X Deaths of Wolverine #3, from Benjamin Percy, Federico Vicentini, Dijjo Lima, and Cory Petit.
Liz Large: Weāre halfway through the X Lives/X Deaths story, and I am looking forward to talking about how this is ramping up. What about you?
Cassie Tongue: You can really tell weāve hit the halfway mark: the plot is unfurling, revealing more of its complexities – and starting to really tackle the fraught possible histories for mutantkind. Also, someone gets a new arm, and thereās a family reunion: a lot is happening here!
Wolverines
Liz: I was delighted by the opener to this issue. We get to see Laura and Gabby having an extremely sisterly interaction, and I love it. Gabbyās a kid, and seeing her ask Laura a thousand questions ranging from deep (how many people has Laura killed) to relatable (I also have questions about the Children of the Vault) was really great. Most importantly, Gabby wants to know: would having a butt claw be just like having a stinger? I love her.
Cassie: Would it be like having a stinger or is a claw really too much of a slicer to form an apt comparison? Wouldnāt you just stab people all the time? No one would ever let you cut in front of them in a queue for fear of butt-stabbing. Iām thinking about this too much.
Thereās a great energy and tone to this new generation of Wolverines, and seeing them operate as both a family and a pack is extremely heart-warming. In an event focused on multiple Wolverines, time travel, and the wounds of the past, it makes sense that Gabby and Laura and also Daken, who appears later, would have a significant role to play. Theyāve been on Wolverineās mind as well; in X Lives, heās dealing with an attack on Itsu that he canāt bear to resolve unless he knows Daken will still be born. Now they have to step up to take down Omega Wolverine, and has anyone been more excited for a team-up, ever, than Gabby?
Liz: Sheās so pumped! Gabby really went through a lot in the recently-resolved New Mutants arc, and it makes sense that she wants to spend more time with her family after going through the extremely common tweenage stage of fighting with your friends, dying, and being resurrected. Does Xavier āinviteā her on the mission to take down robo-Logan? Not exactly, but she has the confidence to invite herself somewhere she knows she will be useful. She even refers to herself and Laura as āWolverines,ā and Iām not sure if itās an attempt at a new code name or just a fun bit sheās doing. I support it either way. The family connection is the focus here, and it seems like thatās going to make the difference.
New Devils
Cassie: So, Omega Wolverineās whole deal is made explicit: heās an assassin from the future, trying to stop present-Moira from creating a Phalanx-winning future. Everyoneās tracking Moira in this series, and sheās started using it to her advantage, leaking intel to the CIA and leading them directly to Omega Wolverine, essentially distracting them with a fight she hopes will take out both enemies.
Itās a smart move, and I love that this series really digs into the character traits that must have kept Moira X going through the lives we now know sheās lived: her gritted-teeth determination, her tenacity, her resourcefulness. In some ways, the characterisation here addresses gaps that were necessarily made by the big change to her character function and role in House of X/Powers of X.
Liz: Agreed! I like how smart Moiraās being hereā sheās confident in her abilities, but every move she makes just shows us how right she is to feel that way. The way she manipulates Arnab Chakladar into doing exactly what she wants is so smooth. Her combination of skill and technical knowledge, combined with the allure of a future in which what they do has already succeeded, makes it easy for her to get him on board. Considering that she starts off by ruining his million-dollar event and kidnapping him, itās impressive!Ā
I found it interesting that Arnab compares her to Ada Lovelace. Ada was essentially the first computer programmer, taking technological developments in a new direction, though she was certain that computers could never create or think on their own. Moiraās goal is something beyond what Ada imagined. Her plan of combining the human and the robot to achieve what neither could do on their own shows promise, especially considering how nice her fancy new arm looks. What do you think of this new partnership?
Cassie: I assume any and all partnerships that any mutant makes with someone who isnāt a mutant (by which I mean, specifically, humans and AI lifeforms) is going to end badly. One of the most breathtaking things about this new era for mutantkind is that it feels consistently, and horribly precarious: shake hands with the wrong person and it all goes away.
And Moira herself is a complication to that future as much as she first helped to create it; as she is quoted on the endpage: āForever is where I live. I tried to take you all with me. You chose not to come.ā
She also canāt stop framing the situation in terms so dramatic theyāre literally biblical: she calls herself a Judas, and inverts Magnetoās already-classic House of X #1 declaration, āyou have new Gods nowā by telling Arnab that mutants arenāt gods at all: instead, theyāre devils. Sheās more ready than ever to destroy it all, and with every handshake (and new hand) it feels like she might just manage it.
Liz: I LOVE the glorious pettiness of this. Moira has spent lifetimes trying to save mutants and failing. But the moment things start to go badly for her this time, through problems arguably of her own creation, she absolutely loses it. The women you tried to manipulate are mad at you? The two doofuses you tried to work with donāt treat you with enough respect? Time to actively work to kill them and all their friends!
This isnāt sarcasm. I really enjoy this full switch from the wise person making the hard decisions out of duty to an early-Magneto-style scenery chewer. The mutants are DEVILS! I cackled when reading this, I love her commitment to this new tactic.Ā
Future Grief
Cassie: Of course, thereās another little twist: Omega Wolverine, for all his Phalanx circuitry markings and total embrace of violence with little thought to community, is the Logan we know and love. Just, from the future. Itās Daken that smells it on him (why did he join his sistersā missions? To work out some old issues on a facsimile of his dad, obviously!) and it immediately changes his approach: he softens, resists, switches immediately to conflict resolution based on words, not violent actions. Truly, the clean-slate fresh-state recovery options that were part of the Krakoan dream have worked wonders on him; heās blossomed, settled, grown into himself. Itād be heartwarming if it wasnāt immediately followed by Omega Wolverine taking a leaf from Moiraās book of dramatics: āNone of you make it,ā he says to his beloved family. āI know how each of you dies.ā
Liz: Weāve become so used to having resurrection as an optionā especially after it was determined that Gabby is allowed to be resurrectedā that the idea that Logan has seen the permanent deaths of his children in the future is so chilling. Pre-Krakoa, death was a revolving door, and now itās just some inconvenient memory loss. But the idea of a post-Krakoan death thatās permanent, and a world so messed up that it killed three members of the hardest to kill family? Itās unsettling!
The art does a really great job of conveying Loganās pain here. Even behind the injuries and circuitry, you can just see the sadness pouring off of him. When he collapses, thereās a real sense of dread for whatās in store, for him and the others.
Cassie: Yes! It hits you right in the chest. And what a great opportunity to take a moment for Vicentiniās art; he keeps his characters in profile, avoids placing them in the centre of the frame – they rarely make eye contact with the reader. It makes sense: everyone has an agenda, everyone is caught off-guard; the world is moving around them, towards some unstoppable outcome that we know is going to land hard. The art captures that unease. The sense that no one is prepared for whatās coming.
No one, perhaps, except Moira X.
Liz: Ah, Moira, who we see in the distant future on the final pages of the issue. Who, in what may be her most dramatic moment so far, turns out to be the one who infected Logan with the virus as part of her centuries-long plan to kill the last mutant. The drive and determination to drag this out for hundreds of years, to continue it in the face of the world ending the next day! Iconic. Sheās chewing the scenery, sheās setting up an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine to kill somebody, sheās explaining her entire plan to the hero. I love it.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Krakoan reads WAR STORIES
- Arnab insists on royal jelly honey for his tea, which is the diet of a queen bee (itās served to him by a āworker beeā of his own). You know itās the royal jelly that separates queen bees from the worker? The larvae bathed in royal jelly while in development become the queen at the top of the hierarchy. Itās amazing what can happen when you augment some cellsā¦
Liz Large is a copywriter with a lot of opinions on mutants.
