Wolverine #39 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #39
“Last Mutant Standing, part 3”
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 the Black Panther fight Orchis.
This should be a fairly short one, because it’s simply another one-shot story with a guest star. Nothing wrong with that, mind you.
PAGES 2-4. Jun Wei is rejected by the Wakandan Prime Minister.
Wakanda. The current status quo in Black Panther is that T’Challa has been exiled, and the country is currently supposed to be undergoing a transition to democracy under the leadership of Prime Minister Folasade.
Jun Wei is the same Orchis officer who was kidnapped and briefly controlled by Chronicler over in X-Force.
“As you know, we are responsible for the exile of the mutants from Earth…” This is Orchis’s standard explanation of what happened in Hellfire Gala.
“Wakanda was wise not to sign the treaty with Krakoa.” Wakanda has indeed always been listed as refusing to enter into a treaty with Krakoa, on a list otherwise populated mainly by dodgy regimes. The official reason given was that the Wakandans simply didn’t need Krakoan drugs, and so Krakoa had no leverage with them. Black Panther has become rather more equivocal in its depiction of Wakanda over the last few years, but it’s still positioned here very clearly as taking the moral high ground. (Though not, apparently to the extent of actually offering mutants asylum.)
Kovu, the corrupt businessman, is a new character.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGE 6. Data page. Another memo from Jeff Bannister, pointing Wolverine to another one-shot story that he can share with a guest star. Basically, Orchis want to get their hands on some vibranium, in order to keep up their supply of robots.
PAGE 7. Logan arrives in Birnin T’Chaka.
Birnin T’Chaka is the setting for the current Black Panther series. It’s Wakandan Gotham, basically. As depicted in that series (at least the two issues that have reached Unlimited), it’s still a high tech city, and the social security system is impeccable, but the people are comparatively poor and the crime levels are high. Oh, and T’Challa is an urban-legend vigilante, and there’s a sexy socially conscious thief in the supporting cast. You get the picture.
“They’d looted our homes…” That was the subject of last issue’s Captain America team-up.
The kid who Logan pays to look after his bike shops him to Kovu in three pages time.
PAGES 8-10. Jun and Kovu talk.
Presumably, Kovu can bite through metal because he’s got vibranium teeth. I rather like the fact that the guy doesn’t have access to vibranium but he’s offering her regular old useful metals. Nice to see Wakanda having a second export industry beyond vibranium trinkets.
PAGES 11-13. Kovu’s men attack Logan, and Black Panther steps in.
Black Panther is wearing a new costume, but everyone in his own book instantly recognises what it’s meant to be (even if they’re often sceptical about who’s wearing it).
PAGE 14. Kovu shows Jun his mine.
PAGES 15-16. Logan and Black Panther travel to the mine.
Logan can’t resist annoying the Panther about his break-ups with Storm, having always seen him as a rival. Ultimately, though, they seem to unite around the idea that Storm is either missing or dead thanks to Orchis, and they both want to avenge her. In fact, they’re sort of wrong – Storm wasn’t even at the Hellfire Gala and she’s been on Mars the whole time, over in X-Men Red. But Orchis did disable the Krakoan gates that would have allowed her to return to Earth, so fair enough.
PAGES 17-22. Logan and the Black Panther defeat the bad guys.
The stuff about Wakanda losing its way without the Black Panther, and T’Challa wanting to restore those values, is a theme of his solo book. When Kovu says there’s “no oversight” in Birnin T’Chaka, he’s basically talking about high levels of corruption, rather than a complete breakdown of law and order.
Jun Wei has the good fortune to avoid getting killed by the heroes a second time, though she’s handed over to the authorities in the next issue.
PAGE 23. Data page: Logan updates Jeff Bannister on the boring stuff that happened after the main story. Basically, Black Panther gets his sister Shuri (who’s in the government) to make sure Jun is properly dealt with. And Wolverine steals an Orchis ship, which he’ll be using next issue.
PAGE 24. Logan bids farewell to Black Panther.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads LAST MUTANT STANDING PART FOUR.
I’m not liking the idea that Logan doesn’t know Storm is on Mars- surely he could have asked Steve about it last issue.
I have the current BP volume in my queue but haven’t started it yet. The premise sounds interesting, but the idea that anyone would find that costume confusing is extremely odd. Wouldn’t it make more sense to create a new costumed identity, ala Ronin? Does exiled T’Challa routinely have an alibi when the “mystery” Black Panther is in action?
The idea that people will not at least suspect that this is Tchalla simply because he is using a slightly different costume is ludicrous.
As for asking about Storm last issue, I think that it is reasonable that he would not. Even more reasonable is that Steve would not necessarily know and might not want to tell even if he knew.
We have to assume that Steve is aware of Kate’s “need to know only” directive. Besides, I don’t see how Steve could know Ororo’s status quo with any certainty. At most he could have known that she was alive not long ago… amidst a situation of war among superpowered beings that may well kill her any day.
Beyond that, it is not clear that either Steve or Wolverine would see fit to exchange such questionable info in a limited time window. And would Wolverine even prioritize info on Ororo? They were not even in the same team or book recently, nor recently involved or even in the same planet.
Wolverine, for all that he likes to pose as a loner-type, is one of the most connected people in the MU. There are literal hundreds of people that he would be more likely to ask about before Storm.
There’s also the minor point that if that’s the setup, with T’Challa officially in exile and hiding out in “Wakandan Gotham”… why the hell is he on the Avengers? Really, half the current team now have status quos that aren’t really compatible with being on the Avengers, they’re just kinda skimming over it…
I’m not familiar with T’Challa’s current status quo – I’m not reading his series at the moment, and it was only hinted at in MacKay’s Avengers.
So I don’t know if there are circumstances I’m unaware of – some magic glamour his under or something like that. But it was hilarious to see people facing Black Panther in a Black Panther costume and going ‘who IS this guy?’.
Or to have T’Challa say to Logan ‘perhaps you don’t recognise the costume’. Because… you added a panther pauldron? Like… What am I not seeing? Is there something I’m not seeing? It’s Black Panther’s costume with a very slightly modified mask and some bells and whistles.
It’s not that people don’t recognise the costume, it’s that they assume he’s an impostor because they know T’Challa’s meant to be in exile and he never paid any attention to their backwater city in the past, so why would he start now?
Hey, it’s up there with Logan’s “Patch” costume from back in the day…
So I presume T’Challa’s new costume has a red arm?
Tchalla being out of touch with his own land and people and feeling the need to atone somehow is a character trait that goes back to his first solo run, in 1970s “Jungle Action” and his efforts to convince himself and his subjects that he was indeed worth of being their ruler and a better person and a better leader than his friend-turned-enemy, Erik Killmonger.
I did not follow his previous series, so I do not know why he is currently in exile nor what that may mean to him. But clearly he is again attempting to seek some sort of attunement and/or redemption, albeit coming from a significantly different situation.
When do we think this happens in Jun Wei’s personal timeline? Is this before or after she gets kidnapped by Mikhail?
Wolverine hasn’t learned not to click on messages from Bannister because then you’ll get an annoying side quest that will hang around in your journal until you go off and complete it. But I guess he’s like me — anything to avoid making progress on the main quest.
Nah, Logan’s just doing a bit of grinding so he can level up before he goes all ‘Leeroy Jenkins!’ in the finale.