X of Claws 6: X Deaths of Wolverine #3

X Deaths of Wolverine #3
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Color Artists: Dijjo Lima
Letterer & Design: VC's Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller
Cover Artist: 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. 23, 2022

Remember that trailer for “The Prestige” that explained the parts of a magic trick? For the X Lives and X Deaths of Wolverine, I think this is “the turn.”

At the end of issue 2, Moira MacTaggert had vanquished Mystique and narrowly escaped Terminatorine, the robotic Wolverine from the future sent back in time presumably to kill her. Or Arnab Chakladar, the Epiphany tech guy. Maybe Linda Hamilton?

This issue opens with two-thirds of the Wolverine Family: Wolverine (aka X-23) and Scout (formerly known as Honey Badger) on Krakoa, where Professor X telepathically enlists the aid of the former to track down Robo-Wolvie. He tells her the reason Logan can't help (he's battling Omega Red throughout the timestream over in the companion “X Lives of Wolverine” book) and why the doppelganger is particularly concerning (he's from the future and Logan is, again, bouncing through time) are classified. Things always work out so well when Chuck keeps secrets; I'm sure this will too.

At the Epiphany Campus in California, Chakladar is about to launch a new product when Delores Ramirez of the CIA's X-Desk warns him he's in danger. He seems nonplussed until a police car plows through a group of CIA agents outside and Robo-Wolvie emerges from the cruiser he stole last issue. The CEO decides it is a good time to flee after all and hops on his private helicopter, unaware that one-armed Moira is stowing away underneath it.

Rather than dodge the CIA and Robo-Wolvie, Moira pitted them against each other by dropping clues Chakladar was being targeted. After the helicopter lands, she confronts him at his hideaway and explains, gradually less and less at gunpoint, that she needs his help and he can be “the man who saved the world from mutants.”

Simultaneously, Robo-Wolvie is confronted on the Epiphany stage by X-Twenty-rine. Instead of X-Force or the X-Men backing her up, it's Scout and Daken, which makes sense thematically, I guess, but maybe send a Krakoan war captain along. Or not a child?

Robo-Wolvie says he has no problem killing X-23 because “you can come back from the dead now. You can't come back from the dead later” (the same can't be said of the CIA agents he's tearing through). It's Daken who declares that based on scent, voice and fighting style, Robo-Wolvie isn't a copy of his father but the real deal.

Robo-Wolvie wearily says he knows how each of his family members dies, while Moira gets another replacement arm to go with a creepy-looking robot body into which she plans to upload her consciousness for an 11th life.

And the perspective on this half of the event starts to shift dramatically.

Machine intelligences were always a big no-no in this X era because of what Moira had witnessed in previous lives, including one where she and Wolverine were pretty much all that was left of mutantdom and Wolverine killed her so she could resurrect and stop that future. How this fits in with that remains to be seen, although the earlier stuff was the work of now-departed Head of X Jonathan Hickman.

But the connection isn't being ignored as we see a different version of that far-flung future scene play out, in which a Phalanxy-looking Moira kills Wolverine, the “last mutant,” on the eve of the Phalanx's assimilation of Earth. Back in the present, Robo-Wolvie tells his family members that was the end of one story and the beginning of another.

While I have more than just an idea about how this story turns out for at least one of the main characters, up to this point I was operating under the assumption that Moira was the heroine of this story and Robo-Wolvie was the tormented tool of the techno-organic threat that wiped out mutants and humans in Moira's past life. But her inner monologue and outward dialogue become more and more hostile to the mutants, while it is apparent that the Wolverine-like robo-assassin Percy and company have been effectively building as a threat is good, old James “Logan” (Patch) Howlett himself.

I ended up reading through this issue twice, and at first I didn't care for what seemed like a sudden reversal. But the second time through, it felt more clever, exciting. I'm sure there are details here I'm missing, maybe even that don't fully add up. It's also possible they will be revealed in the last couple of issues. Even though I know how some of this ends, I'm intrigued to see how the rest of the pieces fall into place.