Wolverine #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 8 #4
“Lost and Found”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE:
Wolverine is trying to teach the Wendigo to hold on to its humanity, with moderate success. For fairly obvious reasons, he sees parallels between his own situation in Weapon X and Leonard’s transformation into a monster. They’ve sneaked across the border into the US, and Logan has rented a cabin to live in. (Logan’s dialogue says they crossed the border “two days ago” and a “few days” ago within the space of a page, but you get the idea.)
He shows up in costume to investigate an explosion in the area, even though he doesn’t regard himself as a superhero that anyone would want to be rescued by.
He gets a bit animalistic while fighting the Constrictor, but doesn’t cross any lines and recovers his composure soon enough. He attributes this to the length of time that he was living in the wilds.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:
Leonard the Wendigo is still able to talk, though only barely and with minimal effort. Still, Logan tells us that the Wendigo’s hunger for human flesh seems to be receding the more the Wendigo resists it. He also thinks that he’s having some impact on the Wendigo. But the time frame given for the Wendigo’s improvement also coincides with them leaving Canada, which feels like it isn’t a coincidence, given the nature of his curse. (Though surely an ancient curse isn’t defined by reference to modern boundaries?)
Nightcrawler. Since Wolverine is on the run from Weapon X and wants to say off the radar, he calls Kurt and asks him to relay the Constrictor’s whereabouts. Kurt is shown in a conventional domestic kitchen, and quite a big one – however, issue #1 was explicitly before X-Men #1 and Uncanny #1, so he can’t be at Haven yet.
VILLAINS:
The Adamantine is the name of the mysterious consciousness that’s been turning adamantium-themed characters golden over the course of the last few issues. Lady Deathstrike suggests that its objection is to adamantium itself, rather than to the characters who use it; she presents it as freeing her from false consciousness and enlightening her.
The Constrictor gets broken out of jail, presumably for two reasons: first, he’s an adamantium themed villain, and second, it’s an event designed to lure out Wolverine, presumably on the logic that he was likely to still be in the area somewhere.
The original Constrictor died in Captain America: Sam Wilson #5 (2016). His son inherited his battlesuit and took up the mantle in Infamous Iron Man #7 (2017), and presumably he’s the character we see here; he’s never been given a real name. The fall of Krakoa seems to have passed him by, but he can’t possibly have missed it by being in jail – aside from the fact that major world news events would presumably reach him even in prison, he was in Avengers Assembly just last month as a member of the Serpent Society. Maybe he just doesn’t pay much attention to the news.
The Constrictor does use electrified adamantium tendrils as weapons, but ultimately he’s just a guy in a battlesuit. He mentions that some “connected folks” arranged to spring him out of jail, and presumably they also arranged for his battlesuit to be available to him after he escaped, since he surely can’t have been allowed to keep it while in prison.
Wolverine has never met this version of the Constrictor before, and he only crossed paths with the original very briefly: they’re both in Marvel Two-in-One #96 (along with a ton of other cameos), and they were both in an X-Men vs Six Pack fight in Cable & Deadpool in 2004. Wolverine regards him, quite reasonably, as a minor villain who happens to have a dangerous weapon in the form of his coils; he puts up enough of a fight to get Wolverine angry, but still goes down without much trouble in the space of two pages.
Lady Deathstrike, under the Adamantine’s control, was presumably responsible for breaking the Constrictor out. Wolverine’s narration briefly recaps her standard origin, blaming Wolverine for stealing her father’s adamantium-bonding process. To be honest, she hasn’t seemed to care that much about that subject in recent years, but it is meant to be her main motivation for going after Wolverine. While possesed by the Adamantine, she’s largely silent, though she does give a speech at the end endorsing the Adamantine, in which she seems to regard herself as separate from it.
MISCELLANEOUS:
Page 5 panel 3: “I’ve been a teacher more than once in my life.” Most obviously, when he was the headmaster of the Jean Grey School in Wolverine and the X-Men. But he also did some teaching at the school during the New X-Men period and ran some classes for the New Mutants back in the day.
“ Though surely an ancient curse isn’t defined by reference to modern boundaries?)”
Um, wasn’t there a whole Amazing X-Men plot (World War Wendigo) that was resolved by crossing the border into the US? Although there must be many stories with the Wendigo outside of Canada. I also don’t know why Logan wouldn’t have just asked Kurt for help. If he’s getting extraction for Constrictor why not ask for help with Leonard too? The extended timeline prior to Uncanny is also a bit much but probably will account for Logan’s reduced healing factor in UXM.
Hm. So Deathstrike isn’t just here because she’s the only other Adamatium-based Wolverine villain around besides Cyber, but also because her motive as a villain was once directly tied up with the stuff.
You’d think she might eventually remember that she was originally after Bullseye, who more directly betrayed her father. For that matter, is Myron McClain still alive in current continuity (despite being of WWII vintage)?
If this does broaden out to the other Adamantium-based villains of the Marvel Universe, I wonder if we’ll end up seeing a golden Ultron by the end of it. (This issue makes that seem unlikely.)
I assumed the curse was made to adapt to whatever boundaries defined the originally stated concept as time progressed
I don’t know if there are many stories with a Wendigo outside of Canada, but there are a few examples of the Wendigo making appearances outside of the Canadian boundary.
Modern national boundaries are inherently not very meaningful… but all that means is that the meaningful boundaries are of other natures, and it is not all that unusual for them to converge accidentally or even deliberately.
If we are talking about Wendigo, that would be fairly easy to explain. Wendigo is the result of a curse that is probably tied up to the scope of influence of either certain native communities or the ancient gods or spirits that they would recognize. Similar considerations apply to Snowbird of Alpha Flight, who we once learned would die if removed from a certain area. It is also possible that the curse weakens (perhaps over time) once they leave a certain wintery or forestal environment, and that the absence of (recent?) feeding from human flesh helps.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if this Adamantine plot turned out to be the explanation for the change in color of the new Venom’s chest emblem? But I am blanking on any possible Venom hosts who might be tied to Adamantium. My current guess is that it is Taskmaster, who I am assume was attempting to free Madame Masque from the courtroom at the time. The disappearance of Masque is by oddest event in the whole setup.
@Luis- I doubt that it is Taskmaster, for the simple reason that he wasn’t mentioned in the issue. It might be one of the other characters in the issue who wasn’t listed as a suspect- like Paul or MJ- but making it someone who wasn’t even in the issue seems like cheating.
In our reality, the Wendigo myth is taken from the Algonquian speaking peoples. They lived in areas that are considered part of the United States boundary today, as well as within parts of what is now Canada.
Although, I don’t believe there has ever been any discussion about the curse being able to sustain itself in, say, the Great Lakes region outside of the Canadian boundary as opposed to the curse losing potency if a Wendigo made an appearance in, say, Florida.
In the early red hulk stories there was Wendigo incident in vagas. But the Loeb Hulk run are big stupid comics so you may not want to take them to seriously.
It’s pretty unlikely Ultron will have any big changes in a Wolverine book, but considering adamantium was invented in an Ultron storyline, you’d think they’d be an obvious target. Hopefully they at least get name-dropped.
The importance of the border in Wendigo stories has been used before, I’m pretty sure, but I can’t think of any examples. I’d no-prize it by saying that there’s a mystical barrier or leyline or whatever that even mundane people are subconsciously aware of, and the national border was drawn right on top of it due to subconscious influences making it just feel right that the border be there.
@Michael – I suppose it might feel like cheating depending on expectations. Mine are rather low.
@Si: Regarding Wendigo, they can always go with the idea that the national border affects the spell because most people believe the border exists, so in magical terms, it does. Or maybe it depends on the curse victim’s understanding of things.
After all, Snowbird was originally bound to Canadian soil by magic, and lost her powers — and started withering away — when she was teleported to New York City.
And the various Captain Britains have sometimes had similar limitations, which seemed largely defined by political borders (though the name makes me wonder if Captain Britain’s remit extends to Northern Ireland).
In Excalibur 13, it’s said that Brian’s powers stem from the magic of “these British Isles”. I always assumed that meant Ireland counts but Bermuda doesn’t.
@Omar: In Excalibur #48, Brian and Meggan were operating in the Republic of Ireland just fine, so I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t have any issues operating anywhere else on the island.
I think Omar Karindu has the right idea about the borders.
After all, any border in any time period is fundamentally pretty arbitrary. Even natural borders, like rivers and mountains, are capricious (why this river and not the the next one, for example?)
I’d say the Wendigo curse is tied to the land containing the area it was first cast. When the Algonquin tribes were the strongest political force in the area, the curse probably stretched into the US…currently, that land is part of Canada. If the Orange Jack*** annexes Canada, the curse would extend extend across the USA as well.
Well, that’s my theory (or expansion on Omar’s theory) at least!