Wolverine reminisces as X-Force bleeds into his solo. Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert, Antonio Fabela, Viktor Bogdanovic, Matthew Willson, and Cory Petit present Wolverine #8.
Which is also Wolverine #350.
Don’t ask.
TT: Hey Pierce! Welcome to our first column talking about our little corner of the Rain of X! It’s like the Dawn of X except there’s a lot more precipitation. In fact, it’s going to be raining all the time now. That’s how Storm is going to gain prominence in this next phase of the X-Me- Wait. Our editor is waving to me from the sidelines. It looks like its REIGN of X, not RAIN of X. Excuse me.
Well at least this special milestone issue of Wolverine was fun.
PL: Ah yes, the Rahne of X. I was very excited for this Wolfsbane-centered era of the X-Men but she doesn’t even appear in this issue so now I’m not sure what to think.
Well, now that everyone has moved on to someone else’s coverage. Let’s get into it.
[Ed. note: I swear I had a fever dream about this bit.]
Disillusioned
TT: Before we get to the meat of the story, we get an interesting little prologue.
For a while now we’ve been seeing Percy dancing around the idea that maybe the institutions in power in modern society are the bad guys here. In this prologue story, Logan and Agent Bannister tell war stories about their past, and holy crap the “dancing around” turns into a tango. The villains of Wolverine are government agencies. Period. The Government is out to get you. And that part of it I kind of loved. What did you think?
PL: I think I like what Percy is going for but I almost wish he’d be a little bit more explicit about it. Given everything that’s happened to Logan, I feel like he’d have a stronger stance but he always lands in this wishy-washy, 80s-90s-action hero space. We can always fall back on Logan having his memory erased to sort of explain it but I think a lot of readers might agree with me that the times when Logan shows some vulnerability are the ones that most memorably define his character.
Tough guys can tell war stories but Wolverine has been through so many wars that I’m hoping that Percy has a more nuanced take on how Wolverine feels about it. If I’m going to compare it to another Wolverine run, albeit one that starred a different character, the aspect of Tom Taylor’s run that endeared it to a lot of people was Laura facing her trauma in a more direct way. Obviously, Logan has had some of those stories in the past, but there’s this tendency to turn him into the John McClane of the X-Men that doesn’t always work for me. It is a hard needle to thread, certainly. But despite the first issue leaning into a little bit of that and Bannister’s struggle with his daughter tugging at Logan’s heartstrings, that feels something Percy isn’t isn’t prioritizing.
TT: Yeah, I think that’s fair. It’s more explicit than other stories about it have been, but it’s also not pushing the envelope enough.
PL: So I liked the intent of this opening salvo from Percy but if we are going to kick off a story with some anecdotes about how the government made these men lose a little bit of their humanity, I think a bit more could have been done.
Meanwhile, it looks like our old friend Viktor Bogdanovic is up to his old tricks.
TT: Yeah, no kidding. While I liked the story part of the prologue, I really can’t say that I’m a fan of the art. Bogdanovic’s Logan is way too skinny, and Bannister is completely off model! It’s really kind of strange to see Logan’s CIA ally from such a distinct visual presence (even if that visual is mostly just Jeff Bridges with a gnarly scar), to a stereotypical middle-aged white dude. I mean, I’m not thrilled with Bannister’s role as “one good cop working from the inside” but he’s at least interesting and part of that is his design. Thankfully, Bogdanovic is only drawing this opening scene…
PL: There have been a lot of uninspired X-Men artists over the years but Bogdanovic’s lack of effort is impressive in how thoroughly he misses the mark.
Family Matters
TT: This might have been my favorite sequence in the issue. Following up from last week’s X-Force, Beast releases Omega Red. However, Arkady doesn’t get far before he gets caught in a snare. And then we get a scene that I’ve been hoping for since this series launched.
We get the Wolverine family in action. Gabby (my favorite Wolverine), Akihiro and Logan all confront Omega Red one by one, and I LOVED this. The dialogue and the art here just RULED. What did you think?
PL: I liked the art well enough. Kubert is always a welcome sight. I don’t always love the “character breaking out of their main panel and blocking some of the other panels” thing that happens on one page but Kubert makes it work. I am in the minority (I think?) when I say that I don’t care about Gabby and Omega Red is really only talking to Logan so I’m a little indifferent to the inclusion of extra characters. I mean, Daken only gets one line. It feels a little bit extraneous. [Ed. note: This is your worst opinion and Gabby must be protected at all costs.] [Writers’ note in response to that Ed. note: This is far from my worst opinion.]
TT: I’m with our esteemed editor here. A major tease that I really liked- Omega Red’s denial that he sold Logan out, and that Logan has been prone to mind control lately. Now, we saw Omega Red back in issues #4 & 5. We think he was there… but was that scene from Logan’s perspective? Was he really tricked into thinking Arkady was there when it was all Dracula?
OR is Arkady the one being played? Is he the one under vampire mind control? My mind is reeling a bit!
PL: I don’t know why I love Omega Red so much. It must be that Jim Lee X-Men #4 cover or his mutant death factor being an extremely cool-sounding power even if it is essentially nonsense. That said, we know that Omega Red is lying. Omega Red cares about one thing, seemingly, and that is the “Carbonadium Synthesizer” that he uses to keep his powers in check. The first issue of this run saw Arkady succeed in getting Wolverine to Paris and Dracula giving him the synthesizer. But there’s a bomb in it so that Omega Red must work as Dracula’s operative in Krakoa. So Omega Red is a big ol’ liar and Logan is getting played again.
Team X
TT: Now for the bulk of the issue- the return of Maverick! You know, the mutant with the power to make his nose disappear when he puts on a mask designed by Jim Lee!
A bunch of Splinter Cell-looking dudes invade a bunker in Utah, and kill a bunch of folks. The Department of Defense reaches out to Beast for help, because one of the mercenaries was a mutant. Naturally, Logan assumes Maverick/Agent Zero. I’m not sure about that though. Could that be a red herring?
PL: Tying back into the Omega Red stuff, Team X has very direct ties to the Carbonadium Synthesizer and Arkady might hate Maverick more than Logan does. I do think the special forces part of this issue drags a little bit only because it feels a bit generic. Then again Team X and Maverick are fairly generic, too.
If Percy is really leaning into “the government are the real bad guys” thing, it feels like he’s putting the X-Desk/Team X/Maverick stuff in front of us to distract from the “Beast is becoming even more of a threatening presence” plot points that have been building.
How’d you feel about Beast’s role in this story and the data page about the Singing Stones?
TT: I’m enjoying that plot point and liking Beast less and less. It’s clear to me that Logan increasingly feels the same way about Hank. I think it’s a solid flip of their dynamic. Logan isn’t quite a boy scout but he’s grown to the point that he understands that the shades of grey are not a good place to be. Sometimes he does bad things because they’re necessary, but he doesn’t like doing them. Hank, meanwhile, continues to push the envelope in increasingly uncomfortable ways and it almost feels like he likes it.
There’s a part of me that can’t help but feel that Percy has a reckoning planned for Henry McCoy and it’s going to be Logan who’s going to deliver it.
But first, Logan needs to track down Maverick, and that leads us from the Mercs (aka the Splinter Cell guys) to Madripoor. All the while, Hank is whispering in his ear, and Logan clearly doesn’t like it…
PL: This is a slight tangent but this issue also borrows its title from a line in William Faulkner’s “Requiem for a Nun.” It’s a story about sacrifice and redemption for past sins. Pretty much right up Logan’s alley. But what if Logan isn’t the intended target for that allusion? Notably, and tying into Percy’s “government as villains” theme, Barack Obama used the same quote in 2012.
TT: Yeah, it’s some interesting stuff, that I really hope that Percy can pull off in the end!
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Well, is Rufus okay or not?! [Ed. note: You might want to check out X-Force #15 for that answer! But no.]
- I’d like to think if Laura wasn’t locked in the Vault, she would have just been standing to the side, rolling her eyes at her family’s Drama. Then she would have kicked Omega Red in the balls.
- Patch is back! But Patch has got to be a pretty known commodity at this point, right?
- Genuinely love the sound effects during the scene with Omega Red, they feel specific and blended into the art in ways that some of the other sounds effects in the issue don’t. (Notably, those BUDDABUDDABUDDA’s feel a bit pasted onto the art.)
- Krakoan Reads: Highest Bid
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.
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.
