Wolverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE. This is volume 7 of Wolverine, and that’s just counting the titles that were simply called Wolverine. Volume 1 is the 1982 miniseries, volume 2 is the long-running ongoing title that started in 1988. The others are periodic reboots.
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine with his claws out, standing over some dead people, and with a butterfly on his hand. His X-Men belt buckle is lit up, for some reason. Like X-Force, this book carries the world’s smallest “parental advisory” warning.
PAGES 2-4. Alaska. A badly injured Wolverine wakes up surrounded by the corpses of X-Force. He sets off following a set of footprints.
Most of the issue is flashbacks leading up to this point. The implication is that the Pale Girl, leader of the Flower Cartel, makes Wolverine kill the rest of X-Force. (It really is fortunate that the X-Men came up with this resurrection thing in time for the Krakoa era, because ever since, they’ve become remarkably prone to getting killed…)
Domino doesn’t have her Krakoan skin grafts, so this must take place after current issues of X-Force.
“James, Logan, Patch, Weapon X, Wolverine.” All names associated with Wolverine. James is his real first name; “Patch” was an identity he used in Madripoor.
“Canada, Madripoor, New York, Japan, Krakoa.” Again, places particularly associated with Wolverine. He presumably means New York state (where the X-Men’s mansion was based) rather than New York City.
“Had by bones turned inside out.” Not literally, but presumably a reference to Magneto tearing out his adamantium in X-Men vol 2 #25.
“Nuked, steamrolled, crucified, ripped in half…” I don’t remember Wolverine getting nuked, but I’m sure someone’s done it. The steamroller is from Punisher vol 6 #17. The crucifix is from Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #251. Wolverine was cut in half in the current X-Force run when a gate was shut off while he was going through it – if you want literally ripped in half, there’s also Ultimate Wolverine vs Hulk, but that’s not the same Wolverine.
PAGES 5-6. Recap and credits. The first story is “The Flower Cartel” by Benjamin Percy (who also writes Wolverine in X-Force), Adam Kubert and Frank Martin. The small print on the data pages just says “adamantium” and “best there is, bub”.
PAGES 7-8. Wolverine plays hide and seek with the Krakoan kids.
We’ve seen Wolverine playing with the kids on Krakoa before – in House of X #1, for example – and it suggests he’s letting his guard down at least a little bit, even if not as much as some other characters.
Percy also chucks in a reminder of Logan’s longstanding romantic tension with Jean; X-Men has indicated that there’s some sort of menage-a-trois relationship going on with Cyclops at the moment, but neither book has explored that further.
PAGES 9-11. Kate Pryde briefs Wolverine on thefts of drugs from the Krakoan supply chain.
Kate Pryde is currently meant to be dead over in Marauders, though I think we all know she’s clearly going to get better. She’s wearing the same traditional X-Men costume that she was wearing in X-Men/Fantastic Four #1 (as opposed to her pirate outfit from early issues of Marauders). There are some fairly ordinary-looking dock workers behind her, presumably loading drugs onto the Marauder – since they’re on Krakoa, these are apparently mutant residents of Krakoa who actually have jobs and don’t just sit around admiring the plants all day.
Whisky. Kate was smuggling whisky onto the island in Marauders #1 as well. It’s still not entirely clear why Wolverine can’t just go through a gate, buy some, and bring it back – or get someone less conspicuous to do it for him.
The Krakoan farm workers appear to be versions of the Multiple Man.
“Everything gets delivered the old-fashioned way – by ship.” Er… well, kind of. X-Force #4 (which Percy wrote) shows an oil-rig-style distribution site off the US eastern seaboard, to which drugs are apparently transported by gates. But presumably they complete their journey by ship.
PAGES 12-13. Narcotics agent Jeff Bannister investigates the pollen cartel.
We’ll find out more about this guy in a data page right at the end of the issue, though it won’t explain the strange mark on the right side of his head.
PAGE 14. A data page on the Order of X. This mutant-worshipping cult has also appeared in Marauders, which was rather more explicit in pointing out that they suddenly appeared at the time of Xavier’s telepathic address to the world, and may in fact be an indication of widespread psychic damage caused by that incident. This data page notes the timing, but nothing more than that. The Order has now taken to carving X’s into their flesh, and a few real extremists have got ideas about ascending by consuming mutants (not dissimilar to the U-Men from New X-Men).
PAGES 15-16. Sage finds a lead on the missing drugs in Moscow.
Wolverine rounds up X-Force to investigate. Jean is a little more tactile with him than usual, but not drastically so. We’ve seen in Marauders and X-Force that Krakoa and Russia are on bad terms.
PAGES 17-18. Bannister visits his daughter in hospital.
She’s on the waiting list for Krakoan drugs, so Bannister isn’t thrilled about people stealing them. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen it mentioned that the X-Men are struggling (and failing) to keep up with demand even for those countries that are meant to be on friendly terms with them.
PAGE 19. A data page about blood groups, the gist being that Wolverine’s blood has a healing property. This fits more closely with the back-up strip, particularly given the references to vampires – but it could also be relevant to Bannister.
PAGES 20-25. X-Force blunder into a meeting of drug-crazed Order of X zealots.
“It is no mistake that X is a tilted representation of the cross.” Wolverine was crucified on an X-shaped cross in Uncanny #251. But this isn’t original; essentially the same reasoning was used in the Middle Ages to claim that Saint Andrew had been crucified on a tilted cross too. (If he was, it’s remarkable nobody thought to mention it earlier.)
“Because the mutants represent eternal life…” Literally true on Krakoa.
Pollen. The Order of X crazies believe that pollen – the drug made from stolen Krakoan pharmaceuticals – can eventually convert them into some sort of human/mutant hybrid, whatever that would be. This pollen, however, is a synthetic knock off which kills them quickly. The next couple of scenes seem to suggest that this isn’t an intentional poisoning, but just a genuine botch job in trying to make pollen independently of the Flower Cartel.
PAGES 26-28. Wolverine confronts the mobsters responsible for the tainted drugs.
The mobsters explain that they’re trying to escape from the influence of the “Pale Girl”, who has some sort of mind control (or at least mind influencing) powers, and makes people commit acts of self harm. She seems to be a new character. Her group is the titular Flower Cartel.
PAGE 29. In parallel, Wolverine and Bannister make plans.
Bannister proposes setting up a meeting with the Flower Cartel. This is expanded upon in his data page later in the issue, which places the meeting in Alaska (which is where Wolverine and X-Force wind up).
PAGES 30-32. Alaska. Wolverine has a brief vision of the Pale Girl and meets Bannister and his men.
Logan is back to thinking about how dangerous he is, and how people should stay away from him (in contrast to his upbeat mood on Krakoa).
PAGE 33. Credits for the second story: “Catacombs” by Benjamin Percy, Viktor Bogdanovic and Matthew Wilson.
PAGES 34-38. Omega Red arrives on Krakoa, much to Wolverine’s horror.
Krakoa. In this story, Wolverine is much more sceptical about Krakoa, regarding its shifting landscape as untrustworthy. It fits with X-Force but seems a little at odds with his attitude at the start of the main story. Like some other characters, Wolverine seems aware of the strangeness of even A-list villains being accepted as fellow mutants, but also to accept it as part of the way things are on Krakoa.
Omega Red. This is Arkady Russovitch, a Russian mutant who started as a serial killer, then got powered up even further by a Russian super-soldier program. He debuted in X-Men vol 2 #4 in 1991, and was last seen in the “Age of X-Man” event, where he seemed to get blown up in Apocalypse & The X-Tracts #4. But that world wasn’t entirely real, so…
Omega Red is an unequivocal bad guy, but no worse than (say) Sabretooth, who was allowed onto the island. Like Sabretooth, he was also a member of Weapon X-Force, the team from the tail end of the recent Weapon X series; he showed some signs of humanising in that series.
PAGES 39-40. Wolverine investigates the chaos left behind by Omega Red in Paris.
The Paris gate is the Arc de Triomphe, which I’m pretty sure we’ve seen before. This seems needlessly provocative.
The idea that Omega Red reminds Wolverine of his “own worst self” is an angle that’s been done many times with Sabretooth.
PAGES 41-44. Wolverine is reluctantly persuaded to investigate Omega Red’s claims that the bodies were nothing to do with him.
Wolverine really is being inconsistent in objecting so strongly to Omega Red but not to some of the other murderous lunatics who are wandering around the island. On the other hand, Magneto’s argument that it’s an acceptable risk because any victims can always be resurrected is unimpressive – as Wolverine points out, the experience of being murdered would still be traumatic.
PAGES 45-51. Wolverine investigates La Oubliette du Roi, which turns out to be a vampire bar. A Christian warrior, Louise, rescues him.
Oubliette. An oubliette is actually a “bottle dungeon” – a dungeon only accessible through a door in the ceiling. I’m pretty sure the stuff about water being introduced is urban legend.
PAGES 52-54. Omega Red claims he was fighting vampires.
Vampire Nation. This is an established Marvel Universe term for organised vampiredom.
The Carbonadium synthesizer. This was a device that Omega Red needed in order to stabilise his enhanced powers, and which Wolverine did indeed help keep away from him. Omega is basically claiming that this was why he killed so many people; however, as Wolverine says, he was indeed already a serial killer before that point. (See, for example, Generation X #11.)
Saint Julian. Specifically, this is the story of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, who may or may not have ever existed. Naturally, the bit where he kills his parents in a blind rage over adultery comes before his conversion to Christianity, after which he’s supposed to have started building hospitals and houses for the poor. The bit of the story that interests Omega Red is that Julian brief turns from helping the poor after “the enemy” comes into his house in the form of a particularly disruptive poor person, but Jesus is supposed to have set him back on the right path. So he’s a reformed murderer who learns to let bad people into his home, you see.
PAGES 55-62. Wolverine returns to Paris and fights vampires again alongside Louise.
The Nightguard are new, as far as I can tell.
Dracula. Last seen in Deadpool vol 4 #29, when he was supposed to have gone off into retirement with Deadpool’s ex-wife Shiklah. I suspect we’re just going to ignore all that.
PAGE 63. Dracula gives Omega Red the Carbonadium synthesizer but keeps him as a double agent.
PAGE 64. A data page on… pollen? Are we sure these weren’t swapped round? Anyway, this is mainly back story for Bannister, making the point that different forces within the US government are giving him different signals – some want to shut down the trade, others see it as an opportunity to form an alliance.
PAGES 65-67. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: BEYOND THE PALE.
Wasn’t Omega Red already mentioned as being on Krakoa?
I thought he was one of the “vampiric” mutants who were given the job of monitoring Krakoa, along with Selene and Emplate (maybe a few others), to make sure that Krakoa wasn’t feeding too much on the mutants.
Maybe Omega Red wasn’t on that list though.
Also, Dracula was heavily featured in the Jason Aaron Avengers series very recently.
It seemed like Aaron had bigger plans for Dracula.
I wonder if this cuts in to any plans Aaron had going forward.
“I don’t remember Wolverine getting nuked, but I’m sure someone’s done it.”
Daniel Way’s Venom run. It tore his t-shirt, and nothing more. https://uncannyxmen.net/comics/issue/venom-1st-series-9
“It really is fortunate that the X-Men came up with this resurrection thing in time for the Krakoa era, because ever since, they’ve become remarkably prone to getting killed.”
If you know you have a safety net, you’re probably more willing to let yourself fall. I’m sure the safety net will go away again sooner or later. Let’s see if they get themselves killed *then*.
re – Wolverine getting nuked
Wolverine was in Hiroshima as depicted in the “Logan” mini -series from BKV and Eduardo Risso
Dracula has actually been a pretty big part of the current Aaron Avengers run.
He secretly incites a war/culling among the vampires, destroys castle Dracula, cons everyone, and starts a new vampire nation in Chernobyl (a place the living can’t easily go.)
He also sets up Gorilla Man as his mole in the Avengers organization by promising to turn him human.
So pretty much the same play as with Omega Red.
Vampires were in Domino as well. Was that Dracula? I think these are probably seeds, and we’ll be getting a vampire-themed major event in a couple of years.
It was just Selene and Emplate who were mentioned in X-Men #3 as monitoring Krakoa. We did see the Omega Clan in Powers of X #5, but that’s a different Omega Red.
It seems like there is quite a class system developing on Krakoa.
If you’re a current member of a X-team, you can go gallivanting off on wild adventures and get preferential treatment with resurrections.
If you’re a former member of a X-team or were an antagonist of the X-Men, you get to sit around in paradise and do nothing except enjoy yourself.
However, if you’re a nobody mutant, you’re going to be put to work as slave labour.
“If you know you have a safety net, you’re probably more willing to let yourself fall. I’m sure the safety net will go away again sooner or later. Let’s see if they get themselves killed *then*.”
I’m sure this functions as a workable excuse for people who are working hard to make excuses, but this is yet another example of these characters behaving nothing like real people. The richest cast of characters in comics are all reduced to props in service of the Big Idea.
That was just rude. You owe Joe an apology.
“(It really is fortunate that the X-Men came up with this resurrection thing in time for the Krakoa era, because ever since, they’ve become remarkably prone to getting killed…)”
This has been one of the more dispiriting things to encounter in this brave new era, because it means the X-men––our heroes, if we’re reading these X-books––are losing all of the time. They lose fights, get killed, seemingly at the drop of a hat. They lose fights to people you wouldn’t credit with the stuff to stop the X-men. Some of these human groups seem to be able to “reach out and touch” the X-men with a newly superlative ease. It’s very strange to read.
It reminds me a bit of the weird feelings I felt reading Avengers vs. X-men some years ago, when it occurred to me that the X-men were in fact going to lose that fight. If you’re an X-men fan, it seems ridiculous that the Avengers would be able to defeat the mutants, who save the world as routinely as the Avengers and who, more importantly, spend most of their time training to fight and developing strategies to work together. Of course, if you’re a big Avengers fan, I suppose the reverse could seem true (as a fairly decent Avengers fan, though, I still thought it was BS––let’s not forget that in her first appearance, Rogue alone wiped the floor with ALL the Avengers––and she did it again with a bunch of Avengers in an AvX tie-in book, just to put over the idea that she could do it again this time, and was simply choosing not to). Either way, it’s hard to sustain this image of the X-men losing the fight against the Avengers in your mind. It seems to diminish them needlessly, as when Jim Shooter thought it would be cool if Spider-man just tap-danced all over them during the original Secret Wars. If you’re a fan of the characters, it’s hard to hold that apparent contradiction of what you know of the X-men in your mind, and hard to look at them the same way afterwards––as the authors of the individual books clearly expect you to do.
But in this new era the X-men have been wiped out or sustained heavy losses in title after title. This is the second time we’ve seen Quentin Quire die in less than two months, which seems fairly excessive. And as in the AvX era, I find my mind rebelling against this constant stream of fatal losses on the X-men’s part. They did better when they were down to four or five members, as they were several times in the 80s, pulling through mission after mission with everybody intact. In that time they even seemed to grow with combat experience, losing initial fights against the Freedom Force, the Hellfire Club, and the Mauraders, only to turn around and hand those villains their asses in later rematches. Now the X-men have an army, filled with allegedly quite smart, resourceful experienced and powerful people; and they are routinely getting hornswoggled by mutant hate group after mutant hate group after paramilitary group, after demented grandma inventor collective. It is glum to read it all in quick succession.
It is I think one of the key ways this new direction for the X-men punishes you for reading the title in the past. We’re punished for liking and following the book by having characters moved wildly out-of-step vis-a-vis their previous characterization, denied access to their past histories as any kind of jumping–on point with their current action (in fact, if you missed all the New Mutants series from the initial one up until this new one, the New Mutants’ character behaviors in the current series would be a little easier to buy into). And we’re punished especially by the largely unjustified cognitive dissonance so much of this new status quo takes upon itself at every turn. Seeing all these characters we know to be stalwart and relentlessly trained fighters with extraordinary power getting shut down all the time by regular guys with guns is pretty dissonant. Seeing characters die repeatedly in a space of months is extremely dissonant (this is by far the least effective X-force field team there’s been since that series was brought back by Kyle and Yost––without even putting to bed their first case they’ve already had their crew killed twice over, another member’s been flayed alive, they let the main guy they were protecting at all get killed by relatively ordinary humans, and the first actual intelligence mission they’ve done has resulted in their intelligence expert getting a needlessly big head and overlooking the details that would tell him that they hadn’t wrapped up the case at all––and that’s coming from one of the more interesting books in the lineup). So if you’ve read these characters and liked them––not to mention if you’ve identified at all with their continued existence as characters in any meaningful way––the joke is on you, because the rules are different. Now characters don’t have to act like themselves, don’t have to wear their most current costume (needlessly confusing), and they die all the time, in any number of manners you’ll find none too pleasing as story beats.
I imagine that the point of this for Hickman may be to neutralize the idea of character death meaning anything––as if using it enough eventually robs us of its power. And I suppose in an industry where valuable characters can never stay dead, nor stay out of action for too long, for licensing reasons, there is a case to be made that writers go to the well of killing characters all too often for cheap effects––well, killing them in this way is a cheap effect, too. And I don’t think the neutralization of death as a story beat is having any too beneficial an effect. The killing of Kate Pryde a couple of weeks ago was handled with a decent amount of pathos, and this week’s issue gave characters a rare chance to actually be affected by her death––but it’s all going to be for very little when she gets resurrected in a couple more issues. And I’m reminded that the last time they killed Kitty Pryde––at least the last time I remember it happening, when she phased a huge bullet through the earth and became irrevocably bonded to it in Astonishing X-men––there was a lot of pathos, and the death stuck for quite a while. It was also nice to get her back later. It all seemed to have some meaning and some poetry to it, and it made something that seemed to be pretty productive for the character of Kitty Pryde. Those things had some impact not only because there were those long periods letting the new status quo settle, but also because death and the resurrection were each given a significant story treatment, with drama and with ways for the reader to feel empathy, and get involved in drama. That’s not happening nearly so much in the current era. So it’s weird to see X-force dead at Wolverine’s hands at the beginning of this story, but it’s already starting to feel pretty commonplace. And because so much of this new status quo is done badly, it’s all going to be so much dross washing over us in the end. Questions like “how will Jean react the next time she gets in bed with Logan in her room on the moon?” can hardly be addressed in the current status quo. And yet, it seems like something, don’t you think? As Logan says, trauma sticks around, and a resurrected Jean Grey is still going to have memories or at least someone’s recounting to her of Logan hacking her to death––that might be in her mind when that intimate moment at the Summers house eventually transpires. That would be a strange exchange to see. But we won’t see it, because the illusion of this new status quo doesn’t reach that deep. It is mostly just a surface facade, and most of these characters are there as props rather than characters, just as Dazzler says.
Ironically, the characters that are on Krakoa to be characters don’t get treated all that much better. They are each to one degree or another treated as ciphers, and I have to say that the conceit is wearing precariously thin. Maybe characters like Professor X and Apocalypse are in fact “up to something,” but we’ve had a passel of stories so far where whatever they’re “up to” has not been teased out any further at all. It’s becoming a monstrous bore, pouring over these anemic stories for “clues.” Clues that someone is, indeed, “up to something.” Clues that might develop this story a precious centimeter further. And this Wolverine comic seems to be the one replacing Fallen Angels, in this sense: the stories seem almost destined to prove inconsequential, and to be much more tangentially related to the X-men’s general status quo than the writers of each book seem to think they are. This “Pale Girl” is the new “Apoth,” a soon-to-be pointless character with a slim connection to the overall themes of the new X-men status quo––a giant yet undernourished undertaking.
Character dying more now that it won’t stick is just one of those genre things. You have to file it in the same place as “How did Lois Lane stay alive before Superman showed up?” and “Why do the bad guys always go for Cable’s -metal- arm?”
The complaint that it makes the characters seem like losers because in a different circumstance they wouldn’t have been able to survive is an odd one to me. In so many of their stories they only survive or succeed through luck or fortuitous factors outside their control anyway.
Anyway, there’s no need to guess as to Hickman’s motivation in getting death off the table. He’s been rather upfront about the why of it all:
“The other thing is, it doesn’t mean anything anymore. It doesn’t mean anything when we kill characters in our books anymore because everybody knows that the IP is coming back. It doesn’t have the impact and I’ve said this in the writers’ room: You need to stop telling those stories, about killing characters. I understand that sometimes narratively you want to do something dramatic but let me tell you, as a storytelling mechanism, walking in the room and kicking all the toys over is not a good look anymore. It’s not the kind of stories that people are wanting to read. It’s not actually helpful in terms of you doing your job 5 years down the road. It makes all of our jobs incredibly difficult.
“One of the reasons why I did the resurrection stuff was not only because I wanted everybody to be able to have all the mutants back without us doing like literally 30 issues of bringing characters back in various ways. We brought everybody back, and we made it so that if you told a story where they died, it’s a plot device and not an emotional hammering of the reader. You can’t play it as, “Oh my god, this is awful and terrible.” You have to more creative than that. I’ve challenged all of the X-writers. If you have a story where the character has to die it’s fine, but what’s the other story? What’s the more interesting story, right? Instead of us holding hand and weeping about how sad it is that we don’t have Gambit anymore. That funeral would have less people at it than Maggott’s funeral, one could argue.”
My main two thoughts about this issue – if we have to have a Wolverine ongoing – and I guess there’s no choice, since he remains the most marketable mutant – I think I prefer it this way, as basically a side-story to X-Force, written by the writer of X-Force. (With the alternative being an ongoing with it’s own status quo, take on character and cast, which most likely would have no impact or even wouldn’t be referenced in the other titles Wolverine was starring in, which was usually the case with his ongoings).
And the second thought – considering that the x-books are all sort of connected now (apart from Fallen Angels), when I read about a ‘pale girl who can make people do things’ I was 100% certain we were going to see Serafina.
I literally only now, writing these words, realized that it’s not even a case of there being two pale girl influencers in x-books now – I forgot Hickman inverted Serafina’s colouring, so she’s no longer pale…
HoX #6 had him sharing a beer with Gorgan, who treated him even worse, so why object to Omega Red?
The mutant drug I is supposed to be an adaptive antibiotic, so it shouldn’t do anything for leukemia.
You didn’t mention that Logan appears to once again be an amnesiac. Could be a dirty way to temporarily reset his character arc (which I feel has been basically cannibalizing itself since he “grew up” and became a headmaster).
I think we should definitely an eye on this Jeff Bannister fellow. I think there may be more to him than he lets on…
https://twitter.com/hashtag/mannister
About character deaths, I find myself rather ambivalent.
I agree with Alan L that the idea of doing away with the “dead and eventually resurrected again” cliché has only led to the new cliché of the heroes constantly getting wiped out because they can be resurrected next issue. On the other hand, I do like the idea of providing a shortcut to bringing back old characters whose deaths had little dramatic meaning anyway. As a fan of some of those characters, part of me rejoices.
I agree with YLu about the X-Men coming off like losers. It doesn’t bother me either. Death or no death, the X-Men have been in a losing battle for as long as I remember reading comics because dramatic conventions demand an escalation of the themes, driving the dream of peaceful co-existence with humans (their ultimate goal) further and further away with each new big event. They’ve always come off as losers to me, but I like them that way. It makes their achievements even more spectacular because they have to work hard at it. Plus, they’re stubborn adherence to values that seem to be eroding with each new status quo makes them more heroic to me. On the other hand, that’s kind of a moot point because the Krakoa set up has them giving up on that heroic dream in favor of mutant supremacist segregation. Part of me groans.
And as much as I deeply resent his using the argument as an excuse to denigrate yet another commenter, I actually agree with Dazzler’s assertion that it dehumanizes the characters. My reasons are a bit different than his, mind you. For me, fear of death is one of the few universal traits that unites all of humanity. Even though I know the heroes will come back eventually, I want them to treat the possibility of death as the end of the line the way the rest of us would. Removing that will obviously make them less relatable. On the other hand, it also seems obvious that Hickman and co. want us to look at the X-Men as “other” at the moment. There are plenty of indications that it’s a deliberate part of the larger story, which could turn out a wonderful opportunity to comment on the current excesses in debating real-life social issues. Part of me raises an eyebrow, perplexed but curious.
I’ve been annoyed and frustrated with the escalation of Wolverine’s healing factor for a very long time. There have been a few attempts to scale it back to something reasonable, but I guess the being able to do all the body horror stuff has more allure to writers than actually having the hero be clever, so here’s another story that opens with Wolverine’s face blown off.
The problem is, now they’ve extended that to ALL the characters, so everybody is fair game to get maimed and killed and none of it means anything. It definitely makes the characters less relatable, a) because they’re so far removed from any recognizable human experience, and b) because you’re forced to turn off any sort of empathy you have for them in order to endure watching them get maimed and killed all the time.
Hickman may have intended to force writers to find ways besides death to create drama by taking the permanence of death off the table, but that’s actually had the opposite effect. Writers can kill characters willy-nilly now (rather than writing about literally anything else), and there’s not even the illusion of the death mattering.
It kind of sucks, and it’s definitely not leading to interesting and engaging stories.
Wolverine’s ridiculous regenerating powers (infinite meat from the meat dimension) is a long-sailed ship so what I was more bothered by in the opening is that it’s a premise built on Wolverine fanwank. Like in Old Man Logan, we see dead X-Men and are told how Wolverine killed them all because he’s so… so… short and hairy, I guess.
(Unless they’re not really dead, because comics, but the hero’s certain they’re dead so let’s go by that).
With the element of surprise Logan could take down one of them. But out of those three – even Domino should be able to put up a fight and Jean and Quentin are Omegas, as HoXPoX reminded us.
Nevermind that they’re Omegas, they’re telekinetics. Logan needs to be standing on the ground to do anything. Lift him up in the air, keep him there until he’s no longer mind controlled. There, plot premise solved, now can somebody write a more plausible opening?
The problem is that the writers are still trying to use character death to create tension.
Professor X died…How will HE, of all people, ever be resurrected.
A few issues later, “Oh, he was resurrected perfectly fine, after all”.
Wait! Kitty Pryde? But, maybe she won’t be able to be resurrected!
Oh, I’m sure she will be able to be at some point.
Now, Wolverine has killed all of his team-mates!
It seems like the writers are trying to use death become a defacto plot-point, and it’s one of the least interesting ones, especially with the resurrection plot.
I think the biggest problem is that everything with this relaunch revolves around the mystery elements.
Except, nothing can be revealed about those plots until Hickman gets around to telling the reader.
Meanwhile, there are soon-to-be twelve X-books, coming out two or three times a month, that need to be filled with…something.
All of these books are so inconsequential, most of them just killing time, waiting for Hickman.
So, another problem is that, without furthering the mystery of Krakoa, most of the X-books are left to tell the same types of stories that have been featured in X-books for years.
Except, the characters don’t have the characterization or back-story that made those stories (at least) somewhat of interest to readers.
So, “Dawn of X” basically turns in to a cross-over event, with all these tie-in books to the side.
This creates the problem that most big events are billed as a six-issue mini-series (or what-have-you).
“Dawn of X” has no real set time-scale. They just keep pushing out more and more tie-in books, while the main selling point (the mystery of Krakoa) lags in the background.
The illogic of it all is that there are interesting stories waiting to be told about Krakoa that don’t require revelations about the secrets.
The writers seem to have no interest in telling those stories.
They seem to be stuck writing on-going tie-in books for a never-ending cross-over event.
“This is the second time we’ve seen Quentin Quire die in less than two months, which seems fairly excessive.“
I respectfully disagree. Ideally, we should be seeing Quentin Quire die AT LEAST once a month. Preferably more.
When Quentin isn’t dying on screen, all the other characters should be wondering, “Where’s Quentin? And is he dead?”
“(infinite meat from the meat dimension)”
LOL
“I respectfully disagree. Ideally, we should be seeing Quentin Quire die AT LEAST once a month. Preferably more.”
I’m sure more than a few in-comic characters would also agree with you… Poor Quentin!
“(infinite meat from the meat dimension)”
This cracked me up too 🙂
As first issues go since the relaunch, I thought this was better than… almost all of them? I am surprised by this even as I am typing.
A lot of that has to do with Adam Kubert. To my eyes, this is the best his art has looked in a long while. I thought his recent Cap, Spidey and Avengers runs were all kinda subpar (for him) and that he had maybe lost a step. Hard to beat his Wolverine though and working on the character seems to have reinvigorated him.
For that reason alone, I preferred the 1st story to the 2nd, but also because I couldn’t care less about vampires. And like others have mentioned, this Dracula plot doesn’t seem to mesh with what Aaron is doing in Avengers, which was not nearly as self-serious and thus far more entertaining.
But the blood page just out and out confused me.
In Powers of X 6, the Librarian makes a point in saying that Logan and Moira are lucky to have the same blood type. My interpretation of that, is that only a few select people can use Wolverine’s blood to extend their life or heal. OK, fine.
And then there is this page, which I *think* is saying that anyone can use it, no matter the type, the effects just won’t be as great once it is outside his body, but they will still heal somewhat?
So now, not only is his healing factor overpowered, but his blood is some miracle cure as well? Has this previously been established?
Anywho, thanks for keeping up with the deluge of books, Paul. Don’t know how you do it.
Wolverine used his blood to revive/heal Doctor Voodoo recently in Savage Avengers (#2), and if I remember right Wolverine was kind of surprised that it worked. That was the first I heard of it.
Incidentally, with all these characters suffering horrific deaths and then immediately coming back, if the writers were willing to be bold, they’d introduce Slapstick as a villain.
Taibak-I’m wondering if you meant Gruenwald’s Captain America character Madcap, the nihilistic character with unwanted resurrection powers?
If so, he can also relate to the mutants how everything they are attempting is purposeless, and that mutants are doomed.
“No everything is not fine. No matter what you try, you are destined to die, and nothing you do on Krakoa will have mattered.”
For the record, I really don’t think I’ve denigrated anyone, and I’d say the crowd has been harsher to me than vice versa. I just think many of you have been tricked into thinking something is much better and more meritorious than it really is. You think I’m arrogant, I think Jonathan Hickman is arrogant and I think everything about this direction is pretentious and frivolous while masquerading as something important. Pretty run of the mill stuff for a comments section. I’d hate to see how some of you would react to actual internet menaces.
PS Alan L killed it. Bravo.
@Chris V
I’d argue that there really isn’t that much mystery driving the current set-up.
By my count there is only one major mystery hanging: One is the background slow burn mystery of the Arakko/Krakoa business — which is so minor that when Hickman did do an issue devoted to it, people were calling it filler and asking when we’d go back to the meat of the story.
It’s a far cry from the sort of ‘mystery box’ plotting that’s du jour in serialized fiction.
I’d have thought Wolverine’s blood would be detrimental to anyone unfortunate enough to be injected with it. Its super-healing would see the host as foreign matter and try to destroy it. Multiple organ rejection, but it’s your own organs.
@Alan L, while I recognize that there has been quite a bit of power levels inflation in the X-Men along the years, those people who claim to be Avengers these days include some very formidable beings as well, and they neither feel the need to attempt to restrict themselves to mutants nor to restrict themselves at all.
It is fitting that we are discussing this in a comments section originated by a Wolverine book. Wolverine is a superb example of how malleable those things can be.
A character who is supposed to be evenly matched to _both_ Nick Fury and the Hulk. A guy who heals real fast, has enhanced senses… but ultimately has no offensive capabilities beyond ridiculously sharp claws and no ranged attacks whatsoever. And yet ends up being recruited by Adam Warlock (alongside Professor Hulk) to use “lethal force” against freaking Thanos (during Infinity Gauntlet).
As others pointed out, that Wolverine (or for that matter the Hulk) is routinely shown to hold his own against ridiculously powerful foes such as many other X-Men (say Jean Grey, or Armor, or Iceman, or Quicksilver) is little more than pure artistic license.
On the subject of Wolverine’s “lethal” status against more powerful characters, from Roger Ebert’s review of the first X-Men movie: “I can’t help wondering how a guy whose knuckles turn into switchblades gets to be the top-ranking superhero. If Storm can control, say, a tropical storm, she’s obviously the most powerful.”
YLu-Everything revolves around the mystery of exactly what is Moira’s plan.
It’s certainly something more than set up an island nation for mutants and turn them in to mutant supremacists.
That’s the biggest mystery behind-the-scenes.
You can branch off from there to other mysteries that are being hinted.
Why are characters acting so strangely?
What is the exact nature of Krakoa?
Why is Moira so afraid of having Destiny resurrected (although that one surely ties directly to Moira’s plot)?
Dazzler-When Marvel Corporation pulls a truck up to your house and asks you to revamp the X-Men, maybe you have the right to be arrogant, like you feel about Hickman.
Regardless of how anyone feels about him as a writer, a monopolistic corporation is willing to pay the guy big bucks.
That’s kind of earned arrogance.
Just stumbled upon the new Thundercats reboot. Reminds me of Teen Titans Go! and how much fans of the original show hated it. But these are reboots/parodies that exist in their own universes. The current line is a reboot that abuses and forsakes the source material. Teen Titans Go! doesn’t change episodes of the original. HOXPOX by its own design and intent changes the existing stories. That’s a big part of why I’m offended and outspoken. They couldn’t just let the concept stand on its own merit.
I’d also like to add the complaint that none of this emphasizes anything about what makes the X-Men special. Their bargaining chip with the world is a flower that came out of nowhere and has nothing to do with anything. It’s the product of one vampiric mutant antagonist and it was never a thing before Hickman farted it out. Wouldn’t it be better and more organic and make more sense if they offered the world something that arose out of the vast array of astonishing gifts that are being entirely wasted on some bland island. There’s, like, no elements of this that grow logically from anything whatsoever. And yet this story insists on recontextualizing the entire history of the team.
I’m afraid you’re the one who has been tricked by a greedy, soulless monopolistic corporation which thinks that their characters (actually property) are anything more than copyrights and cash cows.
Claremont came to realize this, Grant Morrison realized this, Hickman realizes this, a lot of the fans who are willing to read Hickman’s run and just enjoy it for what they feel it is realize this.
Morrison and Hickman are trying to tell what they think are good stories, and a mega-corporation is willing to throw cash at them for their vision.
Meanwhile, you’re raving about the fact that a corporation doesn’t care about these characters as characters.
History is meaningless to a corporation, unless it’s for selling collected editions or trying to cobble together the plot for the next movie. Money is the only thing with meaning.
They’ve hooked you.
Ah, looks like those data pages were uploaded out of sequence for the digital edition. My print copy has the Pollen data page in the first story and the issue ends with the Bloodwork data page.
“Wolverine used his blood to revive/heal Doctor Voodoo recently in Savage Avengers (#2), and if I remember right Wolverine was kind of surprised that it worked. That was the first I heard of it.”
Isn’t that supposed to be (the original) Angel’s thing? Doesn’t he still have that secondary mutation?
Um, obviously I’m hooked. That’s not news. I’ve stated in plain English that I’m irrationally emotionally invested in these characters. And I’m not directing my comments to a money-making corporation, I’m directing them to ye loyal consumers.
@Thom H
Angel’s healing blood hasn’t been mentioned since Austen, IIRC. Besides M-Day, the whole Archangel-as-Hulk thing has happened in the meantime, plus Dark Angel, metal-winged amnesiac Angel and back to Hulkangel.
I think it’s reasonably safe to say he no longer has it.
@Chris V
“Everything revolves around the mystery of exactly what is Moira’s plan. It’s certainly something more than set up an island nation for mutants and turn them in to mutant supremacists.”
Is it? I think it’s very possible that’s the case but I wouldn’t call it a certainty. There’s no reason it couldn’t just be what it is at face value, a consolidation mutant of power and influnce so that they’re in a position to prevent the rise of AI.
Even if there is more to it (very possible), it’s not the sort of mystery plotting that’s in vogue now. There haven’t been any cryptic comments about “real plans,” no slow eking out of vague clues, no mysterious figures or symbols showing up just to have everyone speculating. (See: Every streaming show in 2019.)
If it is a mystery, it’s more in line with one of the “Who is the X-traitor?” variety, in that I don’t see how its lack of development limits the stories that the titles can tell. It’s not the sort of mystery interwoven with the larger story so that everything is dependent on its progression and must take its cues from that. It, in fact, is separate from these characters’ daily concerns of trying to build up Krakoa, which is still a very real and genuine concern despite whatever we’re not being told.
(It’d be different if there were a Moira title, but she’s been near absent so far.)
What stories are the books being prevented from telling by the slow movement of this mystery? In what manner are they being forced into a holding position?
Well, there’s the fact that characters are all acting very strangely, and no one knows why.
I’d say there are constant hints being thrown out about how Krakoa is effecting the mutants.
The latest issue of X-Men has a lot of hints that there’s more going on, with Destiny giving hints to Mystique that Krakoa isn’t really a paradise.
If the characters all have to be written as strange and out-of-character, then that is very limiting to writers.
If everything does feed in to Moira’s secret plan (which is, in fact, something other than what it seems), then it limits what creators are able to write.
The only reason they’re on Krakoa, the entirety of Xavier’s change, it all only exists due to Moira having a plan.
So, if Moira’s big plan is what’s behind everything, and only Hickman can tell that story, the most of the “Dawn of X” titles will have to spin their wills waiting for another revelation as to what’s going on with Krakoa.
What’s really strange is that there should be a lot of stories opened up by Krakoa which it seems like writers would want to play around with (Cyclops, Wolverine, Jean), but for some reason the writers aren’t even showing interest in those ideas.
@Chris V
Are the characters acting strangely, or are they just Hickman characters acting like Hickman characters? Considering how they act much more like themselves in the other titles, I’d wager on the latter. It strikes me as improbable that Marvel’s going to do a years-long story that ultimately reveals -all- the characters haven’t really been themselves the whole time. If there were a time to reveal such a twist, it’d be at the beginning.
Destiny says Mystique would -believe- Krakoa is too good to be true, but she leaves it open-ended whether it actually is or not. And in any case, “they’ll keep lying and stringing you along instead of resurrecting the love of your life” is probably enough to render Krakoa obscenely flawed in those two’s eyes anyway. Mystique is the same woman who decided to let the universe end when she found out she couldn’t revive Destiny, in that bizarre WOLVERINES series before SECRET WARS. There doesn’t need to be some sinister Moira secret on top of that.
Even if Moira has hidden motives for Krakoa, they’re more likely to be in addition to the stated ones, not some revelation that the stated ones are purely a cover story. Because having a strong, united, globally influential mutant nation is something it makes perfect sense for this version of Moira to want anyway. So we already have her reason; there just might also be additional reasons as well. (Indeed, the mutants already had their Krakoa in Life 6, well before Moira thought up her current grand plan while in the womb in Life 10.)
Iceman and Storm showing hatred of humans and acting violently in Marauders is certainly out of character.
Neither have ever acted in that way before.
Mystique has also been written as very committed to the mutant cause in the past in the Marvel Universe.
If the only reason she felt she had to live was Destiny, to that extreme of a level, I would assume she would have killed herself sometime after Destiny died.
I would think that mutant nationalism is something that Mystique and Destiny would both want.
Although it was a past life, Mystique and Destiny were the only reason that Moira embraces the mutant cause.
It seemed more like Destiny was telling Mystique that if Krakoa refuses to resurrect her, it means that something is very wrong on Krakoa. One of her vague prophecies.
Again, it seems that Hickman is dropping a lot of hints along the way, but no one can really know, because no one knows where any of this is going.
I, personally, think that it’s all deliberate, and that things are not what they seem.
I’m blanking on when Storm was unusually aggressive but in Iceman’s case isn’t the simpler explanation that he was really upset about a close friend’s death?
I’ll point out that just this month, X and Magneto dragging their feet about resurrecting Destiny was enough to get Mystique not to sabotage Nimrod, despite the danger its existence posed to mutants.
I have no doubt there’s more to Moira’s story. If nothing else, there are those black-out journal entries. But I don’t think those secrets are going to negate what we do already know about Krakoa. I think everyone’s expecting that this is all heading towards some eventual reversal, with Krakoa collapsing and the mutants returning to the four corners of the globe. But while I have no doubt that’ll happen *someday*, I think it’s fully possible Hickman has no plans for that day to be in the course of his big story and that, as far as he’s concerned, this is just the new status quo.
Storm has been seen trying to calm herself down and remember the “do not murder humans” law in the pages of Marauders.
Iceman has never been shown to be blood-thirsty.
An angry Iceman is likely to cry or get drunk, he’s not Wolverine, who might lose his temper and mutilate humans.
Yes, Mystique used stopping Nimrod as leverage.
She was going to stop Nimrod once Xavier gave her what she wanted.
However, it could also be seen as a test of Krakoa.
She tested Krakoa, and Xavier refused, so she knows that Destiny’s warnings need to be heeded. Something is very wrong.
It can be read more than one way.
I don’t believe this is the actual status quo yet.
I think this is just the first stage, setting up the actual status quo in a way that would make sense.
I don’t believe that Hickman wants to see things go back to the way they were before.
I just think there are a lot of sinister warnings about Moira and Krakoa.
I think that something major will change (maybe Moira will need to go) before the true status quo will start.
I think it will be similar to the current status quo, but with mutants unequivocally in the role of heroes, and without the creepy/sinister elements.
Storm reminding herself to “Murder no man” was a joke about how annoying Batroc was. I don’t think she was seriously considering it.
There’s getting angry and there’s getting angry when the killers of your friend, whose death you only just learned, are right in front of you.
(Plus, Marvel characters have just generally gotten more ruthless over the years. Once upon a time, you couldn’t have Wolverine kill Hellfire guards without Jim Shooter coming down to declare they actually survived. Nowadays, the Avengers wishing Thanos’ entire army into dust is treated as a great triumph.)
I do agree that somewhere down the line there will likely be a repudiation of the mutant nation’s shadier practices.
Cyclops and Beast used a bioweapon to fight off the Skrulls in Secret Invasion, Beast used a nuke on enemy forces in Secret Avengers, nobody ever cared (on page) about those things. I think Beas was a little shaken about the nuke and Captain freaking America told him that it was necessary. (It’s been years since I read that story, I might be misremembering).
But yeah, ruthlessness came in vogue years ago and never really left.
(Also, even characters who explicitly don’t kill often have no qualms about staking vampires, destroying sentient robots or lasering aliens in these stories).
Going back to Mystique ‘always caring about the mutant situation’ – you need to be selective for such a statement to be true. Like, you need to ignore everything Bendis has done with the character, for example.
@Alan L
“Now the X-men…are routinely getting hornswoggled by mutant hate group after mutant hate group…”
This points to my biggest issue with this status quo: I really can’t believe every mutant on Earth could actually be on one team.
Mutantdom feels smaller when there is less variance of perspective. Before, you had violent ideological mutant struggles on top of mutant/human relationships. Occasionally you’d have some mutants who just didn’t care about either side. You have some caught in the middle.
And now, they’re all just on the same page, and humans are the only real problem. I get that the destruction of Genosha should be a big problem for mutants for a new nation, but the hints that “something is awry” because of mind control keeping everyone in line is either 1) true but being delayed in its reveal, or 2) not true, which is a big pill to swallow.
Maybe Chris V is right that Moira doesn’t want to save mutants after all and maybe the uneasy creepiness of perpetual life is a feature of the plot, not a flaw. And the tension between Wolverine and Omega Red is more of what I’d like to see (the past still matters!).
And I definitely don’t miss the endless homilies towards the Claremont era stories. But the world of mutants currently seems shrunken to a since island on a map instead of a worldwide evolution of humanity.
@YLu Except they weren’t her killers, and there was no reason to think they would be able to kill her.