Wolverine #35 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #35
“Weapons of X, part 5”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colour artist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine prepares to pop his middle claws and kill a defeated Beast.
Yes, yes, I know – the main release this week is the Hellfire Gala one-shot. But that’s the size of multiple regular issues and besides, this issue comes first – as you might have guessed, it’s running a week late.
PAGES 2-4. The Beast lectures his clones.
These are evidently the replacement clones that Beast said he would “begin processing” after he wiped out the previous bunch for disloyalty in issue #33. As before, he’s given them different hairstyles and a need for glasses, which makes them all look a bit dopier compared to him. We don’t see anything in this issue to directly suggest that the new clones have started figuring out the need to get rid of Beast Prime, but they do seem befuddled by his old joke and appear to be indulging him.
Jeff Bannister was captured by Beast last issue; Beast made Wolverine an offer to exchange him for the two Wolverine clones that Wolverine and Maverick captured, apparently because they’re very expensive to make. (Presumably the issue is the adamantium skeletons.)
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGE 6. X-Force arrive to help.
X-Force appear here after the “Ghost Calendars” arc from X-Force #40-42, where they visited assorted alternate timelines ruled by future versions of the Beast. Kid Omega, who returned from the future with them, doesn’t accompany them here. Omega Red died during the time travel arc, but he’s been resurrected off panel (presumably with no memory of anything that happened during that arc).
PAGE 7. Data page. The Quiet Council meeting deciding to turn a blind eye to the Beast took place in X-Force #39. Evidently Sage’s experience of Beast-dominated future timelines has persuaded her that this is intolerable.
PAGES 8-9. Wolverine and Maverick await the prisoner exchange.
“I know I been MIA from X-Force lately.” In X-Force #39, Wolverine (Laura) asked Sage whether Logan had quit the team, and Sage replied that “He’s going his own way right now” – i.e., in this arc. However, because he was a prisoner of the Beast before that, Wolverine hasn’t appeared alongside the rest of X-Force since X-Force #33.
As explained last issue, the Wolverine clones are getting (relatively speaking) more intelligent because the impairments that Beast tried to build into them are being overcome by their healing factors.
As Wolverine says, Beast is trying to present this exchange as some sort of formal event. I like the fact that “Beast Prime” – or the one posing as Beast Prime, as we’ll see – is the only one who gets an umbrella, and he doesn’t even hold it himself. Wolverine, on the other hand, hasn’t even bothered changing into an untorn costume.
PAGE 10. X-Force enter Beast’s mobile base.
Weird that Beast never gave this thing a name.
PAGE 11. Beast makes his offer.
This is basically the same offer that he put to Wolverine last issue. Strictly, the promise not to hurt other mutants (if they leave him alone) is also new, but Beast was doing that anyway.
PAGES 12-13. X-Force kill a bunch of Beast clones.
PAGES 14-15. Wolverine sets the Beast’s Wolverine clones free.
Jeff Bannister gets to point out the fact that the real Beast Prime doesn’t need reading glasses, because this specific to his post-Krakoa body, so Wolverine probably isn’t aware of it.
Wolverine’s perfectly reasonable plan, as Domino confirms in the next scene, is to free all of the Wolverine clones from Beast’s control and assume that by this point, they’ll have built up enough intelligence, and enough hatred of the Beast, to make them turn on him of their own accord. He’s absolutely right.
PAGE 16. X-Force make their way through the base.
As Deadpool points out, they’re meant to be going up but there’s no way of lettering the page to make that work, and so we get a meta gag which I suspect may be covering for a storytelling glitch.
PAGE 17-19. X-Force enter the Beast’s chambers.
Once again, we’re simply told without explanation that the Cerebro Sword is “the weapon that’s making this whole operation possible”. I’ve said this many many times over the course of this series, but we’ve never had a remotely clear explanation of why this thing – originally made by Magneto as a commemorative ornament from the remnants of a shattered Cerebro helmet after the assassination attempt on Professor X in X-Force #1 – is useful for anything. I’m not talking about the details, I’m talking about the broad strokes – even at the vaguest level, why is it useful? In what sense is it a weapon? How does the mangled remnants of a Cerebro helmet enable Beast to do anything he’s doing here? The characters all seem to think it’s obvious, but it really isn’t. All we know about it suggests it ought to be a decorative paperweight with maybe some valuable data still stored inside.
(I’m going to hazard a vague guess that the existence of a mystery object that can be used to achieve some form of resurrection independently of the Five might be significant down the line in the light of Hellfire Gala, though.)
PAGE 20. Wolverine kills the “Beast Prime” impostor.
This gives him some sort of closure, I guess, since the actual Beast escapes at the end. Wolverine’s dialogue in panel 4 – “You’re convinced you’re fighting monsters. What you don’t seem to realise is you’ve become the monster yourself” – seems to be the one-line moral of the Beast arc. In fairness, the contrast with the rest of the group, and especially Sage, makes that not quite as one-note as it might first appear; even the likes of Omega Red and Deadpool see the moral context more clearly than Beast, who has convinced himself of his own overwhelming righteousness. Wolverine spells that out for us in the epilogue, with Sage positioned as the character who has the right attitude to this sort of work.
PAGES 21-22. Beast escapes with the Cerebro Sword.
So do three Wolverine clones, but by the look of it they’re doggedly swimming after him in the hope of killing him. (They kind of get lost on the page here, which is a pity.) Since they’re no longer under his control and should be continuing to grow in intelligence, perhaps they’ll be a little more chatty the next time we see them.
PAGE 23. Epilogue: Wolverine tells Sage he is leaving Krakoa.
Presumably, he doesn’t think he’s had a good enough answer to his complaints about the Quiet Council giving Beast carte blanche. And indeed, when we see him again in the Hellfire Gala one-shot, Wolverine is off on his own – location unspecified.
PAGE 24. Data page: Wolverine confirms that he’ll be hunting down the three stray clones.
PAGE 25. Trailers. Instead of Wolverine #36, we’re pointed to Ghost Rider / Wolverine: Weapons of Vengeance Alpha, which is the start of a four-part crossover that continues in Ghost Rider #17, Wolverine #36 and Ghost Rider / Wolverine: Weapons of Vengeance Omega.
I’m baffled by the decision to schedule a random Ghost Rider crossover at this point. Sure, Percy writes both books, but still.
I’m baffled to learn that Percy has a 3rd monthly title.
I’ve not been impressed by anything I’ve ever read by him
@JD: it keeps Wolverine away from the post-Hellfire Gala fallout, so he can have independent stories away from the main narrative. He (and Nightcrawler in Uncanny Spuder-Man) can have a side quest, maybe interact with the rest of the MU while the other mutants get used to a new status quo and/or solve their copious problems.
“with Sage positioned as the character who has the right attitude to this sort of work”
The right attitude being “become an alcoholic and hire a serial killer” I guess.
This dual Percy run has been a real trip. It’s perversely impressive for a writer to be so dully obvious in what they’re trying to say, while botching saying it so egregiously. It’s a polemic against creeping fascism in the security apparatus that somehow manages to imply that the antidote to same is for the corrupt undesirables (note how Percy’s Beast is progressively dehumanized throughout his arc, culminating in the bizarre scene of him literally eating with his hands)who secretly hold power to be violently overthrown by the brave soldiers (who have been doing all the killing the corrupt director is bad for ordering, but are not seen as irredeemably tainted by it), because the official governmental authority is too myopic and indecisive to do anything about it.
It is the most fascist anti-fascist diatribe ever conceived.
Man,I wonder what the result would have been if Beast had trained all his bullshit on Orchis and not “potential” problems.
“Wolverine sets the Beast clones free.’
I think that should be “sets the Wolverine clones free.”
@Tristan- “The right attitude being “become an alcoholic and hire a serial killer” I guess.”
In fairness, Krakoa is a country whose ruling council has included at least three people that were parties to experiments on children, a social Darwinist mass murder and a guy who got rich building machines to murder his own people.
Yes, I’ll fix that – thanks.
Paul, I don’t know if you said or not, but will there be annotations for the comics from the weeks you were on vacation?
No, there won’t.
@Mathius_X: Considering this version of Beast is an utter failure who could break an arm trying to find his ass with both hands, I’m sure that’s for the best. Krakoa tried using X-Force against Orchis and just gave them some free adamantium skeletons.
Judas Traveller: “Call off all our psyops and manufactured incidents. We’re just going to broadcast everything Beast is trying to do to us 24/7.”
It seems like Percy sometimes struggles communicating page layouts to his artists. Take the page of Beast Prime fleeing a legless Deadpool. Beast appears to sneak behind a corner then immediately jump back out, only to discover Deadpool has instantly teleported above him.
I presume there’s meant to be some time passing between Sneak Behind and Jump Out, but that’s not communicated, so the result is confusing.
“I wonder what the result would have been if Beast had trained all his bullshit on Orchis and not “potential” problems.”
Given how incompetent the Beast has been portrayed thus far, he’d probably end up helping Orchis more than hurting them.
[…] #35. (Annotations here.) Well, that seems to be the pay-off for the Beast storyline in X-Force – and I still think […]
Are we sure that this story happens *after* X-Force’s “Ghost Calendar”? Is it possible that it happened before, and that Omega Red remains dead, un-resurrected when the 2023 Gala happens? (I don’t think we see him in that issue.)
@Pseu42- Sage makes reference to X-Force knowing how dangerous Beast is because they’ve seen the future. Plus, Laura is a member of X-Force in this issue and she joined just before Quentin took them to the future.