X Lives of Wolverine #4
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara with Federico
Vincentini (World War II segment)
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: March 2,
2022
Loose ends start to get, well, not tied up, but at least acknowledged. And the series delivers its most ridiculously excessive violent moment yet (and yes, I'm including “X Deaths” and Moira's hotel bathroom amputation on the list).
Rather than pick up on last issue's cliffhanger, this one opens in the Weapon X lab of Dr. Cornelius, who is not nearly as personable as his peppermint mine magnate ancestor, Yukon.* The bad doctor is attempting to identify a foreign substance in Logan's blood, which kind of looks like a Venom symbiote but I assumed was the presence of time-traveling Omega Red. Turns out...
Omega Red jumped into Dr. C to snuff Wolverine out before he can interfere with him in other parts of the timestream, but Logan may no longer be the best there is at what he does – if what he does is being retroactively connected to 95% of the Marvel Universe. We do get a helpful asterisked editor's note saying this can be explained in “Web of Venom: Ve'Nam” #1. Omega Red decides Quantum Leaping is the better part of valor and leaves Cornelius to be sliced and diced by the Venomized Wolverine.
There's also the matter of Omega Red controlling Wolverine in Colombia to assassinate Xavier. The professor winds up being saved by none other than Sabretooth, who is enraged over Logan blowing him up with a grenade and dropping a beehive on his head. For once, I can kind of see Sabretooth's perspective.
Meanwhile, Professor X and Jean Grey discuss the ramifications of Wolverine stepping on and stabbing so many butterflies in the past. Xavier suggests Jean mind wipe everybody in the immediate vicinity after a time jump, which seems a little too tidy but does as good a job as anything in-story to explain why time isn't in such a mess that the Hulk needs to punch it again to fix it.**
All three stories build to a climax, with Wolverine taking down the Japanese planes, Cornelius burning away the symbiote and Sabretooth killing Wolverine, temporarily, and eating his heart.
Um...
Look, I know this book has a fancy parental advisory and people seem to think there is no way a Wolverine story can be properly told without absurd amounts of violence, but this is beyond ridiculous. There will have to be a pretty epic turnaround in the last three installments for me to even think about buying hard copies of this story out of a dollar (or less) bin.
For better or worse, the issue doesn't end there. With Omega Redverine dead, Jean realizes she's kind of misplaced Logan's mind in the timestream. Before Xavier can suggest she look in the last place she remembers having it, Wolverine starts to stir and, inhabited by Omega Red in the here and now, stabs Professor X with both claws, which honestly looks like a pretty restrained and reasonable move after that Sabretooth sequence. Mikhail Rasputin gloats on the other half of the page while standing over Omega Red's Cerebro Sword-impaled body and we're to be continued.
Clearly, this issue lost me based on one moment (that's never happened before), but the rest of the story was pretty solid. It continued the over-the-top action and epic scale of the series while starting to make the pieces fit a little better together. I'm still curious to see how this plays out – I figure Logan washed up in Omega Red's body – but I certainly hope Percy doesn't attempt to out-grotesque himself in the finale. Either of them.
* This is not canon. Yet.
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