Wolverine #38 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #38
“Last Mutant Standing, part 2”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colour artist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: Wolverine and Captain America in action, surrounded by … well, obscured figures, because the identity of the villain is a reveal halfway through the issue. They’re wearing the hats of typical Legacy House agents, though.
As with the previous issue, we get some actual lettering on the cover, which seems to be a thing for this “series of team-ups” arc. (If “arc” is the right word – it’s really more a series of linked one-shots.)
PAGES 2-4. Logan approaches Steve Rogers in a bar.
Logan’s explanation for how he’s evading the Orchis patrols is simply that people don’t recognise him out of costume. Which… Wolverine’s pretty recognisable, isn’t he? It’s not too hard to find stories where members of the general public recognise the short guy with the unusual hair on sight. It happens in the recent Fallen Friend one-shot when he shows up to Kamala Khan’s memorial service. I know you have to turn a blind eye to this sort of thing for the book to function at all during “Fall of X”, but maybe just go with “he’s good at dodging the patrols”?
It’s not exactly clear why Logan turns down the offer of help from the Avengers, or why (in plot terms) he’s singled out Captain America for this team-up in the first place. Thematically, the idea is that Legacy House are about history and so is Captain America, though it’s a bit loose.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGES 6-12. Cap and Logan find that somebody has already raided the Orchis ship.
Logan says in narration that the ship is meant to be full of things left behind by the mutants – he says that the “pulled a heist on the mutant vault”. It’s not entirely clear what that means (what vault?) or when this happens. Some of the things we see later come from Wolverine’s home in the Summer House, which was on the Moon. But a lot of them come from Krakoa itself, and that seems to contradict the Professor X storyline in Immortal X-Men, where the whole point is that nobody can get past Professor X to land on Krakoa proper.
I suppose in theory Orchis could have raided the place while the mutants were marching through the gates, but if so it seems odd that they didn’t leave a force there to secure it. To be fair, you could also argue that this was a bizarre oversight on Orchis’ part even aside from this issue. Another possible explanation is that the vault isn’t on Krakoa proper, but that doesn’t seem to be the intention – Jeff Bannister’s data page says that Orchis “raided the island”.
PAGE 13. Data page. Jeff Bannister reports back to Wolverine and basically suggests that Legacy House stole all the trinkets that Orchis had stolen. That makes sense, since Legacy House’s whole thing is stealing superhero and supervillain memorabilia and re-selling it on the black market.
We last saw Legacy House in this book in issue #27, as part of the sequence of events which led to Beast killing Wolverine and resurrecting him as a mind-controller assassin.
PAGES 14-15. Cap and Wolverine board Legacy House’s liner.
Most of the people on the splash page are random bystanders, but there are a handful of recognisable characters in there. The guy in the green and yellow battle suit at the bottom of the stairs on the left is Chance, a Spider-Man villain. Near the middle of the picture, the guy in monochrome with the white hair and jet black skin is another Spider-Man villain, Mr Negative. There’s also a guy in a blue costume who I don’t immediately recognise.
There are also a few people in here who don’t look human, such as the elephant woman leaving a trail of slime behind her, but who seem to be just random people from the superhuman underworld.
There are a whole group of hooded guys in the top right. Back at the first Legacy House auction, there was another group of hooded men (not quite identical to this) who were identified as members of Order of X, the quasi-religious cult of humans who worshipped mutants. We haven’t heard much about their thoughts on Fall of X, but it would make sense for them to show up for something like this.
PAGE 16. The Merchant begins his introduction.
The objects shown in floating globes, from left to right, are:
- Possibly a version of the Caliban suit Forge wore in X-Men #15-17.
- Professor Plod, Mr Sinister’s genetically engineered giant tortoise from Immortal X-Men.
- Cy-Cat, Mr Sinister’s cat/Cyclops hybrid from Immortal X-Men.
- A Krakoan diving suit from X-Force #16.
- One of Emma Frost’s White Queen corsets.
- Some random gun or other, presumably belonging to either Cable or Bishop.
- One of Cyclops’s visors.
- One of the Moira MacTaggert clones that was depowered in Sins of Sinister: Dominion.
- One of Magneto’s helmets.
- The adamantium surfboard from X-Force #25-26.
PAGE 17. Data page. Basically a recap to bring new readers up to speed on the Muramasa Blade. This is not the Muramasa Blade from Wolverine: Origins, but one of the two swords forged by Muramasa in hell during “X of Swords”. Presumably the missing sister blade is with Solem.
PAGES 18-19. Logan and Cap find the storage room.
There are various miscellaneous Krakoan artefacts here such as guns and ammo. The left side of page 19 panel 1 includes a selection of costumes from previous Hellfire Galas. The table below that is mostly random weapons but seems to have the Shadow King’s fez and one of Colossus’s paintings. Most of the shelves on the right hand side of the room are filled with mugs and decoration from the Green Lagoon bar. The Muramasa Blade is resting on the stand that Logan used to have in his room in the Summer House.
PAGES 20-22. Logan and Cap interrupt the auction.
All pretty straightforward.
PAGES 23-24. Logan and Cap give their recoveries to Nick Fury for safekeeping.
Presumably they went back afterwards to retrieve it from the bottom of the ocean?
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads LAST MUTANT STANDING PART THREE.
Logan couldn’t have put an eyepatch on to throw off Orchis? The guy isn’t even trying anymore.
Wasn’t Cy-Cat shown to still be in Sinister’s lab in this month’s Immortal X-Men?
They have one of the Moira clones for auction? No wonder Moira has such a hatred for Sinister and/or mutants. It would seem as if Moira would have wanted to make sure all clones of her were destroyed to avoid this very situation.
My guess is that something in a future Immortal that takes place before this leading to Sinister’s lab being looted.
Also would assume that Moira would personally want to loot Sinister’s lab (I forget — does she know about SOS beyond the broad strokes Colossus revealed?). Either way, I would have to imagine that the Moira clone was intended to be delivered to her before it was diverted.
I think that suit of armor is the weird tree thing Moira was wearing at the end of X Deaths of Wolverine…?
With that said, one thing I “like” about this issue, the Percy of it aside, is that securing the X-Armory and keeping every single erratic plot item out of Orchis hands is a perfectly reasonable plot-point for Logan to be doing instead of participating in the “main” crossover. A little weird to be only doing it with Cap, and I think he probably should have asked Hulk or someone strong to come along for the heavy lifting. Still, overall I think I like the idea of Wolverine bringing in other 616 heroes to take care of things the X-Men have overlooked, and with the scale of Fall of X, it’s nice to see the other heroes participating.
Yeah, as ridiculous as so much of this is, I also like the idea of Wolverine being the go-to cleanup guy in the event of a catastrophe. I suppose Cable or Bishop would also be likely contenders, but well, they’re busy.
Surprised Cyclops didn’t have a plan for this. Not that he’s in any condition to execute it.
Superheroes are SO careless with their belongings.
Fallen Friend doesn’t support the idea that Wolverine is instantly recognizable in civvies. Kamala’s father doesn’t recognize Logan- he asks him if they’ve met and Wolverine replies that he’s not Muslim but knew her from the community. Whether people recognize Wolverine in civvies is something that varies Depending on the Writer.
@Chris V- Not only Cy-Cat. If you look carefully you can see Professor Plod is there as well.And the annoying thing is that Steve Foxe claimed that they went over which characters were appearing in which books, so you wouldn’t have a minor character hiding in the Limbo Embassy in one book, a prisoner of Orchis in a second and hiding in Canada in a third. I guess they only went over mutants and not Cy-Cat and Professor Plod but you’d think they would at least discuss major plot points like no one being able to get on Krakoa because of Xavier and whatever is going to happen to Xavier in Sinister’s lab.
@Mathias X- Selene was feeding Orchis information from inside the Quiet Council, so you’d THINK Moira would know about the clones.
Next issue: everything is retconned to be counterfeit, including the cat. To be continued in Unlimited sidestory where the cleanup guy for the cleanup guy goes after the counterfeiter.
Sinister has a long history of making multiple copies of his favorite creations. Maybe Orchis raided a non-Krakoan secret lab of his that had its own complement of pets.
“As with the previous issue, we get some actual lettering on the cover”
Whoever they’re paying to apply this lettering, that person is getting paid too much.
The guy in blue at the auction is current She-Hulk love interest/villain The Scoundrel.
So Wolverine and Captain America sink the boat, then help all the villains onto life rafts and none of them think to attack them?
I’m amazed at how much Orchis is getting done in other books, in terms of global authority and influence, while here they’re apparently completely unaware of, or powerless to interfere with, a major SHIELD salvage operation involving mutant artifacts stolen from Orchis. I guess worldwide detention centers and checkpoints are one thing, but there’s no getting around the Law of Finders Keepers. (Wolverine *is* an expert on maritime law, after all…)
Another fun item in the pg 19 inventory is a whole rack of Tiki glasses, presumably from the Green Lagoon.
Reasonably certain there have been multiple Cy-cats and Professors Plod.