As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

WOLVERINE vol 8 #2
“Blood and Debt”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Tom Brevoort

WOLVERINE:

Wolverine has accepted Nightcrawler’s argument from the previous issue that he can’t leave the world behind, if only because the things that he’s trying to avoid will just follow him. Nonetheless, for the moment he’s still hanging around in the wilderness, presumably because Cyber is still out there. Cyber doesn’t appear in this story, but the plot is driven by the murders he committed in issue #1. Nightcrawler doesn’t appear either: presumably he was taken to hospital after the end of the previous issue.

Wolverine decides to help the new Wendigo (see below), after reminding himself that he used to be an animal and that other people helped him to regain his humanity – a familiar Wolverine trope. He takes this idea to the point of fighting off the Department H soldiers who are trying to capture the Wendigo; he claims that he’s trying to avoid a fight in which the soldiers would just get slaughtered. Despite his dislike of Department H, he regards this squad as legitimate (if underwhelming) footsoldiers and tries to do minimal harm to them – but he suggests that he also fears that drawing blood would affect his self-control too. He seems to take it as read that Department H either wouldn’t or couldn’t help the Wendigo.

VILLAINS / ANTAGONISTS:

Department H send a squad to find the murderer from last issue. Based on the reports they’ve had, they’re  are under the impression that it was Wolverine. We’re told that they still take it personally that Wolverine left them, and at the very least this seems to be a happy opportunity for them to go after him again. Still, they do seem to be here  in their capacity as the legitimate authorities investigating a superhuman spree killing, and Wolverine’s initial response is simply to avoid them. The unnamed squadron leader is a blowhard; Agent Mehta is clearly the smart one, and Wolverine regards her as by far the most competent.

The last time we saw Department H was during the “Fall of X” Alpha Flight miniseries, when they’d become a fascist branch of Orchis. We’re not directly told who’s running it now, but both Wolverine and the squadron leader talk about the people in charge having a history with Wolverine. So presumably it’s back under the control of its traditional powers that be.

The Wendigo is the latest poor soul to fall prey to the curse that befalls anyone who eats human flesh while in the Canadian wilderness. Wolverine fights these things quite a lot, partly because he’s the high profile Canadian superhero, but mainly because there was a Wendigo in his debut story from Incredible Hulk #180-181. The last time we saw a Wendigo in the Marvel Universe was in issue #37 of the previous volume, when a stray Wolverine clone fell prey to the curse.

Unusually, this Wendigo has retained some of his human personality, and tries to get Wolverine to help it. He hands over an apparent diary, which we see as a fully illustrated and lettered comic, but presumably that’s artistic licence, given the circumstances in which the drawings would have to have been produced. According to the diary, the Wendigo is a boy called Leonard who ran away from a “group home” along with his friend Ryan, and got stuck in an abandoned cabin during a storm. Ryan died of starvation, and Leonard wound up eating his flesh to survive. Wolverine infers that this Wendigo has only just been transformed and has yet to hurt anyone – presumably this is why he still has traces of his mind.

Ultimately, the Wendigo does take a chunk out of one of the Department H soldiers, so it’s not obvious that Wolverine’s attempts to help it made much difference. But who knows, maybe if the whole group had reached the Wendigo, it would have killed the lot.

OTHER REFERENCES:

Page 16 panel 1 is a flashback to a generic scene of Wolverine being greeted by some of the 1975-era X-Men: Colossus, Professor X, Storm and Nightcrawler. Wolverine is overstating a bit when he suggests that they “decided not to just leave me to be an animal” – that was really more something that Heather and James Hudson did in his early time in Department H – but it’s with the X-Men in the 70s and 80s that he really comes to control his rage.