Wolverines vol 4: “Destiny”
The fourth and final collection of Wolverines is a very, very strange comic. Granted, “final” in that sentence should come with an asterisk, for reasons I’ll get to, but Charles Soule and Ray Fawkes’ story winds up building to a bizarre anticlimax that makes the book read like an exercise in trolling the readers.
Not that trolling the readers is necessarily a bad thing, mind you. X-Statix did it all the time. But in this case, it winds up with a comic which leaves us with the intriguing puzzle of trying to distil it down to the key elements that presumably looked promising at the pitch stage. After all, Soule clearly knows how to put a story together; if he produces something as odd as this, it’s presumably by design. A misconceived design, possibly, but still a design.
At this point it’s probably useful to lay out the plot. You’ll recall that the series started out with a group of characters who had escaped from “Paradise” with new powers given to them by Dr Cornelius’s experiments, and a genetic time bomb that would kill them unless they found a way to cure it. They press ganged a bunch of Wolverine-related characters into helping them try to recover Wolverine’s corpse, in the hope of (somehow) using his healing factor to cure them.
But this pretty straightforward set-up then proceeded to fly apart over the course of the next few volumes, as half of the Paradise characters blundered off to join Mr Sinister, Wolverine’s body was carted off by the X-Men never to be seen again, a bizarrely out-of-character Fang showed up to pay a perverse tribute to the late hero, and Mystique seized control over the remaining cast as part of a plan to bring Destiny back from the dead, following instructions left by Destiny herself.
This volume opens with the Paradise characters who are still hanging out with Mystique realising that they’re starting to die. The other Paradise characters show up again, and lure everyone into a trap on behalf of Mr Sinister, who apparently just wants revenge for them smashing up his lab in the early issues. This leads to a big fight that fills a couple of issues and pretty much leads to nothing conclusive beyond a big explosion and the Wolverines getting freed from their control words (remember those?). Oh, and Junk dies, but it’s not like he was doing much beyond padding out the cast. And somewhere in here, Shogun ends up submerging Ogun’s personality for good.
So far, a bit unfocussed but that’s about it. But then the book takes a 90 degree left turn into what passes for its climax, as Mystique enlists Portal – yes, the guy from Darkhawk, who was introduced into this series in the previous volume with no real attempt to explain who he is – to teleport everyone in the cast to the Nexus of All Realities. Put shortly, her big plan is to get Siphon to absorb the healing factors of everyone else in the cast who still has one (Sabretooth, X-23 and apparently Lady Deathstrike), so that Portal can then take the energy from Siphon and use it to open the portal which will bring Destiny back to Earth. Everyone else tries to stop Mystique and gets defeated. Everything seems to be building to a climax.
At which point – three pages from the end – a further note from Destiny shows up, explaining that actually the plan isn’t going to bring her back at all. Instead, Destiny has foreseen that bringing Wolverine back from the dead will (somehow or other) avert the destruction of the universe in Secret Wars #1, and she’s trying to manipulate Mystique into doing that. Mystique promptly refuses to do any such thing, closes the portal and goes home. The end.
Hmm.
Let’s start with an obvious point. While it’s dressed up to look like a climax, solicited as a final issue, and has “END” on the final page, the fact that X-23 and Sabretooth both lose their powers and are left bleeding on the floor is a pretty clear indication that issue #20 should be better thought of as a cliffhanger. The bizarrely abrupt finish works a lot better viewed in that light, and much of what goes before by way of secondary resolution seems to be a case of tying up some subplots in order to maintain the feint. Of course, there’s no indication of where you might expect to find the next chapter (though whatever replaces Wolverines after Secret Wars would seem a pretty obvious place to start looking), and the bait and switch will still have a lot of readers throwing their copies across the room. But it does work somewhat better if you take it as a mid-story twist.
Even then, it’s a story that pretty much invites the reaction: what the hell? Twenty issues of Mystique working on a plan and then just abandoning it at the last minute?
Well, there’s a motif here. I’ve pointed out in reviewing earlier volumes that a strikingly curious feature of Wolverines is how little any of it has to do with Wolverine. The Paradise characters are only interested in him as a means to an end; the so-called Wolverines have been dragged into the story because of their healing factors and even the ones who do mourn his passing are mainly concerned with more pressing matters. Fang has to show up in volumes 2 and 3 to even keep the question of Wolverine’s legacy on the page at all. This may be Wolverine’s stand-in title during his death-compelled absence, but it’s not like his presence is particularly felt.
And this comes front and centre on the final page as Mystique refuses to go through with Destiny’s plan: “This is not about Wolverine. I will not allow it. This is my story.”
So perhaps the starting point here was to take the obvious fact that everyone is expecting Wolverine to come back, and subvert it. Hence Wolverine’s body being hunted for in the early issues, and then simply vanishing from the plot when it disappears into the X-Men’s custody. I’m guessing that what Soule and Fawkes were going for was a story where Wolverine casts a long shadow over the book, but all the characters ignore it, trying to assert their own identities and agendas in a story that keeps trying to drag them back to Wolverine’s orbit.
I say “guessing”, because while that’s my best estimate of how this might have looked at the pitch stage, it really doesn’t work on the page. Wolverine’s presence is pretty much absent from the second half of the story except for the ludicrously off-kilter stuff with Fang. The series ends up as a series of plots starting off purposefully and meandering into the long grass; Wolverine just doesn’t have enough impact for Mystique’s closing tantrum to pay off.
In theory there’s a great comic in the idea of all these characters finding that Destiny is literally forcing them to return to their established roles, and some of them fighting against that role. But in practice there are two major problems with that. One, it’s such an unfocussed mess that it doesn’t work. And two, the same basic idea is being done infinitely better by Loki: Agent of Asgard, which also has the advantage of featuring a lead character who is a myth, making the theme of being trapped by narrative inevitability and by the tendency of stories to return to their classic form one that actually resonates.
There’s quite probably an interesting book trying to get out here, but it’s buried very deep. I’ll be charitable and call it a well-meaning misfire, since if the creators were phoning it in they’d have produced something infinitely more coherent; this is the sort of bad that suggests a genuinely ambitious idea has got hideously lost in translation on its way to the page. Either way, though, it really doesn’t work.
> …the fact that X-23 and Sabretooth both lose their powers and are left bleeding on the floor is a pretty clear indication that issue #20 should be better thought of as a cliffhanger.
But it can’t possibly be resolved “properly” – even if it wasn’t for the whole universe-destroying thing, they’ve confirmed there’s an eight-month (in-continuity) jump post-Secret Wars.
[Something similar happens at the end of Angela #6, which sets up an immediate story… which can’t happen in any satisfying way. In that case, you’d think they would have done a “Last Days…” arc rather than the 1602 mini.]
Thank you for recapping. I don’t feel bad for skipping this series now that I know how pointless so much of it was. 🙂
“So the characters learned how to function in immediate pre-SECRET WARS continuity, and eventually they were rescued by, oh, let’s say…Moe.”
If nothing else you’ve made me want to get my hands on a Loki: Agent of Asgard tpb asap.
Hasn’t the whole Death of Wolverine thing been one magnificent piece of trolling?
When I read that last issue of Wolverines, I was actually PISSED. Usually I’m just kind of like “well, comics kind of suck now, but whatever.” This one was above and beyond, though.
I’ve been primed for dissatisfaction by the whole Avengers/Secret Wars thing (77+ issues of Avengers culminating in nothing but another crossover, and another tedious alternate reality trudge at that). But Wolverines took it to another level, showing me just how little Marvel cares about telling a story in the current environment.
They put out, what, 40 “Death of Wolverine” comics (Wolverines plus a bunch of minis and one shots that preceded it) and not only was there no payoff, but thanks to Secret Wars, there can never BE a payoff. The universe ended, and it appears that they’ll come back from the alternate reality with whatever status quo the random plot generator comes up with (looks like X-23 as Wolverine, with a side of Old Man Logan). It takes some gall to publish $120+ worth of comics that are ultimately not even telling a story with an ending.
“It takes some gall to publish $120+ worth of comics that are ultimately not even telling a story with an ending.”
WINNER! I’d love to refund your $120+, but unfortunately, I was ripped too. There’s no way the dual writing job helped any of this either, for reasons mentioned in previous posts. The entire thing was a sloppy mess horrendous enough to have me looking forward to a Bendis-written Old Man Logan mini, just to get something actually Wolverine related, even if it ends up having an old man with claws bantering with villains in the voice of a teenage girl. At least it will be pretty to look at.
The funny thing about the timing of this disappointing ending is that there will almost certainly never be a follow-up to the last scene of this book — e.g. who among the wounded survived, and how. It won’t have to be explained because X-23 and Mystique have both been seen in stories that took place after “Wolverines” and before “Secret Wars” yet were published before this finale to “Wolverines.”
Laura was already shown in “The Black Vortex” crossover without her healing factor, so this barely even qualifies as a cliffhanger. I suppose it arguably still does for Daken, Shogun, Deathstrike and Sabretooth, but I’m just going to assume they made it since Laura did.
Meanwhile, Mystique was just taken down by Dazzler and several of Cyclops’s former students, then turned over to S.H.I.E.L.D., where she presumably remained in custody until the death of the 616 and 1610 universes.
So, not only does this series end on an anti-climax, but it implies a cliffhanger that lacks any sense of dramatic tension since it had already been “spoiled” months ago. With that in mind, perhaps it is better they just move on rather than bother throwing a rope over the edge of this cliff.
Heck. If Hickman’s arc really started with Secret Warrriors then Fantastic Four and Future Foundation alongside SHIELD…. then we have over 150 comic books, I think, with an ongoing narrative and it all builds up to Secret Wars……..
but. you know. charts.
Good Lord – that series sounds awful.
Thanks for taking one for the team Paul.
“Hasn’t the whole Death of Wolverine thing been one magnificent piece of trolling?”
No, the fact that we can see behind the veil of fiction and editorial management to know that nothing is permanent in comics does not invalidate the story being told in and of itself.
I’d refer you to the 2-part story arc by Priest and Velluto, The Death of the Black Panther, which we mostly knew wasn’t going to be final, since the series kept going with someone apparently acting as the Black Panther, but . . . well, this isn’t really a spoiler, but the Black Death does, in fact, meet his final demise in that story. (Yes, despite everything published years afterwards.)
Er, not “The Black Death.” Although that would’ve sufficed as an alternate title, maybe.
Btw, anyone who continued reading (and paying for) Wolverines after reading the first issue deserved exactly what they got. The writing was on the wall (not in the book).
Paul reads this crap so we don’t have to!
The thing is, I’ve read far worse comics than Wolverines. As Paul has described, it was schizophrenic, but I didn’t find it to be _bad_, just mental. But I kind of thought there would be some kind of payoff at the end, and there really wasn’t.
I was similarly pissed about Superior Iron Man, the last issue of which came out the same week as the last issue of Wolverines. I was skeptical of the series, spinning out of the last terrible crossover as it did, but it was fairly well written and seemed to be a story that was probably going somewhere. But 9 issues in, it just stopped mid-arc due to Secret Wars. “Well, Tony’s a jerk, but then the universe ended and everything changed.”
I understand the “illusion of change” and all that – I know how comics work after 35 years reading them, and it takes a lot to actually piss me off, but knowingly publishing stuff that’s never going to have an ending is particularly galling to me.
You sound terribly galled!
Fraction’s Iron Man took terribly long to get somewhere, and for many of those issues nothing happened… but at least it ended up somewhere… there was a payoff….
wait…. 9 issues was mid-arc?
I’m still so used to how they constructed plots and subplots in the seventies, eighties, and early nineties.
There was a time when at least one subplot had its respective pay-off per issue… and another subplot was either started to furthered.
But that was a long time ago, before every issue was almost guaranteed a trade collection reprinting.
Galled indeed! 🙂
Perhaps “mid-arc” isn’t the right term. I’m speaking of the larger arc of the storyline, versus a “part 1 of 4” kind of thing. The series started with “inverse Tony” from Axis remaining a self-centered jerk (more than usual) and hatching some dubious, self-aggrandizing plots. We all know that he’s got to end up back to “baseline Tony” eventually, and the hope is just that the ride to get there is entertaining.
But after 9 issues, if anything, Tony had become even more of a jerk and had alienated all his friends, and then the book ended. Clearly the post-Secret Wars Iron Man we saw in the FCBD Avengers book wasn’t still “inverse Tony,” so I fear the plot will just be dropped and things will get reset to the new normal without actually finishing the story.
Story-arc vs. character-arc. You used the right term; it’s just a term that could be confusing in this context. I’m reminded of Gary Gygax’s classic disclaimer in the 1st-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons DUNGEON MASTER’S GUIDE about the myriad contradictory ways that “level” is used in that game.
Although this particular pre-SECRET WARS matter (I was about to “this particular…issue” until I realized that I would be using the same sort of multi-meaning terms) actually reminded me of DC during INFINITE CRISIS or prior to FLASHPOINT when a lot of plots were either dropped to never be seen again (especially with the second) or ended up being resolved off-page during months of in-universe downtime in such a way that readers never learned (during the One Year Later gap of the first). With SECRET WARS almost a combination of multiple DC events in certain ways, I’m not surprised to see certain traits in the books surrounding it crop up like this, especially since the Marvel Universe isn’t “used to” these sort of cosmic shenanigans (at least them “sticking”) the way that the fabric of the DC Universe has gotten used to over time.
“Tony had become even more of a jerk and had alienated all his friends”
I’m unclear about how this is “inverted Tony” and not just regular Tony.
“Btw, anyone who continued reading (and paying for) Wolverines after reading the first issue deserved exactly what they got.”
Your point here is that…Marvel is intentionally putting out poor stories, or stories they know will never get any kind of resolution, because what the hell, they’ll get some more cash from the saps?
Or is it that readers deserve to be trolled – in which case it makes a lot of sense you’d be behind them all the way.
Dave: Those are exactly the same thing.
“Your point here is that…Marvel is intentionally putting out poor stories, or stories they know will never get any kind of resolution, because what the hell, they’ll get some more cash from the saps?”
No, my point is that if you can tell a book is shit from issue 1, it’s your own fault for buying 19 more issues of crap. Insanity is, after all, repeating the same behavior and expecting different results.
The thing that really got me was Destiny’s assertion that Wolverine was somehow vital to saving the universe in TIME RUNS OUT. No shade on Logan, but, ah, I have a hard time understanding how we’re supposed to believe this is a thing that could happen.
It might have made the ending more interesting if we had, say, a page or muted panels showing exactly how Wolverine saving the universe would work, to add some meaning to Mystique’s decision (though I still don’t know HOW that would happen, given Hickman’s plot–what could Logan do that the Illumanti couldn’t think of?). Instead, it comes off as a last minute twist that we’re supposed to take as given.
Obviously, Wolverine would repeat his “Hank Pym Solution” and travel back in time to personally kill off EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. on EVERY. OTHER. EARTH. That way, when the Incursions were going on, the Illuminati would just find a bunch of empty worlds and find no compunction in destroying the lifeless rocks as they were doing early on before things got real with the Great Society’s world and Namor’s heel turn, such that 616 would face no collision with an inhabited Earth such as 1610. Problem solved with extreme snik’ty prejudice!
Please don’t give Marvel ideas like this.
Things are bad enough there. 😉
(To be fair, a WHAT IF WOLVERINE PREVENTED THE SECRET WARS? where he cuts a swath every alternate Earth published by the company, in a sort of version of PUNISHER KILLS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE cranked up to 11 might actually be an interesting project to spin out of these two storylines, especially with the callbacks that the right writer could make to the Hickman NEW AVENGERS and back to AGE OF ULTRON. As ludicrous as my joke sounds, it actually might work as a one of those alternate-take WHAT IF? one-shots that come out of event comics nowadays…)
Fang to Sabretooth: “Ain’t there anything you hate worse than someone weaker than you throwing their weight around?”
Are there no other Fang fans here?