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

WOLVERINE vol 8 #3
“Hunter and Hunted”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

WOLVERINE:

Nice and straightforward, this issue.

Wolverine is still trying to protect the new Wendigo from Department H, whom he correctly assumes will try to kill the creature. His reasoning is that (1) Department H are hunting the Wendigo because they blame it for the murders that Cyber committed in issue #1, and (2) Cyber was only in the area to commit those murders in the first place because he was looking for Wolverine. This chain of events is hardly Wolverine’s fault, but it fits with his general view that he brings disaster to innocent people when he tries to hang around with them (just as he blamed himself for the death of the wolf pack in issue #1). Last issue, he placed somewhat more emphasis on the idea that the new Wendigo was itself trying to resist its violent instincts, and he still stresses that point here.

In this interpretation, Wolverine isn’t exactly prone to berserker rage, but is prone to acting on instinct, so that he’s likely to respond violently to an attack in the moment. This takes the form of momentary lapses rather than uncontrollable violence; he has to make an effort to resist his instincts, but he can do it.

Once Department H are out of the way, Wolverine explains the plot to the one sensible soldier present (more of her in a bit) and leaves with the Wendigo. It’s not clear where he’s taking the guy, but he tries to teach him some meditation techniques.

SUPPORTING CAST:

The Wendigo is still trying to resist its bloodlust, but gets more violent when it smells blood. Still, he tries to retain control even when Department H soldiers are shooting at him. When he does lose control, Wolverine seems to shock him back to his sense by drawing blood, and then manages to knock him out with a sleeper hold. He seems much more calm in the epilogue but, again, it’s not clear where Wolverine is actually planning to take him. Maybe he’s just intending to leave the kid in the wilderness and hope he sticks to hunting animals.

Agent Mehta is the one smart Department H soldier who avoids getting knocked out by Wolverine. She was specifically drawn to our attention last issue as well, and Wolverine seemed relatively impressed by her. Nonetheless, having seen Wolverine take out the rest of her squad, she does open fire on him. It doesn’t do her much good, since he quickly disarms her. After he tells her what’s been happening, she makes no attempt to stop him leaving with the Wendigo – but she might just be reasoning that there’s nothing she can do about it anyway.

VILLAINS:

Department H play the role of triggerhappy antagonists. Their unnamed squadron leader remains aggressive and somewhat dim, and seems to have an issue with mutants. That said, they don’t do anything outright villainous here, since they genuinely do think that Wolverine and the Wendigo are responsible for Cyber’s killings, with at least some reason. They come across as dangerously incompetent rather than evil.

Cyber was last seen in issue #1, where he encountered a strange sentient metal that regarded adamantium as some sort of perversion, to be “purged from this Earth”. It’s probably meant to be something to do with adamantine, the mythical metal that adamantium was named after. Adamantine exists in the Marvel Universe – Hercules’ mace is made of it, for example – and it’s usually shown as golden, which fits the art here. But adamantine isn’t normally shown as sentient, so there’s more going on than that.

This metal apparently possessed Cyber, whose metal skin turned golden, and whose eyes started glowing. He looks the same here – we don’t actually see his eyes glow, but Lady Deathstrike mentions that they look weird. He kills his way through Lady Deathstrike’s men without saying anything until he reaches her, at which point he possesses her body in the same way. It’s not clear why Cyber (or the thing possessing him) has chosen to focus first on Lady Deathstrike, five thousand miles from Canada, when Wolverine was in the vicinity – maybe it just figured that she was easier to find, or maybe it wanted to start with softer targets and work its way up. The narrator, which only pops up for the purpose of this scene, says that it “grows stronger with each unworthy scrap of adamantium it purifies and reclaims”.

Lady Deathstrike was last seen in the bonus page of issue #1, at which point she was training some henchmen to help her hunt down Wolverine. None of that comes to anything, because they all get killed here, and she gets possessed by the mystery metal, which puts an end to whatever she might have been planning on her own account.

REFERENCES:

Nothing, really. It’s a very straightforward issue.