he was attracted to the melodrama of a doomed love that could endure forever as a memory. Nightcrawler quite rightly retorts that he’s really just struggling to deal with the fact that Mariko lived and died on her terms rather than his.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Logan and Daken team up to go after Romulus. Daken is impressed by Logan’s plan, but also disdainful of his willingness to ask for help. Just as Logan planned, Daken quickly betrays him and leaks his location to Romulus. Daken claims to be motivated by hate for Logan, but Logan argues that Daken is really acting out of love for his father figure Romulus. Either way, Romulus does show up, and Wolverine teams up with Skaar to fight him, but he escapes. Daken warns Romulus that Wolverine’s plan is to expose him to the world, remove his mystique and destroy his mythos – which is a really, really weird angle for\u00a0Wolverine: Origins<\/em>, an entire book devoted to spelling out Wolverine’s supposedly hidden back story in painful detail. I\u00a0can’t quite decide whether it’s a clever twist or a dazzling lack of self-awareness. Daken claims later to be lying about this, anyway.<\/p>\n

Wolverine and Daken fight again, but Cloak drags Wolverine off so that he can focus on dealing with Romulus instead of getting distracted yet again by Daken. Daken tries to kill Romulus, but Wolverine and Cloak spirit him off to the Howlett Estate. They then banish him to the Darkforce Dimension.<\/p>\n

And now the moral. Wolverine wanders the grounds of his abandoned family mansion, and reflects on how his desire for revenge has driven him for over a century. He’s learned that that path is destructive, and that he needs to acknowledge himself as a victim, and forgive himself for what has been done to him. Armed with this insight, he defeats Daken, then cuts out his claws, to stop him from presenting himself as Romulus’s symbolic heir. Finally, he buries both the Muramasa Blade and Daken’s severed claws, on the grounds that they’re all symbols of hate, and hopefully he has at least averted Daken following in Romulus’s footsteps.<\/p>\n

This actually isn’t bad, at least within the logic of\u00a0Wolverine: Origins<\/em>.\u00a0The book does deliver a solid finale to its own story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #49-50<\/a><\/strong>
\n“What I Do”<\/strong>
\nby Daniel Way, Will Conrad & Andy Troy<\/strong>
\nJune & July 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Logan goes to the wilderness of British Columbia to build a cabin and start a new life under his own control. Nick Fury drops by for Logan’s birthday. Since Sabretooth is dead at this point, there’s no attack. But Logan has nightmares and hallucinations about Sabretooth and other villains, which leads to him clawing Fury in his sleep. Fury uses a healing injection to recover, and points out that it was based on Wolverine’s own powers, an example of how some of his suffering over the years has produced something useful along the way.<\/p>\n

Finally, Logan hallucinates about confronting Romulus in the Darkforce Dimension and facing his past head on, before deciding to return to his regular life.\u00a0A nice little coda in some ways, saving Sabretooth to the end of the run and using him as a symbol of everything repetitive that Wolverine needs to move past. But the hallucination stuff feels random and underexplained.<\/p>\n

And that’s\u00a0Wolverine: Origins<\/em>. Daken the only element of the 50-issue run that stuck, and frankly, he’s unrecognisable from the version that appears in\u00a0Origins<\/em>. In terms of its broader agenda of establishing a cohesive back story and arch villain for Wolverine,\u00a0Origins<\/em> has been politely ignored by every writer since, since they all recognised that Wolverine’s past is better when it’s messy and it isn’t\u00a0<\/em>all subsumed within an overreaching conspiracy around a villain that nobody finds very inspiring. Ultimately,\u00a0Origins<\/em>‘ central project wasn’t a failure because it didn’t stick – it didn’t stick because it was a failure.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>PUNISHMENT<\/a><\/strong>
\nFranken-Castle<\/em> #19-20 by Rick Remender, Tony Moore & Dan Brown<\/strong>
\nDark Wolverine<\/em> #89 by Daniel Way, Marjorie Liu, Stephen Segovia, Paco Diaz, Craig Yeung, Guillermo Ortego & Antonio Fabela<\/strong>
\nJuly to September 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you’re unfamiliar with this bizarre era of the Punisher, well, it’s exactly what it sounds like: the Punisher has been killed by Daken and resurrected as a Frankenstein cyborg. Not unreasonably, Franken-Castle wants revenge. Wolverine intervenes to protect “my boy” – a bit of a weird angle coming right on the heels of Origins<\/em>, but okay. Daken steals the magical Bloodstone that’s keeping Castle alive, and Wolverine has the gall to try and guilt-trip Castle over letting Daken near it in the first place. Castle responds by telling Wolverine that he’s a “delusional mutant freak” protecting a “ruthless , blood-soaked monster”, which is indeed how Daken is written in this arc. Wolverine has no answer to that, so they team up to fight Daken – though Wolverine persists in trying to make excuses for his behaviour.\u00a0In the event they retrieve the stone, and Daken and Castle both escape. The art on the\u00a0Franken-Castle<\/em> issues is wonderful.<\/p>\n

In a flashback in\u00a0X-23\u00a0<\/em>vol 3 #2<\/strong>, Logan and X-23 go to the fairground, and he offers to formally adopt her. She tells him that she already is his family, and he answers “Good.”<\/p>\n

1 MONTH 2 LIVE #5<\/strong><\/a>
\n5-issue miniseries<\/strong>
\nby Rick Remender, Jamie McKelvie & Nathan Fairbairn<\/strong>
\nSeptember 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Avengers team up with Flux against Hammerhead, and make him an Avenger minutes before he dies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE: WEAPON X #11-15<\/a><\/strong>
\n“Tomorrow Dies Today”<\/strong>
\nby Jason Aaron, Ron Garney & Jason Keith<\/strong>
\nMarch to May 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Logan takes Steve Rogers for an international pub crawl, with Nightcrawler acting as designated driver in the Blackbird (in exchange for Logan promising to go to church in the morning, of course – there really is a lot of this stuff in the Aaron run). Despite his initial reservations, Steve is glad that Logan became an Avenger: “You helped hold them together, even if you didn’t realise it. You give people strength, you know, just be standing alongside them.” Which, I suppose, is one way of trying to find meaning in Wolverine’s virtually zero contribution to Bendis’s Avengers stories. Logan grudgingly admits to losing hope during Dark Reign, but says that it’s a new day now, and that Melita and Utopia both make him hopeful for the future.<\/p>\n

In New York, Logan is approached by\u00a0Miranda Bayer<\/strong>, who is plagued by dreams of\u00a0Deathloks<\/strong>\u00a0from a Roxxon-dominated future. According to Bayer, the Deathloks are trying to alter history by killing superheroes or their parents before they can even start their careers, in the hope of eliminating the mystery leader of their world’s resistance movement. It’s Terminator <\/em>with Deathloks, in other words.\u00a0Logan is sceptical, but Bayer does indeed lead him to some Deathloks attacking Captain America. One of those Deathloks corners Miranda, but resists its programming long enough for\u00a0young\u00a0Evan Wakowski<\/strong> to bundle her to safety.\u00a0Wolverine, Captain America and Miranda take a captured Deathlok to\u00a0Dr David Heimerdinger<\/strong>, a former HAMMER scientist whom Miranda has identified as the future designer of the Deathloks. But he hasn’t designed the Deathloks yet, and has nothing useful to contribute. Wolverine and Cap seriously discuss just killing the guy before he creates any Deathloks, but Miranda persuades them that the impact on the timeline is too unpredictable.<\/p>\n

The “nice” Deathlok turns out to be the future version of Bayer’s own son, who grows up to become a murderer and to be experimented on by Roxxon. Instead of its human side resisting violence, this Deathlok is fighting back because of its AI, which eventually seizes control and switches sides, declaring that it wants to embrace emotion. The reformed Deathlok leaves and eventually goes on to become the resistance leader; to preserve the timeline, he (or rather, the AI) specifically asks Miranda to abandon him. Not at all bad, but it reads more like a backdoor pilot for a\u00a0Deathlok<\/em> series.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE #900, first story<\/a><\/strong>
\nUntitled<\/strong>
\nby CB Cebulski, David Finch, James Asmus, Danny Miki & Guru eFX<\/strong>
\nMay 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

While fighting some ninjas and a Yakuza, Wolverine reflects generically on his dark side.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #900, second story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“The Curse of the Yellow Claw”<\/strong>
\nby Dean Motter, Greg Scott & Val Staples<\/strong>
\nMay 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wolverine helps Chinatown resident Mai Ling against the Ibis Corporation, whose hidden underground facility is growing Yellow Claw poppies more addictive than opium. He and Nightcrawler bring down the operation and bring the building’s dark history to light. A very rare case of a story that uses Jason Aaron’s Chinatown set-up, and actually very good.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #900, fifth story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Worst There Is”<\/strong>
\nby Matt Yocum, Jake Bilbao, Rick Ketcham & Ikari Studios<\/strong>
\nMay 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Logan helps a little girl called Maya to find her missing father; she’s unimpressed by Logan’s lack of conventional heroic behaviour. The father turns out to be violently abusive, Logan saves Maya and her mother from him, and Maya finally acknowledges Logan as a “very nice man”. Exceedingly forgettable.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #1000, fourth story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Development Hell”<\/strong>
\nby Mark Simmons, Mike Ryan, Victor Olazaba & Marth Martinez<\/strong>
\nFebruary 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mojo tries to force Wolverine to make films for him, but Wolverine refuses to co-operate and escapes. Just a generic Mojo story, really. I’m not sure why the Marvel Chronology Project has it a year out of publication order, but I assume it’s to do with the wider chronologies of Mojo and Spiral.<\/p>\n

Once again, Marvel Unlimited has interesting ideas about how to file these books.\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #900 is filed as issue #900 of the 2010\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> series – but\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #1000 is filed as Wolverine 1000\u00a0<\/em>#1000.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>X-23 vol 2 #1<\/a><\/strong>
\nOne-shot<\/strong>
\nby Marjorie Liu, Filipe Andrade, Nuno Alves, Jay Leisten & SotoColor<\/strong>
\nMarch 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the\u00a0“Women of Marvel” one-shot, not the other\u00a0X-23\u00a0<\/em>#1 from later in the same year. It’s a nightmare to find on Marvel Unlimited, but it is there – it’s mis-filed as a second #1 in the 2010 series.<\/p>\n

Logan and X-23 investigate when a series of depowered mutants go missing from Jubilee’s outreach centre; they stumble upon X-23’s former castmates from\u00a0NYX<\/em>,\u00a0Kiden Nixon<\/strong>,\u00a0Catiana<\/strong> (Tatiana Caban),\u00a0Bobby Soul<\/strong> and\u00a0Lil’ Bro<\/strong>. The NYX kids initially mistake Logan for X-23’s latest abuser and try to defend her from him. The story has some nice material contrasting Logan’s relationship with Jubilee with his much more distant relationship with X-23, a theme which Liu will come back to in the X-23\u00a0<\/em>ongoing.<\/p>\n

GIRL COMICS vol 2 #3, second story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Things That Never Change”<\/strong>
\nby Marjorie Liu, Sara Pichelli & Rachelle Rosenberg<\/strong>
\nJuly 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wolverine and Jubilee team up to rescue depowered mutants from unnamed villains. Afterwards, Jubilee talks about how it feels to be depowered, Logan apologies for not being there to support her, and they share ice cream.<\/p>\n

GIRL COMICS vol 2 #3, fourth story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“A Moving Experience”<\/strong>
\nby Lea Hernandez<\/strong>
\nJuly 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A gag strip where Wolverine helps Magneto fetch his furniture from storage.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE vol 2 #309<\/a><\/strong>
\n“Underneath”<\/strong>
\nby Ivan Brandon, Rafael Albuquerque & Jason Latour<\/strong>
\nJuly 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

This fill-in story was published in 2012 (by which point the book had returned to vol 2 “legacy numbering”). But it’s set during the period when Wolverine and Elixir were teammates on X-Force.<\/p>\n

Trying to understand Wolverine, Elixir tags along with him to bars and on missions. After fighting a splinter group of Morlocks called\u00a0the Dregs<\/strong>, they encounter a group of depowered mutants who believe that their power loss has made them sick, and are receiving “help” from a mysterious Russian. Since depowered mutants just become ordinary humans, Wolverine knows this can’t be right. The Russian turns out to be Meltdown (from\u00a0Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown<\/em>), using his powers to drain energy from the depowered mutants under the guise of healing them. Outraged by such behaviour, Elixir now understands how Logan can be motivated to kill, but still leaves it to Logan to kill Meltdown again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>SECOND COMING<\/a><\/strong>
\nX-Men: Second Coming<\/em> #1 by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, David Finch, Matt Banning & Peter Steigerwald<\/strong>
\nUncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #523-525 by Matt Fraction, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson & Justin Ponsor<\/strong>
\nNew Mutants<\/em> vol 3 #12-14 by Zeb Wells, Ibraim Robertson & Brian Reber<\/strong>
\nX-Men Legacy<\/em> vol 1 #235-237 by Mike Carey, Greg Land, Jay Leisten & Justin Ponsor<\/strong>
\nX-Force<\/em> vol 3 #26-28 by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, Mike Choi & Sonia Oback<\/strong>
\nSecond Coming: Prepare<\/em> by Mike Carey, Stuart Immonen, Michael LaCombe & Justin Ponsor<\/strong>
\nX-Men: Second<\/em> Coming #2 by Zeb Wells, Mike Carey, Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, Matt Fraction, Ibraim Roberson, Esad Ribic, Greg Land, Terry Dodson, Jay Leisten, Rachel Dodson, Matt Milla, Matt Wilson, Frank Martin & Brad Anderson<\/strong>
\nFebruary to July 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cable and teenage Hope finally return to the present day, but immediately have to go on the run from anti-mutant groups organised by Bastion. Several issues of chasing across America follow, with the X-Men trying to reach Cable and Hope first, and the bad guys trying to take out the X-Men’s teleporters. Magik is injured, and\u00a0Ariel<\/strong> is killed. During this, the other X-Men finally find out about X-Force, and they’re not happy – not that any real consequences follow.<\/p>\n

Wolverine’s team of X-Men finally catch up with Cable and take Hope off his hands, since it’s Cable’s techno-organic virus that the bad guys are using to track him. But when they get back to Utopia, they learn that Nightcrawler has been killed fighting Bastion. Wolverine is furious, and plainly blames Hope for getting people killed defending her – or at least Cyclops for making\u00a0<\/i>everyone treat Hope as a big deal. Hope doesn’t think she’s anything special either, and is alarmed by the expectations everyone has of her.<\/p>\n

Bastion traps Utopia and part of San Francisco within a dome, planning to flood the place with Nimrod. Hence the attack on all the teleporters. But Cable and X-Force travel to the future and shut down the Nimrods’ A.I. network. Cable sacrifices himself to provide a portal back to Earth for X-Force, thus removing him as a father figure for Hope. Back in the present, Hope’s powers finally emerge, and she personally defeats Bastion. (The aftermath of this fight is also shown in a\u00a0flashback in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men: Heroic Age<\/em><\/strong>.)\u00a0The X-Men hold a funeral for Cable. (This is also shown in the one-shot\u00a0Deadpool & Cable\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>#26<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

Wolverine tells Storm that Nightcrawler was the only one who treated him like he wasn’t an animal – but Nightcrawler died having just learned about X-Force, and thus “knowing that’s exactly what I am”. He also says that he regrets having involved anyone else in X-Force, but not his own involvement – “maybe if I had killed more of them, Kut would still be alive”. Needless to say, Storm does not agree. Afterwards, Wolverine officially disbands X-Force, and tells Laura that she has to find her own way instead of just letting the X-Men use her as a weapon. Cyclops agrees that X-Force can now be wound down… but in reality, Wolverine just sets up a new X-Force that even Cyclops doesn’t know about, consisting of himself, Fantomex, Archangel, Psylocke and Deadpool. At least he’s sticking with characters who are already corrupted this time. If all this seems wildly inconsistent in terms of Wolverine’s attitude to X-Force… well, that’s kind of the point, but we’ll get to that when we reach the new\u00a0X-Force<\/em> series next year.<\/p>\n

After all\u00a0that<\/em>, Cerebro finally detects five new mutants, but that’s in an epilogue where Wolverine doesn’t appear. We’ll get to that in a bit.<\/p>\n

NEW MUTANTS vol 3 #20-21<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Rise of the New Mutants”<\/strong>
\nby Zeb Wells, Leonard Kirk & Guru eFX<\/strong>
\nDecember 2010 & January 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

The X-Men fight\u00a0Project Purgatory<\/strong>, who have spent 26 years in Limbo experimenting on the babies who were gathered for Madelyne Pryor’s sacrifice way back in “Inferno”. Project Purgatory are defeated, as are\u00a0the Elder Gods of Limbo<\/strong>, mainly thanks to Legion; he also purges Magik of her corruption.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #50, second story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“And the End is Always Near”<\/strong>
\nby Daniel Way, Antonio Fuso & C Garcia<\/strong>
\nJuly 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A weird coda to the series, with Logan and Hope talking in an alley. She’s uncomfortable about the expectations on Utopia and yearns to go back to living rough; Logan doesn’t believe in her supposed messiah status but implies that he accepts her.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE: WEAPON X #16<\/a><\/strong>
\n“The End of the Beginning”<\/strong>
\nby Jason Aaron, Davide Gianfelice & Dave McCaig<\/strong>
\nAugust 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his will, Kurt asks Logan to transport a $20,000 concert grand piano to a church on the top of a remote Venezuelan mountain; Logan accepts the challenge, and hauls the thing to the mountain top while reflecting on the many discussions about religion that he and Kurt had over the years. When he reaches the top, he finds that nobody there can play the piano – but Kurt has left them a gift for Logan. It’s a piece of wreckage from one of their early Danger Room sparring sessions, when he had made fun of Kurt’s faith. “Okay, elf,” Logan says, “you win.” This is another chapter in Aaron’s efforts to get religion into Wolverine’s character, but a pretty good issue on its own terms.<\/p>\n

This is the final issue of\u00a0Wolverine:\u00a0<\/em>Weapon X<\/em>, which got rebooted alarmingly quickly by the standards of the period.<\/p>\n

UNCANNY X-MEN: THE HEROIC AGE<\/strong><\/a>
\nOne-shot<\/strong>
\nby Matt Fraction, Whilce Portacio, Steve Sanders, Jamie McKelvie, Ed Tadeo, Jaime Mendoza, Brian Reber, Ian Hannin & Chris Sotomayor<\/strong>
\nJuly 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A single panel cameo as the X-Men are welcomed back to San Francisco after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.<\/p>\n

UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #526, second story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Rebuilding”<\/strong>
\nby Allan Heinberg, Olivier Coipel, Mark Moreals & Justin Ponsor<\/strong>
\nJuly 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A prologue for\u00a0Avengers: The Children’s Crusade<\/em>. Wolverine warns Magneto off getting involved with his grandchildren Wiccan and Speed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #526-527<\/a><\/strong>
\n“The Five Lights, parts 1-2”<\/strong>
\nby Matt Fraction, Whilce Portacio, Ed Tadeo & Brian Reber<\/strong>
\nJuly & August 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

The X-Men split up to monitor the five new mutants, who for the moment just seem to be sick. Logan and Scott are in Japan, and go for a drink while they wait for developments. Logan challenges Scott about whether he’s allowing his emotions to come out now that the emergency is over.<\/p>\n

GENERATION HOPE #1-4<\/strong><\/a>
\n“The Future is a Four Letter Word”<\/strong>
\nby Kieron Gillen, Salvador Espin & Jim Charalampidis<\/strong>
\nNovember 2010 to February 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

The new Japanese mutant,\u00a0Kenji Uedo<\/strong> (soon to be\u00a0Zero<\/strong>), is an avant-garde artist. His powers rage out of control to create a giant cyborg monster. Wolverine and Cyclops fight it alongside Rogue, Hope and the other four “lights” –\u00a0Gabriel Cohuelo<\/strong> (soon to be\u00a0Velocidad<\/strong>),\u00a0Idie Okonkwo<\/strong> (soon to be\u00a0Oya<\/strong>),\u00a0Laurie Tromette<\/strong> (soon to be\u00a0Transonic<\/strong>) and\u00a0Teon Macik<\/strong> (soon to be\u00a0Primal<\/strong>). Why does nobody use any of these characters except for Oya? Anyway, Hope manages to calm Zero down and bring him back to Utopia.<\/p>\n

Once they’re back on Utopia, Logan also has the inevitable fight with Primal, who has a weird animal instinct personality; Teon quickly defers to him as an alpha, and Logan is immediately able to understand and communicate with him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #530-534<\/a><\/strong>
\n“Quarantine”<\/strong>
\nby Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, Greg Land, Jay Leisten & Justin Ponsor<\/strong>
\nNovember 2010 to March 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

A power-dampening mutant-tailored flu virus breaks out on Utopia, and the island goes into lockdown. Because his healing factor is no longer cancelling out his adamantium poisoning, Wolverine is particularly badly affected, and unable to go defend Chinatown against the Collective Man. (Some X-Men who were still on the mainland deal with him instead.)<\/p>\n

The virus is the creation of Lobe, who wants to blackmail the X-Men into selling him the intellectual property rights to their genome in exchange for the cure. Lobe also has an impostor\u00a0X-Men<\/strong> team:\u00a0Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel<\/strong> (Penny Newsom),\u00a0Iceman<\/strong> and\u00a0Beast<\/strong>. Once it becomes apparent that the virus is harmless to ordinary humans, the X-Men stop self-isolating and defeat Lobe, who is forced to release his cure in order to save himself from infection. A weird story to read in the post-Covid era.<\/p>\n

DOOMWAR #6<\/strong><\/a>
\n6-issue miniseries<\/strong>
\nby Jonathan Maberry, Scot Eaton, Robert Campanella, Jaime Mendoza, David Meikis & Jean-Francois Beaulieu<\/strong>
\nAugust 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just a background cameo in the aftermath of Doom’s defeat.<\/p>\n

I AM AN AVENGER #1, Young Avengers story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Homecoming”<\/strong>
\nby Jim McCann, Chris Samnee & Matt Wilson<\/strong>
\nSeptember 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A single-panel cameo as the Young Avengers visit Avengers Mansion.<\/p>\n

I AM AN AVENGER #5, Ant-Man story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Growing”<\/strong>
\nby B Clay Moore, Filipe Andrade & Chris Sotomayor<\/strong>
\nJanuary 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another non-speaking cameo, as Ant-Man (Eric O’Grady) gets caught sneaking into Avengers Mansion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>GENERATION HOPE #5<\/a><\/strong>
\n“The Daddy Issue”<\/strong>
\nby Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie & Matthew Wilson<\/strong>
\nMarch 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hope tries to turn to Logan as a substitute father figure, not least because he’s one of the first X-Men that she met. But he sends her away, telling her to make her own decisions. After she leaves disappointed, he tells himself that “it’s for the best”. Logan’s very ambivalent attitude to Hope is going to be a theme running through to\u00a0Avengers vs X-Men<\/em>, on and off.<\/p>\n

CHAOS WAR<\/strong><\/a>
\nChaos War<\/em> #1-2 by Greg Pak, Fred van Lente, Khoi Pham, Tom Palmer & Sunny Gho<\/strong>
\nChaos War: Dead Avengers<\/em> #1 and #3 by Fred van Lente, Tom Grummett, Cory Hanscher & Andy Troy<\/strong>
\nSeptember 2010 to January 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back from the dead already, Hercules gathers a whole bunch of superheroes, including Wolverine, to battle\u00a0the Chaos King<\/strong>. They all head off to Nightmare’s realm to fight him (as also shown in\u00a0Chaos War: Chaos<\/strong> King<\/strong><\/em>), but the Chaos King just uses Nightmare’s power to put them all to sleep. They remain gently slumbering for the rest of the storyline, while the Dead Avengers protect them from Nekra and the Grim Reaper. Hercules saves the day.<\/p>\n

I AM AN AVENGER #2, Edwin Jarvis story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“The Journal of Edwin Jarvis”<\/strong>
\nby Paul Tobin, David Lopez, \u00c1lvaro Lopez & Nathan Fairbairn<\/strong>
\nOctober 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A two-page short in which hard-working Jarvis is finally taken out for a drink.<\/p>\n

I AM AN AVENGER #2, D-Man story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Pie of the Tiger”<\/strong>
\nby Jacob Cabot<\/strong>
\nOctober 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A one-page gag strip. D-Man wins the pie-eating contest at the annual Avengers Picnic. Wolverine congratulates him on his “nice mask”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>NEW AVENGERS vol 2 #1-7<\/a><\/strong>
\n“Possession”<\/strong>
\nby Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Wade von Gawbadger & Laura Martin<\/strong>
\nJune to December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Steve Rogers assigns Norman Osborn’s former aide\u00a0Victoria Hand<\/strong> as the New Avengers’ government liaison; after a bit of interrogation, Wolverine and Luke Cage are broadly convinced of her bona fides. Cage then assembles his new team: himself, Wolverine, Mockingbird, Iron Fist, Hawkeye, the Thing, Spider-Man and Ms Marvel.<\/p>\n

The Eye of Agamotto appears, accompanied by a demonically possessed Dr Strange and Hellstorm. Wolverine drives the demons out by pinning them down and stabbing them – Strange congratulates him on his mystical knowledge that trauma could have this effect, but by all appearances Wolverine was just stabbing them because that’s what he does. Anyhow, the actual villain is\u00a0Agamotto<\/strong> himself, trying to recover his Eye. Dr Strange casts a merging spell that allows all the Avengers to merge into Wolverine as a host, so that Wolverine can face Agamotto in single combat – yes, at last, it’s a Bendis Avengers arc where Wolverine actually does something. But the spirit of\u00a0Daniel Drumm<\/strong> tries to assist, which is against the rules, so Agamotto wins by disqualification. The new sorceror supreme, now going by\u00a0Doctor Voodoo<\/strong>, defeats Agamotto, and they both vanish in a mystical explosion. Dr Strange rejoins the Avengers .<\/p>\n

Oh, and Squirrel Girl moves in as the new nanny for Danielle Cage. Wolverine recognises her immediately, and there’s an awkward exchange which implies that they’ve had a previous relationship. This comes up periodically in this run of\u00a0New Avengers<\/em>, and let’s just say the idea has yet to commend itself to any other writers.<\/p>\n

I AM AN AVENGER #4, Thing story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Everything Will Change Soon (In Bed)”<\/strong>
\nby Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Sara Pichelli & Emily Warren<\/strong>
\nDecember 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just a background cameo, as the New Avengers fight a monster in Asbury Park.<\/p>\n

BLACK WIDOW vol 6 #1-2 and #5<\/strong><\/a>
\n“The Name of the Rose”<\/strong>
\nby Marjorie Liu & Daniel Acu\u00f1a<\/strong>
\nApril to August 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Black Widow is hospitalised after an attack, Wolverine, Iron Man and Captain America (still Bucky, remember) race to the hospital. Logan tracks down the attacker, who turns out to be just a hired gun. Logan then hangs around the hospital for a while, and he pops up again later in the arc to help the Widow escape from\u00a0Imus Champion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>ASTONISHING SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE<\/a><\/strong>
\n6-issue miniseries<\/strong>
\nby Jason Aaron, Adam Kubert, Mark Morales, Mark Roslan & Justin Ponsor<\/strong>
\nMay 2010 to May 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn’t like this miniseries at the time and nothing has changed. The art is lovely, but it’s Aaron’s absurdist mode, which never works for me. It’s a self-indulgent mess, it took a year to come out, and the whole “Wolverine can’t stand Spider-Man” angle doesn’t work when they’ve been Avengers for years. But here’s what happens anyway.<\/p>\n

A bank robbery by\u00a0the Orb<\/strong> attracts Spider-Man and Wolverine’s attention. A bag of glowing diamonds from the bank’s vault transports the heroes to prehistoric times. All this is apparently engineered by\u00a0Czar<\/strong> and\u00a0Big Murder<\/strong>, two thugs who stumbled upon the magic diamonds at a different point in their timeline, and are now working for Mojo to generate the usual insane content for his TV channels.<\/p>\n

Months later, Logan is living with the ape-like\u00a0Small Folk<\/strong> when Peter returns to let him know that they’re about to be killed by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. The asteroid has the same glowing diamonds in it, and somehow the impact transports Spider-Man and Wolverine to a post-apocalyptic future. There, they encounter a future Small Folk and a robot Devil Dinosaur. Apparently, Logan’s past interaction with the Small Folk led to them replacing humanity.\u00a0Doom the Living Planet<\/strong>\u00a0attacks Earth, but Wolverine fires a Phoenix-powered gun to stop it, knowing that the gun will kill him too. Spider-Man uses a Cosmic Cube to revive Logan – who is furious, as he was about to be reunited with loved ones in the afterlife.<\/p>\n

Czar and Big Murder send Logan and Spider-Man into each other’s pasts: Logan encounters Spider-Man during the brief period before Uncle Ben died when he hadn’t learned any responsibility yet. \u00a0More time travel shenanigans follow, and eventually Wolverine steals the diamonds from Czar and uses them to travel to the planet that they originally came from. There’s a bit here where Wolverine nearly becomes Dark Phoenix but Spider-Man talks him down. Because they’ve bonded from their shared experiences, you see. Eventually Mojo and Czar are bundled away by\u00a0the Minutemen<\/strong>, and\u00a0the Time Variance Authority<\/strong> hit the cosmic reset button on the whole mess, though they leave Spider-Man and Wolverine with their memories.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0flashback in\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> vol 4 #1<\/strong>, Logan visits John Wraith, who is now – you guessed it – a pastor. They discuss whether government experiments really made them into weapons, or just brought out who they always were. Wraith encourages Logan to find God. Logan is sceptical that better times are coming, but admits that a corner has been turned, and says that he’s scared of this sense of hope. In another flashback in the same issue, Logan gives Melita various weapons to defend herself with if she’s attacked by villains.<\/p>\n

SHADOWLAND #4-5<\/strong><\/a>
\n5-issue miniseries<\/strong>
\nby Andy Diggle, Billy Tam, Victor Olazaba & Guru eFX<\/strong>
\nOctober to December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wolverine, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, the Punisher, Spider-Man, Elektra, Shang-Chi and\u00a0Master Izo<\/strong> join forces to defeat a Hand-possessed Daredevil.<\/p>\n

DARK WOLVERINE #90<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Empire: Prelude”<\/strong>
\nby Daniel Way, Marjorie Liu & Mirco Pierfederici<\/strong>
\nAugust 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a San Francisco bar, Daken briefly approaches Melita, but Logan doesn’t notice him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>CURSE OF THE MUTANTS<\/a><\/strong>
\nX-Men<\/em> vol 3 #1-6 by Victor Gischler, Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco & Marte Gracia<\/strong>
\nCurse of the Mutants: Storm & Gambit<\/em> #1 by Chuck Kim, Chris Bachalo and various<\/strong>
\nCurse of the Mutants, X-Men vs Vampires\u00a0<\/em>#1, 4th story, by Rob Williams, Doug Braithwaite & June Chung<\/strong>
\nCurse of the Mutants: Smoke & Blood<\/em> #1 by Si Spurrier & Gabriel Hernandez Walta<\/strong>
\nJuly to December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

A vampire blows himself up in San Francisco, infecting those around him and making them susceptible to vampiric influence. One of the victims is the depowered Jubilee, who is brought to Utopia so that the X-Men can investigate. The X-Men discover vampire safehouses in the city, with vampires wearing light-bending medallions that protect them from the sun. With Dracula dead, the vampires are now led by his son\u00a0Xarus<\/strong>. Blade shows up to help, but despite his very strong advice to the contrary, Cyclops and Wolverine agree that the X-Men should resurrect Dracula to fight his son. The X-Men duly retrieve Dracula’s body (Wolverine also meets his other son\u00a0Janus<\/strong> here).<\/p>\n

Jubilee is drawn to the vampires, and Wolverine goes after her. Unknown to Wolverine, Dr Nemesis has dosed him with nanobots that will let him briefly turn into a vampire if bitten, all as per Cyclops’s plan. As Cyclops guessed, it’s a trap; Jubilee has become a full vampire and she tries to turn Wolverine. Wolverine hangs around with the vampires for a bit, claiming to feel more alive than ever (“Hell, I’m thinking about smoking again”), and declares that he’ll dethrone Cyclops as the leader of the mutants, once they’re all vampires. Wolverine apparently isn’t faking during this bit. When the vampires attack Utopia, Cyclops deactivates the nanites, and Wolverine returns to normal. He’s not very happy, but he sides with the X-Men anyway. Dracula defeats Xarus, and Cyclops insists on letting him go; in return, Dracula leaves Jubilee with the X-Men, and they place her in a holding cell. Naturally, Blade wants to kill her, but Wolverine insists that he won’t give up on her.<\/p>\n

We were three films into the\u00a0Twilight<\/em> series by 2010, so naturally it was time to see if the comics market was interested in vampires. (It wasn’t.) This volume of\u00a0X-Men<\/em> was launched with tremendous fanfare and contains little or nothing of any wider importance. But “Curse of the Mutants” itself is better than it gets credit for – it was just massively overhyped.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE & JUBILEE<\/a><\/strong>
\n4-issue miniseries<\/strong>
\nby Kathryn Immonen & Phil Noto<\/strong>
\nJanuary to April 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blood transfusions from Wolverine moderate Jubilee’s vampiric urges, but only go so far. Wolverine persuades Scott and Emma to let Jubilee out anyway, so he can help her come to terms with her change. But she escapes into town, and when he catches up, she’s in a shipping container with a pile of corpses. She pleads innocence, so he takes her to Siberia – partly because it’s remote and has five hours of daylight, but mainly because it’s where the shipping container comes from. When they encounter another vampire, Jubilee realises that Wolverine regards vampires\u00a0in general\u00a0<\/em>as being beyond redemption, and protests that she is no different from any other vampire. Then she gets carted off to an abstract plane as payment for some sort of mystical debt, but Wolverine tracks her down and frees her. Finally, Wolverine and Jubilee defeat a dragon, which somehow shows that her self-control has reasserted itself.<\/p>\n

The first three issues of this are great, and really build off the old Wolverine\/Jubilee relationship without going for nostalgia. It does sell the vampire direction as viable. The final issue goes off the rails, veering too far into outright weirdness.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE vol 4 #5.1<\/a><\/strong>
\n“Happy”<\/strong>
\nby Jason Aaron, Jefte Palo & Nathan Fairbairn<\/strong>
\nFebruary 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

On his way to meet Melita at a cabin in the Canadian wilderness, Logan gets sidetracked by dealing with the insane, cannibalistic serial killers\u00a0the Buzzard Brothers<\/strong> (Boyd and Bufford Buzzard). As soon as he actually starts hunting, he becomes completely focussed on them. But he remembers where he’s going, and decides to hand them over to the police instead of killing them. As a result of all this, he shows up hopelessly late for what Melita had planned as a surprise birthday party, since all the guests have gone home. Logan is confused, since it isn’t his birthday – but Melita has traced his birth certificate, and apparently he’s had the date wrong all these years.<\/p>\n

The “point one” issues were meant to be self-contained jumping on points, and this does deliver on the brief – it’s a straightforward, well executed statement of the character.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE vol 4 #5, second story<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Scorched Earth, conclusion: How it Started”<\/strong>
\nby Jason Aaron, Jason Latour & Rico Rinzi<\/strong>
\nJanuary 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Scorched Earth” is a series of back-up strips that ran alongside “Wolverine Goes to Hell”; this one finally fills in the set-up for the arc. Logan is meeting Melita for a date when kidnappers bundle her into a truck. Logan furiously pursues, determined to send a message to all of his enemies that Melita is off limits. Naturally, it’s a trap orchestrated by Mystique (who is disguised as Melita) – she lures him into a mystical circle, and a sorcerer casts a spell to send him to hell.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>WOLVERINE: ROAD TO HELL<\/a><\/strong>
\nOne-shot<\/strong>
\nby Jason Aaron, Renato Guedes, Jos\u00e9 Wilson Magalhaes & Matthew Wilson<\/strong>
\nSeptember 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

More prologue. Images of Logan’s past violence flash before his eyes as he falls into the Pit of Hell. The spirits of the dead warn him that Satan will break him. Logan grabs onto the side of the pit, but an image of his “brother” (apparently Dog?) tells him that he needs to keep falling. Then the severed head of Sabretooth bites Logan’s hand so that he lets go.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE vol 4 #1-5<\/strong><\/a>
\n“Wolverine Goes to Hell”<\/strong>
\nby Jason Aaron, Renato Guedes, Jos\u00e9 Wilson Magalhaes & Matthew Wilson<\/strong>
\nSeptember 2010 to January 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Hell,\u00a0Satan<\/strong> pits Logan in endless battles with Hand ninjas and other people that he has killed, patiently waiting for Logan to beg for defilement as an alternative. Naturally, Logan continues to fight, so Satan produces a broken Sabretooth in order to show that he always wins in the end. Then he produces Mariko Yashida, who is apparently in Hell because, well, she\u00a0was<\/em> the head of a Yakuza crime family. Then he cuts the spirit of the Silver Samurai to pieces – preventing the Samurai from warning Logan that his friends are all being attacked back on Earth. Meanwhile, Logan’s body, possessed by a demon, attacks Wraith’s church, then Yukio and Amiko, and finally the X-Men.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With Puck’s encouragement, Logan battles Satan, who is apparently weakened by the mere act of defiance. Logan defeats Satan and Puck leads an army of the damned to help. During all this, Logan is approached by the ghost of his late father Thomas Logan. Thomas seems to be proud of Logan, but for all the wrong reasons. Logan prevents Sabretooth from claiming the throne of Hell, but winds up being recognised by the demons as the new leader himself, as a result of taking Satan’s sword. Realising that Thomas was using him to seize control of Hell, Logan throws the sword away and decides to leave. Mariko refuses to go with him, insisting that she belongs in Hell. Fortunately, all this coincides with an exorcism being carried out on Earth by Melita, Hellstorm, Mystique (who’s had second thoughts) and both Ghost Riders. Wolverine returns to his body, fighting for control with the demon. He stumbles onto the street outside, where the X-Men – still expecting the demon – are waiting for him.<\/p>\n

I don’t like this arc at all. It’s unrelentingly bleak. Part of the point seems to be to present Wolverine with incontrovertible proof of the existence of Hell, and to further the long term goal of driving him towards God. In issue #4, Logan says that he has always “wanted” to believe, but that it has never come naturally to him (though really, given his upbringing, he probably ought to be a lapsed Christian).<\/p>\n

Next time, the second half of this arc, and\u00a0Schism<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914 Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age 1974-1975\u00a0|\u00a01976 | […]<\/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":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wolverine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691","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=8691"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8936,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691\/revisions\/8936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}