It’s closing time for Logan in Wolverine #50, written by Benjamin Percy and Victor LaValle, drawn by Geoff Shaw and Cory Smith, colored by Alex Sinclair and lettered by Cory Petit, with backups by Larry Hama, Daniel Piccioto, Yen Nitro and Petit; and Percy, Javi Fernandez, Matt Hollingsworth and Petit.
Tony Thornley: Well, Matt, we’re back in what might be our last X-Chat before From the Ashes (for which the two of us will be covering X-Men and some of the assorted titles). Maybe we’ll cover Heir of Apocalypse and the Blood Hunt one-shots.
I’m honestly pretty bummed that Krakoa is over, and a big part of why I’m bummed is what we talked about last time we chatted. Honestly though, this is a better end to it than several of its concurrent stories.
Matthew Lazorwitz: I had been away from the X-books for a few years before Krakoa; the IvX and color-coded eras were just not my bag. And so seeing an era I loved, an era of at times wild and fascinating reinvention end not with a bang but a whimper in so many places makes me remember that old quote, “Comics will break your heart.” But I’m not completely heartbroken by the end of this series, which I felt like came to a pretty satisfying conclusion, all in all.
The Short Second Life of Graydon Creed
Tony: Look, I love that Graydon was introduced as a secondary antagonist. It almost seemed like he was going to be a big deal. Then Victor took him out like an absolute chump, and I love it.
It was almost a moment like the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He shows up, he makes a big deal, you think there’s going to be a throwdown. Then he goes down hard.
Matt: The villain who goes down like a chump is a trick that I have very mixed feelings about. Stephen King is one of my, if not my absolute, favorite authors, but his villains have a really bad habit of going out like chumps (I love the very end of the Dark Tower series, but the fact that both big bads go out like they were nothing is a true disappointment). But here, Graydon feels like a proxy for every blustering racist blowhard with feet of clay. He talks a big game, thinks he’s all that, and BOOM! Down he goes. And I am very OK with that.
Tony: Oh, absolutely. It’s a trope that’s VERY hard to get right.
The actual brawl that filled up the first half of the main story is great, though. It’s almost just as much about the Exiles and X-Force as it is Wolverine and Sabretooth. Even though Graydon is down, the Sentinels he hijacked are still coming for our heroes. So while Logan and Creed are just brutalizing each other, the two teams are finishing off the Sentinels.
(Also, there’s Colossus. Hi Piotr!)
Then it all leads to the Council chambers, and Wolverine getting sucked into the Pit. Here’s where this story’s pacing problems hit hard. The fight in the Pit should have gotten more space, and maybe if we hadn’t gotten so much filler in previous issues, it could have gotten the space it needs.
Matt: I have been thinking a lot about this. I was at a barbecue with the rest of the CXF New Jersey contingent over Memorial Day (shout out to Dan Grote, Adam Reck and the Eddlemans), and we were talking about this. This was a 10-part story just to get it to issue #50, to hit that milestone number. Even not having read this before then, I still stand by it, which does make a scene that I agree should have had more space being only three pages all the more frustrating. We got so much flashback to the past throughout; having that take place here, having Logan fight his demons literally and figuratively as conjured by Sabretooth, would have been another way to give that retrospective but feel more like a part of the story rather than filler.
Tony: Yeah, exactly. And it would have been such a great resolution to both Wolverine and Sabretooth, which have both had more unique focuses on the characters’ pasts. I mean, about 70% of both characters’ stories over the years have had such a focus on their past. This is a unique way to bring that in without focusing on the tropes. But then it just went by too quickly.
Hack & Slash
Tony: And when it comes down to it, it’s two guys and a sword. And I don’t know how I feel about that.
Matt: Sabretooth and its first sequel were about the carceral state, about how we treat those we see as lesser. Those were thoughtful stories masked under the trappings of the superhero. This at times had some of that thoughtfulness, but in general was much more of an action movie. It loved its gore and its big set pieces. The thematic heart was in issue #49, where Doug Ramsey’s seed doesn’t work on Sabretooth because he is a full-on sociopath, which was another bit I would have liked to spend more time with.
Tony: Oh yeah, absolutely.
And I get it, Wolverine will never be about the philosophical differences between Logan and Creed. It’s always going to come down to a fight. But after so much buildup and story, to have the whole thing come down to a three-page sequence of Logan hacking Victor Creed to pieces, it felt hollow.
If it had been more about all the pain and hurt, it would have worked better for me. Yes, Logan said it was about his son and his friends, but it was just so quickly moved past, it felt like an afterthought to “and this will end with Sabretooth in pieces on the floor of the Quiet Council chambers.”
That said, I still think it was a largely satisfying ending. Creed is out of the picture for a while (Let’s not pretend he won’t eventually be back). Quentin Quire gets his most thoughtful death in a string of them. Then X-Force says goodbye. It’s probably the best goodbye we’ve gotten in all the long-running Krakoan series.
Matt: Definitely better than X-Force. Frankly, if there had been a way to do the Beast arc and the Sabretooth arc as crossovers between X-Force and Wolverine, and give the former a little more breathing room and contract the latter a little, I think it would have done something good for both series. But I do agree this was a solid finale.
One last thing, and tying this into what we were saying above, Logan says this is about his son and his friends. Wouldn’t it have been better in the Pit if the plant golem of Akihiro had been more front and center than the ones of Silver Fox and Jean? And maybe Quentin and some of the other people Creed killed in this arc? Granted, this is more to do with Sabretooth calling those particular golems because of his fixation on Silver Fox and his misogyny, but thematically that would have been more appropriate, I think. It would have allowed for a little more of Logan reckoning with that death; lord knows we talk on BatChat enough about how the death of Alfred was squandered, emotionally; I don’t want the same thing to happen with that death (even if he is already sort of back).
Tony: Yeah, definitely. That’s an excellent point, and I don’t think I have much I can add to it outside what I already did. Of all our concerns with padding in this arc, this is the sequence that needed more space. Or even if there had been more of Logan pissed off about it. I mean, he and Akihiro were FINALLY in a good space for the first time, and then Creed yanked that away from him.
But I do think it’s a great ending for everything to see Creed in pieces on the floor.
Goodbye
Tony: I thought the two backups were such a perfect epilogue. Getting a Hama “pure action” story is something I’ll never say no to (Why have there been two Claremont nostalgia Wolverine limited series this year, but no Hama?). It’s fun, a little silly and classic Wolverine. Then we get Percy saying goodbye to the character. It was sweet without being saccharine.
Honestly, for its faults, I’ll miss this series. It’s the first Wolverine solo I’ve ever read beginning to end. The first half of it was often hit or miss, but the back half was just all bangers.
Matt: Hama is the definitive Wolverine and Jubilee writer; Claremont might have set the tone, but Hama did so much with that relationship in his run, it is always good to see some more. It feels like the short from a ’90s annual in all the right ways.
And the second one is a solid look inside Logan’s head, thinking back over his life as he sees the end of Krakoa. I wish we had gotten more quiet introspection about the end of this era from characters across the line, but I’ll take what I can get.
Tony: Amen to that. Knowing how thoughtful Saladin Ahmed tries to be, I’m hoping we get more interior life and deeper Wolverine than just “slash slash bub bub” because this series often got the balance right.
Matt: This is the first Wolverine ongoing I too have read from beginning to end, and I’m happy to say that, for all my nitpicking, it was a satisfying run. It suffered from the same flaws as much of the end of Krakoa did, but it ends on a grace note or two that I really enjoyed, and it felt organic to where Logan was as a character. I’m going to miss Ben Percy on Wolverine.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- It’s weird to see this run wrap up around the same time as Blood Hunt is happening, since this series, which helped set up a lot of the Vampire Nation stuff, does not have a chance to address it.
- It’s still weird that Hellverine isn’t a Blood Hunt tie-in as well.
- That panel in Percy’s backup, with Logan, Jean and Scott that says, “Pain leaves a residue. But so does love”? Yeah, Logan was completely platonic friends with Jean (at least) throughout Krakoa, just like Brevoort said. Absolutely…
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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.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
