X of Claws 5: X Lives of Wolverine #3

X Lives of Wolverine #3
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Color Artist: Frank Martin
Letterer & Production: VC's Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller
Cover Artists: Adam Kubert & Frank Martin
Production & Additional Design: Jay Bowen
Assistant Editor: Drew Baumgartner
Editor: Mark Basso
Senior Editor: Jordan D. White
Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski
Released: Feb. 16, 2022

Beneath a cover that makes me think of Clint Eastwood and “Tremors,” we find Jean Grey and Professor X furiously trying to psychically coordinate Wolverine's adventures through time. If we readers have been having trouble keeping up, imagine how Logan feels, as a striking two-page spread shows him battling Omega Red in multiple time periods simultaneously, at least three of which we won't actually see elsewhere in this issue.

First we pop back to circa 1900, where Captain Benedict Xavier is killing off members of his (possibly?) mutinous crew as Omega Red quantum possesses them one by one. As Wolver-teen arrives via dog sled, Red either runs out of sailors or decides on a different strategy, jumping into a whale to finish the job. As I have documented here before, whales can be dangerous.

Logan makes with the stabbing while Captain X pitches in with some fire. I was left with the impression that they'd defeated Moby Red, but we're jumping between multiple eras, so I can't say for sure.

In one of those eras, unfortunately, a buck naked Wolverine battles Omega Red in the equally nude body of Wolvie's wife, Itsu. I guess Wolverine just slashed one of her coils at the end of last issue, and he's psychically trying to get Jean to help him figure out how to protect Daken if indeed he does have to kill his unborn son's mom. They start tossing around the idea of putting a Cerebro unit in a black hole, and I can't tell if that's science-y smart or just science fiction-y mumbo jumbo. Still, the scene manages to be quite suspenseful.

Wolverine gets a reprieve when Itsu Red stops strangling and drowning him because Romulus shows up and runs her through with his … four claws? This is the first non-Marvel Handbook comic I think I've read with Romulus, at least out in the open, and he looks he is to Logan what Raichu is to Pikachu? Look, X-23 having toe claws was OK, but how many not-quite-Logan variants are we going to get?

Anyway, Wolverine stabs the heck out of Romulus just enough to get him to leave, which makes me wonder how Logan knows the exact amount of stabbing it takes to elicit a particular reaction (experience?) and how this guy managed to manipulate him all these years if Wolverine knew the exact amount of stabbing it took to get him to back off. But he also wonders if the beatdown what ultimately makes him Romulus send the Winter Soldier after Itsu, killing her and stealing Daken from her womb. So it's good to see him considering the ramifications of stabbing butterflies again.

Oh, and Itsu's fine, I guess? I did a quick Google search to see if she had powers and the consensus seems to be no. Maybe this means that the people who appear to be getting killed when Omega Red hijacks them are OK too?

I don't know if it's flashing back, forward or sideways, but we also learn more about how we got to this point, as Omega Red officially joins forces with Mikhail Rasputin, who warps reality and stabs him with the Cerebro Sword and, boom, time travel. Some more text pages flesh out the mechanics of how Professor X and Jean are guiding Wolverine, at least enough to assure readers that there is some rhyme and/or reason.

The other time period we drop in on features Team X Wolverine in South America, rushing to reach Charles Xavier before Omega Red gets to him. An angry Sabretooth is pursuing and Logan slows him down by shooting a beehive out of a tree and dropping it on his head, which is frankly the least violent moment in the book.

When Wolverine arrives, he finds the Prof not in any particular danger – at least until Omega Red Leaps into Logan himself. I can't decide whether that or the whale Leap was more surprising. Wait. It's the whale.

Despite the hiccups I experienced reading and trying to understand some of this issue, it was fast-paced and exciting. The first issue set the tone, the second established the scale, and this one brought it all together and went nuts. I'm not 100% how this will dovetail with the “X Deaths” companion series, but I'm curious to see it play out and feeling a little better about Wolverine's prospects to not destroy the timestream by the end of it.