Laura Kinney: Wolverine #4 annotations
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #4
“Brother in Arms, part 1”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
This one won’t take us long.
WOLVERINE
Bucky claims to be enlisting her help because he needs an “old-school tracker” to locate Henrick Schneider. She doesn’t believe this is the whole story but doesn’t seem to press him on it. She seems to be happy enough to go along for the sake of the road trip and the chance to go after a Nazi mad scientist. Bucky specifically sells to her the fact that Schneider tortured mutants.
Naturally enough, she sees Bucky as “not so different from me”, as they’re both would-be heroes trying to escape a past when they were used as weapons. This was also the theme with Elektra, the guest star in the previous arc.
She’s surprised to find that the unnamed mutant they rescue in Red Oak wanted to keep it secret that he was a mutant, and has to remind herself that not all mutants are “ready to be out” (to be fair, there weren’t many closeted mutants on Krakoa, nor is she meeting many in NYX).
She likes fighting robots because she doesn’t have to hold back, but wonders whether this is indulging the violent side that Logan always struggled with.
GUEST CAST
The Revolution. Bucky Barnes has been using this codename since Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty in 2022, although X-readers may not have noticed. It originally ties to a storyline about the Illuminati-like “Outer Circle” group, but none of that really matters for the purposes of this story.
He wants to hunt down Nazi scientist Henrick Schneider, whom he fought alongside Captain America back in 1942. Beyond that, he’s conspicuously vague about why this is only coming up now (though he implies that he’s only just discovered Schneider is alive) and why he’s asking Laura to help him when they barely know one another. While he claims to want a tracker to help locate him, the reality is that no actual tracking seems to be required.
For some reason he’s very antsy about going “back” to Indiana, and wants to drive straight through the state without stopping. This begs the question of why he’s chosen to drive from New York to Iowa at all – aside from the fact that it’s a 16 hours drive, when he could just get a flight to Cedar Rapids in less than half that time, there’s no realistic way of making this drive without going through Indiana. The story doesn’t spell this out (because Laura doesn’t know), but Indiana is Bucky’s established birthplace, so it’s likely that he’s referring to some sort of childhood trauma.
He regards the mutant from Red Oak as simply ungrateful, but shrugs it off rather than thinking much further about it.
He calls a town “older than I am”, as if it was somehow unusual to see a town built as long ago as the 1800s. From a British perspective, this is adorably American.
VILLAINS
Henrick Schneider. A Nazi scientist from World War II who used radiation to mutate humans and enhance existing mutants. As far as I can tell, he’s a new character. He also built giant skull robots with tentacle legs; some of them also appear in the present day, and those ones have HYDRA logos.
He seems to be hiding out in Iowa building robots. When our heroes reach him, he identifies them as the Winter Soldier and X-23; on being told that those aren’t their names, he replies “that is how I know you”, so perhaps he’s meant to have some connection to Laura’s back story with the Facility.
Jack and Mickey. A bigoted petrol station attendant and his fat balding mate (they have another friend hanging around, but he doesn’t get a name). Jack has strong views on mutants; with hindsight, much of his anti-mutant rant seems to be directed at the closeted mutant waiting in the queue, who mentions later on that there have always been rumours about him. That would also explain why Jack jumps directly to the conclusion that he’s dealing with mutants, without really seeing any evidence of it.
Mickey harasses Laura on the forecourt, then jumps straight to attacking her with a knife when she rejects his advances. This is a bit odd – is Mickey really in the habit of attacking female customers with knives, right in front of Jack and at least two customers (one of whom is not a friend), and presumably with the CCTV switched on? It doesn’t seem like it can be good for trade.
FOOTNOTES
Page 4 panel 1: There actually is a place called Redoak in Ohio (not “Red Oak”), but it’s on the border with Kentucky, not Indiana.
The Revolution. Such a bad codename.
Wait. How is this Nazi scientist still alive? He’d be over one hundred years old by now. Is this explained or are we just ignoring these facts now?
Yeah, you can avoid driving through Indiana if you drive down into and then across Kentucky on over. It’s take some extra time to drive up through Missouri, but if they’re already taking a leisurely drive rather than flying, it’s definitely possible to avoid Indiana.
I mean, I would have the same reaction to going to Indiana. heh
Wait, again. Bucky is surprised there is a town older than him? He was born around 1929, right? He was a teen when he was in WWII with Rogers, right? Even aside from the whole early-1800s is very old to non-Indigenous North Americans thing, that’s a highly unusual reaction. Anyone should surely be aware that towns existed prior to the 20th century. Maybe a twelve year old kid might be shocked that a town existed prior to his grandfather’s birth, but a grown man shouldn’t have that reaction.
*That’s supposed to be around 1925 for Bucky’s birth.
I agree about The Revolution being a terrible name; I only just learned of it here. Winter Soldier was such a cool name they used it as the title of a movie. Bucky is, well, not great, but it is iconic.
As a new-worlder (not American but same deal), I can see where the writer might have been going. A town being old is different from it just being around a long time. A town that’s not much bigger than it was a century ago, with a lot of the buildings identifiably from an older building style, is old. A town that got swept up in suburbia and has few if any of the old facades visible, won’t feel old at all. None of this applies to Europe of course.
Maybe being someone who grew up in a town which hadn’t changed a great deal since 1886 influences my way of seeing things. There are plenty of small-towns like that all across the US and Canada. If it was Logan making that comment, I wouldn’t find it so strange even to a North American ear. Coming from a man who would have been born in the 1920s, it sounds immature to me.
The reason why Bucky doesn’t want to go back to Indiana is because of Thunderbolts: Doomstrike 1. In that issue, Bucky organized Natasha and Songbird to oppose Doom. Doom punished him by nuking Bucky’s home town of Shelbyville, Indiana, killing 20,000 people, and framing Bucky for it. (That also gave Doom an excuse to unleash his own secret police which included the Contessa and the Fixer.) That’s probably why Bucky can’t travel by plane.
Although it is odd that Laura hasn’t heard of it, since it was announced on the news. Presumably she’s been too busy with her adventures the past 3 issues.
I think Mickey usually just sexually assaults women- he was putting his hands on Laura’s shoulders. But luckily for Laura she’s a lot stronger than the average woman and she pushed Mickey down. And then Mickey lost his temper.
@Si, Chris V- it was a ghost town. But still, it doesn’t work. The railroads were at their peak in the United States between the Civil War and World War 1. Where does Bucky think the railroads were traveling if not between towns? Has Bucky never seen a Western?
As for the Nazi scientist, we hear his voice in the present day but we don’t see hm. That might be deliberate.
Really? Another “demagogic saviour of the masses” nukes an American city during one of these crossovers? What is the thinking behind this decision? Didn’t anyone inform Marvel how incredibly stupid, not to mention suspension of disbelief shattering, it was during “Secret Empire”?
Tom Taylor’s Wolverine presented her as socially stunted, traumatized, neurodivergent, but highly creative and unrelentingly focused on doing what was right. She didn’t speak with slangs or use contractions. I loved that character.
Gerry Duggan wrote her as a boorish, sloppy version of Logan who called everyone “Bub” and was violent without restraint or even some iota of thought.*
Erica Schultz is threading the two characters back together into one Laura. She even had Wolverine talking about her use of contractions on panel.
I miss Taylor’s version, but Schultz’s approach is like an improv performer saying ‘yes… and…’ She isn’t creating a retcon nor is she ignoring what came before, instead she is showing us how to rehabilitate the character in a way that makes sense within the story. That’s good writing.
“From a British perspective, this is adorably American.”
Am I the only one who thought that Bucky comparing about how old the town was his way of bringing up the age gap between Laura and him without being overly direct or outright flirting? I read it that he was testing what she knew about him? If nothing else, I like when a writer invites the reader to fill unspoken dialog with what nods to what the reader already knows. I don’t ship these two, and I don’t think the story is going there, but it was a long leisurely road trip. It doesn’t seem like out of character dialog for Bucky to me. If anything, his time with Colin Jost’s wife prepared him for the spy craft of letting others tell you what they know.
*I hated Duggan’s take on Wolverine, but liked most of his writing… let’s say better than many.
I get the idea of playing up mutantphobia as a thing which is once again on the rise in society but… the whole scene in the gas station was weird.
Even if we continue on from the “mutants can look like anyone and you’d never know it” conversation… why would this random dude assume that a young, attractive woman who wasn’t into him, on a road trip through the middle of nowhere, was a mutant? To be blunt, it’s far more likely for someone like that to leap towards homophobic assumptions before mutantphobic. It all just escalated quickly.
(Headcanon: our green-skinned mutant-in-hiding has erratic or unhoned emotion powers which caused everyone around him to act irrationally/react to his subconscious fears/whatever…)
Impressive no one reacted to Bucky’s metal hand…
@ChrisV, No-Prize: maybe BB is surprised not at the town’s age per se but the fact that its still surviving as just a town instead of either growing already into a city if it wasbdoikg that well or dying altogether if it wasnt
I don’t remember a single town in Michigan that is founded after 1900
Given that Krakoa was ended to bring the X-Men closer to the trad school setting so as to not confuse people who saw the movies and then wanted to buy comics, they’ve seriously stopped Bucky being the Winter Soldier in the comics and they don’t have someone they want to hand the name over to?
Granted I didn’t pay close attention to the Outer Circle seemed to be a repeat of the story that had been done as recently as previous to that writer taking over, but I don’t remember there being much about Bucky saying at the end he was going to stay as The Revolution. Did I forget that or did someone take the advantage of him not appearing in comics for a few months to do a quiet change?
Bucky clearly needs to spend more time on the east coast. Our town was founded in 1684, and that’s by no means uncommon around here. Frankly, most towns in Indiana are older than the 1920s too, so I suspect he was just trying to be funny.
@Chris, I grew up in one! Romeo, Michigan founded in 1839. It was actually known as ‘Hoxie’s Settlement’ before is incorporated in 1839.
For what it is worth, I’m enjoying these books so far. If we just keep getting team-ups and learning about Laura, I’m good.
And now I just realized I read Chris’ comment wrong. Right after I post. OF course!
You guys are forgetting the sliding timescale, all cities/towns in marvel are probably less than 50 years old!
Was really expecting some kind of emotion control at the gas station. Stuff just happening like that was bizarre.
In the sliding timescale of the Marvel Universe, the Declaration of Independence was written in 1976!
Right, there would be very few towns in Michigan founded before 1800. I don’t know of any towns founded after 1900, but I’m assuming there must be a few out there. But thinking a town founded BEFORE 1920 in Michigan was unusual is just wrong. And Indiana was a state two decades before Michigan.
BTW, speaking as a Michigander, the FUN way to go west by car without going through Indiana is to take one of the car ferries across Lake Michigan. If you went across Canada to get from New York to Michigan it wouldn’t be particularly out of your way — though I guess getting those two across two national borders might be a bit much.
@Sol- the town was in Iowa, which was founded less than 10 years after Michigan. Still not unusual.
Driving West on I-90 from New York, detouring north through Canada adds about 4 hours to get to Minneapolis. If you’re not going that far North or West (Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison), it’s less efficient. Iowa is even farther south.
Going through Kentucky doesn’t help. When you get as far west as Louisville, to avoid Indiana you’d either need to drop down way south to Nashville, or navigate very small country routes through Paducah, a name that’s synonymous with backwater, out-of-the-way no-places.