X Lives of Wolverine #5 Ends How It Started

Wolverine makes a jaunt back to the present to end this fight in X Lives of Wolverine #5 written by Benjamin Percy, art by Joshua Cassara, colors by Frank Martin, and letters by Cory Petit.

Cassie Tongue: Well, we’ve run out of lives. The final issue of X Lives of Wolverine ends in a collision with its companion series, X Deaths of Wolverine, so while the story isn’t quite finished yet, our romp through time saving Xaviers and fighting Omega Red stops here. But would we call it a romp, Chris?

Chris Eddleman: I’m going to be completely honest with you here, Cassie. I think this last issue was beautiful but largely a fairly unsatisfying conclusion to an unsatisfying miniseries. X Deaths felt throughout like it carried a more meaty plot, while this was a little more of an empty carb. But I don’t want to belabor the point too much before we dive in, so let’s get into it!

Ohhh, That’s Why It’s Called Ten Lives

Chris: I’m maybe not the most astute reader so, it was nice to finally have my hand held that the reason why this was called X Lives was because it took place simultaneously(?) in ten different points in Wolverine’s fairly long life. Cassie, I’m not sure how much you enjoyed the original reveal of Wolverine’s life after House of M, but a part of me thinks was trying to bring a gestalt of Wolverine together with his general mission statement. Am I wrong, and if not, did you think it worked well at that, or was it just kind of a break-neck-paced rollercoaster?

Cassie: I don’t think you can ever create a definitive Wolverine. I don’t think the nature of comics as a medium – and the function of Wolverine in a character in the Marvel universe – allows for a truly consistent, developed through-line. And I don’t think he needs one. He’s lived a long life; he’s been a hundred different people; he means different things to different writers and readers. I also think that trying to connect all of those past lives and histories together undermines the promise and potential of what Wolverine as a character can say about identity, community, growth, and change – especially for a life frequently lived outside of the social contract. 

All this to say that X Lives, to me, managed to make an exploration of one of the most necessarily dimensional and potentially complex characters feel flattened into a single idea: a dangerous loner who learns, over and over again, that he’s different now because he’s connected to and with other people. Ultimately, did we learn anything new about the character? I’m not sure that we did. Did it celebrate his long history? I’m not sure it really did that, either. Did it foreground a gruffly poetic thoughtfulness on a version of Wolverine that’s the most well-known? Yeah, it did, and that’s what I would say was the most successful thing about it.

Chris: I think this is supposed to re-mystify the history of Wolverine. Almost like a very personal hypertime. It talks throughout the issues of Wolverine STILL not remembering his whole life and having this jaunt through time possible mess with his history a little. I’m not certain how necessary that was, and I’m not certain this broke the mold enough beyond yet another kind of gruff warrior-poet Wolverine monologue with stabbing in the background. But it wasn’t a bad version of that. I think it’s possibly the victim in my own mind of a failure of expectations. It’s funny because this kind of story was exactly what I expected but hoped I didn’t get and X Deaths is not at ALL what I expected.

Cassie: It’s certainly striking that the most nakedly emotional moment for Wolverine – the one given the most space on the page and in the story to really land – is in X Deaths, when Omega Wolverine looks at his children, long-lost to him in his timeline, and tells them he remembers how each of them dies. In many ways, that’s the evolution of Wolverine beyond the gruff warrior-poet into someone anchored in family and community. In many ways, it was the Wolverine I wanted to spend more time with in X Lives. 

Chris: But alas. At least we got a pretty good Jean/Wolverine kiss. The power of community/love/cute redheads prevails!

Omega, Sanctioned

Cassie: It’s the final issue, so it’s time to defeat Omega Red, a villain that Mikhail Rasputin witheringly describes as a “failed tool”, which is accurate, but also totally discounts his creativity on this journey (we learn in a data page that in one particular attempt to destroy the Xavier line, Omega Red’s first tool is to ‘sully [Sharon Xavier’s great-grandfather’s] good name by bringing charges against him of cattle rustling’ which is maybe the only time I’ve ever enjoyed an Omega Red Plot). When Omega Red takes over Logan’s mind, it’s the beginning of the end: Logan has a habit of clawing himself out of brain nightmares when he’s guided by Jean, and of course that experience gives him a clear view into Omega Red’s own plans. Cue the hero music. 

Chris: I’m completely with you in that I find Omega Red the most boring thing on the planet. He’s at least pretty cool looking but he always seems to have this eye-rolling effect on me. However, I also think you’re right in that this is one of the more interesting uses of him. So, with our big showdown set, we have Mikhail immediately leaving and calling Arkady a failure. He also leaves the sword with him! Can’t expect every villain to be smart, I guess. Anyway, Gateway (glad to see him back as always) teleports Wolverine and it’s a knock-down-drag-out brawl. I think this action scene was very cool, and as always I will toot the horn of Cassara. We get some cool frenetic panels interposed with Wolverine’s fights throughout history. We get more “history” narration from Wolverine, as he beats his polar opposite, the man with the MUTANT DEATH FACTOR. 

Cassie: Cassara makes a brawl look beautiful; there’s a generosity of line to his shapes that adds dimension but also emotion to the stand-off. As the caption boxes show Wolverine pontificating on the nature of history, and how he, specifically, can never really know himself or measure the weight of his life, Cassara turns the fight itself into physical poetry that has room for grace. Frank Martin’s colours help here too: it’s all cool blues and sepia tones, all past and sweeping present – until a sudden shocking burst of red as Wolverine slices Omega Red clean in two (comics!). 

There’s something very Wolverine about struggling with the shape of a self and the sense of the enormity of a life in the snow, about bowing your head against your defeated opponent against an enormous sky, trees as witness, just a mutant with a long and impossible life fading into the wilds. 

Chris: And after your absolutely beautiful thoughts on this wonderful fight scene, I’m going to have to be a party pooper. I don’t FEEL a lot of chemistry between Wolverine and Omega Red. While this was a super gritty, nasty fight—it’s not much of a payoff to me. He’s been fighting with Omega Red this entire miniseries, he just finally has the gumption to put him down. To get weird, it kind of reminds me of in wrestling, when two people in a feud have like 5 matches before they even get to the big show. I just didn’t feel like this payoff did it for me. Also, Mikhail is still at large?! They’re really playing the extra-long game on this.

Cassie: By the time we’d reached the part of this issue, I wasn’t expecting us to land somewhere satisfying, and I agree with you that the fight isn’t so much a payoff as it is a moment – one that feels like it belongs in a patchwork of larger moments. X Lives, in the end, seems to be a book about moments, not statements. About constancy, not change. About, perhaps, even the futility of definitive endings? At any rate, Omega Red is down and out, but probably not for long, and Mikhail will move on to something else, and Logan will forget he is loved and will restlessly seek out answers to his past once more, and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. 

Chris: I’m glad we have the sword that Magneto decided to make from a Cerebro back in the hands of Krakoa, I guess. It was perhaps the oddest Chekhov’s Gun that I’ve ever seen but, it was at least a fun comic book idea. I was pretty whelmed by issue 1 of half of our double minis, and I’m slightly more impressed but still generally whelmed by issue 5. I’m excited we’ve tied back into the more interesting half of this by the end, and I’m crossing my fingers for our finale.

X-Traneous Thoughts

• Chris would again like to thank Joshua Cassara
• Wolverine fighting Pinkertons? Yes please.

Chris Eddleman

Chris Eddleman is a biologist and co-host of Chrises On Infinite Earths.

Cassie Tongue

Cassie is an arts and culture writer living on Gadigal land in Australia. For 10 years she’s been working as a professional theatre critic, and is delighted to finally be writing about her other love: comics, baby.