Logan and Maverick reflect on the old days before pulling off one last job in Wolverine #10 by Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert, Frank Martin and Cory Petit.
Tony Thornley: Hey Pierce, you ever think about taking revenge on your enemies?
Pierce Lightning: Every day, Tony. I work in customer service and write about comic books for a living. I have so many enemies. But why do you ask?
TT: Oh, no reason. It has nothing to do with my enemies stealing artifacts from my life and auctioning them on the black market. Apropos of nothing, this issue was strangely relatable!
BANG
TT: Good grief, the team does not waste time here.
Immediately- and I mean IMMEDIATELY– the issue opens with Logan and Maverick in a pitched battle with the Merchant’s forces. This is a great fight. Not only do we get to see Logan and Mav in a pitched fight through the auction house, then the streets of Madripoor, but we actually get the duo reconnecting as they do it. I thought it was really fun.
PL: I’m glad that Kubert and Percy pick up right where the last issue left off. But the paneling approach left me a little cold. White space can be extremely dynamic but Kubert doesn’t feel like he’s using it to ratchet up the tension here. And those pages are far less effective than the ones that feature smaller inset panels over a full page splash or even the similarly styled one from last issue. Admittedly, this might be a bit of a limitation of reading digitally in full pages where the staccato rhythm of the fight doesn’t translate as well as it would in a guided view. But I think these elements that artists have to always take into consideration not that this medium isn’t purely in print.
TT: I was ready to mention that too! I didn’t totally DISLIKE it, but it was a LOT of white space, especially when it’s only about 8 or so small panels a page. The other downside is that the fight is full of kinda generic looking gangster-ish henchmen and standard guys in black suits, rather than the eclectic group we saw last issue.
PL: I definitely agree. I hate to call anyone’s work “rushed” but it does seem far easier to draw a lot of smaller panels of nondescript bad guys than it is to deliver dynamic action choreography with a more varied cast. No Prize explanation? All the interesting looking folks knew better than to stick around. And despite not loving the overall approach, Kubert can still make a fight look good.
TT: You and I have been writing together too long now, because I thought the same about the crowd. But hey, our guess last month was correct- that woman in the wheelchair was Agent Delores Ramirez of the X-Desk. As the Merchant tries to shoot Logan with the Phoenix Gun (?!) from Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine, she tazes him! And while she snagged Logan’s disembodied hand (loved that data page, by the way), we discover her true purpose there.
She wants Maverick.
Why? Who knows?
PL: I had to check because I wasn’t sure if the Phoenix Gun was destroyed when Wolverine used it to destroy Planet Doom but hey, it wasn’t! Cool to see it here especially since Adam Kubert drew that mini but I have to imagine that the Phoenix Gun works like a regular handgun without a Phoenix bullet, right?
Government agencies wanting to work with mercenaries they don’t control always seems weird to me since they are generally in charge of a bunch of mercenaries they do control. Obviously, it’s easier for Maverick to access Krakoa than most others but this doesn’t seem like a partnership that’s destined to go well for either of them. Unless there’s a little more to Delores than meets the eye and I suspect there probably is.
Rose Colored Glasses?
PL: Shared trauma is always a big theme in X-Men and I like that Percy leaned into the parallels between both characters. I think you could argue that there’s an alternate universe where Wolverine and Maverick’s standings in the Marvel Universe are swapped. They both have that Clint Eastwood/Western kind of vibe about them. Jim Carrey said “‘The Man With No Name’ had no name, so that we could fill in our own” when introducing Eastwood for his AFI Lifetime Achievement Award and I think that sentiment rings extremely true with Wolverine but to a lesser extent (mostly because he’s less popular) with Maverick. Wolverine has always been a character that readers (and even some other Marvel characters) glommed onto because his lack of solid identity allows them to project on him in the same way.
TT: Yeah, that definitely was the worst thing about the whole idea of “James Howlett” and revealing his origin. He doesn’t need that identity, especially since he’s walked through the trauma and is a completely different person. This arc really makes me frustrated that Maverick hasn’t been a major presence in Logan’s life. But it’s interesting how that shared trauma leads them in two different directions, ways that I think makes sense and fits the characters.
While Logan discovered a found family in the X-Men, and found peace from his traumas with them- even evolving into a leader and father- Chris Nord retreated into Maverick. He kept running jobs, he kept killing people, and so on. Hell, even when he started down a similar path to Logan, when he took Bolt under his wing, he ended up leading Bolt down his path, not the other way. Logan (at least partially) healed from his trauma, Maverick embraced it. So of course, they’re going to differ on their opinions of Krakoa.
PL: Wolverine’s never going to be allowed to fully recover from trauma because someone will always write in some forgotten memory that triggers him into a past version of himself. Logan’s curse is that kind of story around his neck. And that’s why I like Percy’s approach here. Your assessment is spot-on – Wolverine found himself with the X-Men but he also had to allow himself to get there. That’s the crux of his conversation with Maverick. He essentially tells Maverick that there’s a better version of him with Krakoa. They are both men who have lost so much and Wolverine wants to share what he’s found. But Maverick isn’t ready to do that. He says that he likes who he is now but as readers, we still haven’t really gotten a sense of who he really is.
TT: The only thing that disappointed me a little is that Logan offered him the Crucible… and he declined. But that’s just because I’ve liked Maverick so much the last two issues that I’m invested now, dammit!
PL: World’s Biggest Maverick Fans, right here.
The Warehouse
TT: So the one last job that Maverick brings Logan in on? It’s raiding one of the Merchant’s warehouses, and seriously… I love this scene so much. It’s literally nothing but punching and Easter Eggs.
And boy were there a lot of the latter.
PL: I got Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull flashbacks and frankly, I’m disappointed that they didn’t escape by hiding in an old refrigerator. The Easter eggs were fun though! I’m glad someone’s taking care of Onslaught’s armor. Hopefully, that’s a tease for things to come. (This is 100% a joke, please do not @ me.) What were your favorites?
TT: Oh yay, I was hoping you’d ask. 😉 I saw:
- The original Liberty Bell
- A Sentinel head
- Nimrod
- Ultimate/War Thor’s hammer
- A sword in a stone
- Hulkbuster armor
- Doc Ock’s arms
- Mojo’s chair
- MODOK’s harness
- Hulk’s Skaar armor
- The Weapon X helmet
- Ultron
- Shocker’s vibrogauntlet
- Luke Cage’s tiara
- A Pumpkin Bomb
- At least one of Cyclops’ visors
And that’s just the stuff that I’m sure of what it was. That’s not even counting the crates labelled X-Men, Avengers, Spider-Man, Team X and more!
PL: I get the sense we’ll be back at this warehouse at some point. It seems like a bad idea to leave all that stuff just… lying around?I laughed that Team X just has one little box compared to all the giants of the Marvel U. But maybe this is all really just a setup for Maverick: Origins.
TT: Please!
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Between last issue and this issue, we discovered that machine gun arm guy from Wolverine #9 was obscure Punisher villain Rapido. Sadly he does not reappear here.
- Really, Tony discovered Rapido and he’s just being modest. I hope Percy has some plans for him but he strikes me as the kind of guy who might just live in Madripoor. Also, why is his name Rapido? He’s French.
- I’m beginning to feel like the most natural progression for Logan would be to move on from the Wolverine moniker. I know he’s done it before but we know Marvel won’t let it really stick and that’s a bummer.
- I dig how much Percy is doing short seeding arcs, then stepping back to revisit it in the future. This arc worked best of all of them so far, but it’s an approach that works really well to let readers know that Percy is in for the long haul, plus it gives Kubert more time to draw some of the cooler stories.
- Follow up on the Wolverine hand when?
- Krakoan Reads: BLOOD FOR BLOOD
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.
