Wolverine jumps into some more timelines as the plot starts to come into focus in X-Lives of Wolverine #2 by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara, Frank Martin, and Cory Petit!  

Rob Secundus: What’s up, bub. You can call me Fishy Rob. Or, when I’m undercover, call me Hat (I wear a tuxedo and also a hat and change nothing else about my appearance). Or, among friends, you can call me just plain— Bob. Anyway. That’s my gimmick opening for this book about all the different lives James “Patch,” “Lucky Jim,” “Logan” Howlett has had over the years. 

Austin Gorton: Welcome to the X Lives/X Deaths party, bub. I hope you, well, you know how it goes. We’ve now got one issue each of the two books under our belts, and it’s clear it is two books, each following a different protagonist (at least for now). All of which is to say, this truly does read like a second issue, even though it’s the third chapter of this larger story. 

Rob: Nothing has crossed over yet, but we see that things are headed towards convergence points. Speaking of,

Timeline Terrorism

Rob: As you said, we’re three issues into this braided narrative and two into this strand, but we don’t yet know how these things are fitting together. We haven’t yet had a paradigm-defining moment like House of X #2’s biography of Moira X. We do have three issues of information, though. Austin, given what we know, where do you think we’re headed from here? How is this story building towards the teased end-state, the fracturing of time? 

Austin: Obviously, I don’t *know*, but this issue builds on some things hinted at in the first issue (of X Lives), which suggests some paths forward. In the last issue, Future Wolverine was reluctant to kill Omega Red’s “hosts” who were attacking him in the past. It’s presented as mostly a moral quandary: these were innocent bystanders pulled into the conflict. Yet in this issue, Jean, in her role of managing Wolverine’s field operations from the future, cautions him that unnecessary deaths could have ripple effects on the timeline; she seems largely unconcerned with the larger moral question.

That idea is repeated when we see Wolverine, amid a mission with Maverick and Sabretooth in his Team X days, go off-script. Jean reminds him he has to let things play out as they did historically. Wolverine decides this particular (historic) mission is shitty enough that he wants to do things differently. This, even though it has nothing to do with his (present-day) mission to protect Xavier. This issue sets up the importance of Wolverine limiting the butterfly effect in his actions. It also presents a few ways in which that could go wrong and lead to the fracturing of time we know is coming (thanks to marketing/promotional material). Assuming this does lead to the fracturing and that the fracturing is not caused by something “Inferno”/Moira related, how does this work for you, Rob? Is grounding the action in Wolverine’s moral choices effective? Or should a seasoned superhero operative with no small amount of time travel experience under his belt already know better? 

Rob: It works for me as a literalization of the character’s core concept, as well as how he often works with the X-Men. Wolverine is haunted by his past, by the fact that he can’t change the horrors he committed while serving as a tool; here, he relives it. And though he tries to be better, the people he relies upon often see him as that tool for killing. They still just want to make use of that monster, which places his desire to do better, to seek some measure of redemption, at odds with them. 

I think it’s fitting to have a story where Wolverine and Jean Grey are at odds because the latter wants to focus on saving Charles Xavier, not saving scores of innocent people. I think their dynamic is most interesting when they’re both in some kind of morally grey area at odds with one another. I think it’s fitting that the woman who was once a cosmic force can’t help but see the big picture, and the man haunted by his sins can’t help but see the innocents he might save. The story here is, I agree, some pretty standard time travel stuff. Grounding the conflicts in those aspects of those characters helps the story feel authentic rather than written.

The frantic, almost disordered structure of the issue also helps. Time hasn’t fractured yet, but it feels fractured thanks to this pacing. For House of X #2, pacing among the timelines was also important; cutting between lives helped the story feel exponentially massive and grand. It’s fitting that the camera is zooming in the opposite direction for this story. Instead of zooming out to see Moira’s Earth, we’re honing in on a flash of claws, a spray of blood.

Austin: That’s a great observation! I think this issue improves on the first by cutting back and forth across multiple missions and time periods. Not only does it structurally presage the fracturing of time, it quickens the pace of the issue itself. The fight in issue #1 wasn’t leisurely, but it did drag a bit. Here, the quick cuts and jumps in time create a sensation of speed and forward momentum. The fast pacing has the added benefit of making the overarching plot feel grander in scale and more apparent in terms of what’s happening. 

Rob: And one last note concerning time: though I don’t quite understand how the mechanics of the system described work, a data page for this issue gave us one of the all-time great lines in comics:

“We have, since the beginning, accounted for TIMELINE TERRORISM.” [ed. Note— emphasis added]. I love comics. 

Wolverine Punches a Polar Bear in the Face

Austin: One thread that ties the various timelines together in this issue is imperialism. We see Wolverine fighting to protect an ancestor of Xavier’s, who is leading a sailing venture into the Arctic circa 1900. Wolverine also jumps into his past self in the wake of World War II when, as a Canadian in Japan, he fell in love with Itsu, the future mother of Daken. And in the timeline established in the previous issue, we see Wolverine with his Team X compatriots in Columbia and learn their mission there has the specific goal of enforcing American policy. The mission in Columbia is the event that causes Future Wolverine to go off script and start changing time. The way the issue is structured, the Colombia sequence comes last. As a result, it feels like the final straw for Wolverine.

All three of these sequences (well, two of them, at least) also generate some of the issue’s best art moments. What amongst those eras stood out for you?

Rob: The most striking art choice to me are the gutters and borders of the older time periods, making the comic appear yellowed with age. My favorite panel might be the one where Wolverine punches a polar bear in the face. Wolverine punching a polar bear in the face is just pure comics. What was your favorite moment, Austin?

Austin: I complained a little in the first issue about some of the artistic choices feeling like padding, handing over splash pages to moments that maybe didn’t warrant it. But I loved the full-page splash of naked Wolverine being the little spoon to an Omega Red-possessed Itsu as his creepy bone tentacle wrapped itself around Wolverine like a terrible umbilical cord before climbing up towards the reader. Just absolutely creepy, gorgeously rendered stuff. 

Rob: I appreciate that creepiness. The grotesque feel of everything because it would be so easy for this just to be a Snikt-across-time power fantasy where Wolverine slices and dices a great variety of generic enemies with bone tentacles. That would be fine, that would be fun, but it wouldn’t play as nicely with Percy’s themes extending from X-Force into this narrative. We have here a story about Wolverine being told by his superiors that he needs just to let the violence happen, allow imperial forces to massacre innocents, and focus on the good of Krakoa. And he rejects that. It’s a revisit to Wolverine’s past, but it’s also a dark parallel to recent events in the present in X-Force.

Austin: The most important moment in the “1900s Arctic Expedition” sequence is Omega Red suggesting imperialism runs in the Xavier family, drawing a direct line from historical empire-building to what is being done with Krakoa. Not only does this connect the series to Percy’s themes, but it also offers a bleak question: if Wolverine is being sent through time to save Xavier, what happens if he decides Xavier isn’t worth saving?

And Then…

Rob: In the end, we don’t have much to say about this issue. I liked it. There are parts we enjoyed and aspects we’re interested in discussing, but, much like Lives #1, this issue is still laying the groundwork. It’s functional. The first issue gave us the starting premise, and this issue takes that premise and shows us the full scope before, presumably, things will start to change in issue #3, as the two series begin to converge further. 

Austin: It’s a very workmanlike issue in that it’s doing the (necessary) job of widening the plot and making it more clear where this is all headed. For example, we get the sequence of X-Force attempting to meet with the head of the Russian Hellfire Club, which reveals that Omega Red was working for Mikhail well before their encounter at the end of issue #1 (and that Mikhail is presumably the one sending Omega Red through time). But you’re right: aside from a few artistic flourishes, there’s not a ton to dig into here. Certainly, no moment on par with the Moira reveal in House of X #2 (though that is perhaps too high a bar for any series to clear). 

It also doesn’t help that there’s still a sense of the narrative being padded. I love Wolverine punching a bear as much as the next comic book fan, I’m not a monster. I’m not sure, however, the issue truly benefited from four full pages of Wolverine-fighting-a-bear action. 

Rob: We’re still waiting for the “and then… and then…” of it all. But until then, I’m glad we’re getting something fun.

X-Traneous Thoughts 

• The bear fighting sequence involves Future Wolverine jumping into his Origin-era self (ie the body of “an idiot [redacted] teenager who thinks he’s invincible”, in Future Wolverine’s word), a period in his personal history we don’t see revisited very often. 
• Wolverine says the Team X mission is meant to teach the locals to fear America more than the cartels. However, Team X is meant to be an extension of the CIA. It’s worth noting that none of the three central agents are: Wolverine is Canadian, while Maverick is said to be German and Sabretooth from “who knows where” when the TeamX concept was introduced in X-Men (vol. 2) #5-7. 
• The Comics XF consensus seems to be that this Russian Hellfire Club mentioned in this issue is new. 
• What happens when Omega Red jumps back to a point in the Xavier family lineage beyond Wolverine’s life? Let’s bring in SELENE.

Austin Gorton

Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton

Rob Secundus

Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.