When Logan needs a vacation from his vacation he goes to dive bars in the middle of no where. Lucky for him, there is no way that ends poorly. Benjamin Percy, Viktor Bogdanovic, and Matthew Wilson pour us a tall one in Wolverine #4.
Tony Thornley: Whew! It’s nice to be back so quickly, don’t you think?
Pierce Lightning: Tony, time has stopped existing for me for the most part so I’m going to have to take your word for it. You say it’s quick? I am obliged to believe you.
Disciplinary Council
TT: Oh my hell, it’s good to have the old Logan back. I feel like we’ve been getting a softer gentler Wolverine ever since HOXPOX, so this opening scene in front of the Quiet Council is a great start for this issue. This is the Wolverine of old, full of vinegar (but not piss as the old saying goes- as we’ll see in a second).
I thought it was interesting though here. We only see half the Council. Think that was deliberate? Especially because Storm was with Logan on the mission to the Flower Cartel?
PL: Couldn’t agree more! I really like Logan being a bit more of the curmudgeon that we’ve known him to be. As much as I like him in a mentorship role or as headmaster of a school, I think Logan’s my favorite when he’s pissing in someone else’s Cheerios, er, anti-mind control helmet in this case, I guess.
As for the Council, I have to imagine that when it comes to Wolverine’s discipline not everyone wants to be involved but its more likely that some of them are just off in other places. It has been hard to really track where this series exists amongst the others.
TT: I am a little disappointed we didn’t get to see Mystique’s reaction to Logan’s crack about peeing in Magneto’s helmet. I really think the two of them have similar senses of humor as far as taking the piss out of Chuck and Erik. And sorry Zack, that’s the last pee joke we’ll make. Maybe…
PL: Don’t bend the knee to our editor! What are you, Tony? Yellow?
TT: HAH!
PL: If Zack gets a wee bit angry, I say, let him. It doesn’t take a whiz to see we’re just appreciating a good bit. So our enjoyment leaked into the column a little bit, who’s to say this isn’t the kind of content that XavierFiles fans are looking for?
But yeah, Mystique needed a zinger to really put a cap on this scene, oh well.I guess she held it.
And just for the SEO: watersports. [Ed. note: I regret, so deeply, what I’ve let this site become]
TT: What a relief that was to release all of those puns.
Anyways, moving on downstream, Percy has gotten some grief for his Chronicler data pages from X-Force, and we see one of them here. I’m kind of mixed on this one. On one hand, this is some really interesting prose that gives us solid insight into Logan’s frame of mind. On the other, I was under the impression that the Chronicler was an actual character on Krakoa currently, so to see them being omnipresent here… It feels off to me.
What did you think of it?
PL: I really liked this data page. I know that just slapping down a page of prose isn’t as interesting as other usages that we’ve seen across the line but not everything can be puzzles or weird symbols. Especially early on in the arc, this helps set the tone and eases the transition into the next part of the story. We’re moving away from the superheroes just a bit into something a bit smaller and more personal for Logan, at least at the start.
As for the Chronicler, they could still be an actual character. I don’t think Percy would waste the opportunity for that to be the case. Plenty of people have wanted to keep tabs on Logan and plenty of folks in the Marvel Universe could conceivable that kind of insight into Logan’s inner thoughts. I think it’ll be keyed directly to all this bloodsucking stuff we’ve got coming.
TT: I definitely really like what we see here. I like getting insight into Logan’s thoughts because it makes it feel way more intimate of a story than we’ve got in the past. I guess it would have worked just a touch better for me if it was Logan’s journal rather than the Chronicler, which goes back to what we said last issue. Percy is still trying to figure out the difference between this series and X-Force. This issue definitely felt more “This is a solo Wolverine story!” than the entire previous arc but the Chronicler showing up blurred that line a bit again.
However, the actual content? I dug it.
An Angry Canadian Walks Into A Bar
TT: I love that Logan has a secret gate to a cabin not far from an isolated dive bar (probably on the Alaska/Canada border given the Canadian flags but a jukebox that takes American quarters). That’s such a Logan thing that it would be a cliche if we’d ever seen it before.
PL: The question is, where else does he gates to? And followup, who else has secret gates? And a followup to that, what will Beast inevitably ruin with his secret gates?
To be fair though, is there anything more cliche than Logan getting into a bar fight? [Ed. note: No]
TT: That’s an easy answer- he has gates to each of his favorite bars. And how are they his favorite? They’re each home to a favorite fight!
PL: This is the kind of setting that Benjamin Percy’s writing really gets to feel at home in – partly because we’ve seen the man chopping wood on the Internet so it’s only reasonable to assume that he frequents an establishment not unlike this one.
TT: Further proof that Percy is basically just real world Wolverine.
I do love the visual we get here of this village. The huts, the woods, the dark roads, and the desolate bar being basically the only thing that’s open for miles… It’s bleak and desolate, the perfect setting for what’s about to go down. I would be fascinated to see what Percy’s panel descriptions were for Bogdanovic.
PL: In stops and starts, Bogdanovic almost had me. I have loudly disliked his art in the past and it’s mostly because he often looks like a poor man’s Greg Capullo. [Ed. note: We’d link to those Newsarama reviews but the recent changes there have removed them.] Now I may be reading a lot of Spawn right now but I am no Capullo evangelist. Bogdanovic’s Wolverine is basically just Batman in that opening scene, though. And his lines are so brittle that I was more worried they would break than Logan actually suffering any sort of injury.
That said, the script allows for Bogdanovic to be a little more experimental with his layouts which I did appreciate. And I liked any opportunity he had to really back up his inks and give contrast to the pages.
I did love Logan putting on “Whiskeybent and Hellbound” – a song about how Hank Williams Jr. feels like he’s not living up to his father’s legacy. I think legacy is something Logan must think about a lot.
TT: It’s a good reference to booze and a song with deeper meaning! It’s not just about legacy either. As the lyrics go-
I’ve got a good woman at home
Who thinks I do no wrong
But sometimes, Lord, she just ain’t always around
And you know that’s when I fall
Now I can’t help myself at all
And I get whiskey bent and hell bound
Logan’s got a lot of women in his life, but the special one right now is Jean Grey. You look at a literal interpretation of the lyrics, you can definitely see that there’s a lot of self loathing here towards himself and his relationship with Jean. I mean, what better thing to get drunk about than the love of your life?
PL: Tony, I don’t know about you but I’ve never needed a good reason to get drunk.
But in all seriousness, you’re not wrong. Percy’s working on different levels with the song selection here. It’s got layers. Like a parfait.
Do you think Logan was just going there to get drunk though? Was he looking for a fight? And what’d you think of his assailants?
TT: I mean it’s Wolverine in a bar, when ISN’T HE? However, I really like where the story twists from here.
Revenge Served Cold
TT: There are four people in the bar when Logan arrives- a belligerent trucker, the bartender, an older woman and some nutcase snickering in the corner. After Logan picks a fight with the trucker, things go south.
He recognizes the woman as he’s halfway through his beer. Then the world starts swimming. I honestly thought for a minute that Logan just wasn’t holding his booze, thanks to getting soft on Krakoa… But that’s definitely not the case.
PL: I like the idea of someone or someones catching Logan by surprise. The thing that stuck out the most to me was the old woman mentioning Gorgon and saying “My dear son had what you might call mommy issues.” Is that… Gorgon’s actual mom or is this more of a mommy situation?
Either way, this is where I didn’t love the data page if it was in fact explaining the characters that were before us. It felt a little too on the nose. Definitely a YMMV situation and arguably the kind of thing most people were asking for from the data pages.
But you know who I do love, Tony? Omega Red. That guy friggin’ rules.
TT: Oh I kind of loved the data page from a satire standpoint on first read. However, after a little thought about it, I soured on the idea. It feels like a legit Facebook group for racists. Unfortunately, it’s also a case like Russia last issue though- it’s a little too realistic for it to land. I guarantee that there’s real life Facebook hate groups out there, maybe with rules that say that word for word. It went from “this is kinda funny” to “oh, not the best call” after I thought on it a bit.
You know what though, you’re right Omega Red RULES. Because after Logan finds the trucker with his chest ripped open, the racists drag the drugged Logan out onto the frozen lake. This scene? This scene I loved. Each of the racists air their grievances with mutants, and all of them are pretty weak. Really they’re just excuses to hate, which is what we see with real life racists. And here’s where Percy finally gets the real life parallels right.
I always like terrible people getting their comeuppance.
PL: Percy is funnier when delivering on character moments than he is elsewhere. Hopefully, he sticks to that and just lets the data pages be the prosetry that he wants them to be.
Logan’s gotta weigh around 300 pounds right? It must be a pain to move him. I’m always impressed when seemingly regular people do it. He’s a dense little guy.
But yeah, Omega Red! He was definitely a favorite of mine as a kid because I thought he looked cool. Plus MUTANT DEATH FACTOR sounds awesome. Loved him taking the racists apart and the larger arrival of vampires. I know I was tough on Bogdanovich earlier but I really like his Omega Red.
TT: Oh my gosh, the racists get theirs hard, and that’s BEFORE the vampire show up, in one on my favorite final pages in a very long time…
X-Traneous Thoughts
- We’d like to note that the artist of this issue, Viktor Bogdanovic, made comments recently that blamed grooming and sexual assault on the victim. We STRONGLY condemn those comments, and want to make it clear that the writers of this article and the staff of Xavier Files as a whole condemns sexual misconduct in all its forms.
- Tired of using the word “urinate?” Try “micturate.” It doesn’t appear in this issue but we thought you might want to know.
- We want to know what Logan spent his five bucks in quarters on in the jukebox. Was it all Whiskeybent and Hellbound, all Hank WIlliams Jr. or a variety of miserable music? Spill, Percy!
- The mark on the neck of the victim that Wolverine finds looks a lot like the different vampire clan marks in Vampire: The Masquerade. It’s not super close to any specific one but this detail definitely has resident X-goth “Tini Howard” all over it if Percy himself didn’t play.
- The former asylum patient? I want to know where he finds flies that big to munch on, and avoid it!
- Considering the reference to the”Brotherhood Militia,” the dead guy being named Fred and that guy eating flies, did we just meet some weird human counterparts to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?
- Krakoan reads: Bleeding Hearts
Pierce Lightning is a longtime comics journalist and critic, singer for a band called Power Trash, and staving off the crushing heel of capitalism with every fiber of their comic book loving being.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
