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Friday, March 24, 2017

X-amining Wolverine #64

"What Goes Around..."
December 1992

In a Nutshell
Shiva arrives as Psi Borg continues to manipulate the former Weapon X members.

Script: Larry Hama
Pencils: Mark Pacella
Inks: Dan Panosian
Lettering: Pat Brosseau
Coloring: James Tinsley
Art Assist: Scott Hanna
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

Plot
Wolverine, Sabretooth, Maverick & Wraith proceed to destroy Ferro's computer equipment, attempting to draw him out. Their efforts succeed, and Ferro appears in his full Psi Borg guise. He separates Wolverine from the group, telling him he's the prize he's been after. He shows Wolverine the memory of Silver Fox being killed by Sabretooth, and Wolverine learns that Sabretooth didn't kill her, though she did knock out one of Sabretooth's teeth. Psi Borg realizes Wolverine's mental pain is the key to the age suppression factor they all share, and forces Sabretooth to attack Silver Fox. Upstairs, Shiva appears, and asks Jubilee where Vole is. Jubilee proceeds to kick Shiva over the edge, where it lands on Psi Borg. Free of his control, Sabretooth attacks Psi Borg, who once again turns into a tree and consumes him, leaving behind only a twig and a pod, which contains a tooth.

Firsts and Other Notables
Mark Pacella, fresh off a stint stinking things up on X-Force and X-Factor, fills in for Mark Texeira. A swipe-prone artist, this image of Sabretooth, lifted from X-Men #7, particularly stands out (I'm sure there's more).


Shiva pops up in this issue as well, still trying (and failing) to kill members of the Weapon X project. It has progressed down its list to the point that it's now after Vole (Ferro/Psi Borg).


A Work in Progress
This issue shows us Psi Borg's true form, not masked by telepathic illusions, which is basically that he's a robot at this point.


Psi Bog notes that he implanted just the bad stuff into the minds of the Weapon X members, suggesting a possible path towards determining what's a real memory and what's a fake (in that, if Wolverine has a good memory, it's probably genuine), though I doubt any future writer has stuck to this idea too closely. It does confirm that at least the "Wolverine & Silver Fox were in love" portions of the flashback first introduced in issue #10 was true, and not an implant, and that Silver Fox' apparent resurrection in the present is due to the fact that she wasn't actually killed at that time.


Jubilee manages to kick Shiva down the hole leading to Ferro's computer complex which, good for her, but seems like the kind of thing Shiva should be able to guard against.


Pun with Peter Larry
When talking with the Professor X who is an illusion created by Psi Borg, Jubilee asks him to "psi hello" to Wolverine.

Austin's Analysis
The best thing this deep dive into Wolverine's past and the Weapon X project had going for it was Mark Texeira's art, which has generally soared when depicting the various hallucinations and reality-bending the story has called for, and has injected a fair amount of energy into a tale that is, essentially, a lot of talking and/or running around smashing stuff. Take that away, and the story as a whole loses something. Replace it with Mark Pacella's art, and the whole thing becomes a complete waste of time. Even Hama seems off his game here, with Wolverine's voice sounding wrong in several places, and this issue essentially repeating the cliffhanger of the previous one, with a former Weapon Xer being eaten by a tree representing Psi-Borg. That "man-eating tree" was used as a cliffhanger in this story once is kind of bonkers. That it was used a second time, consecutively, is even stranger.

Next Issue
Next week: X-Men (vol. 2) #15, X-Force #17 and Excalibur #58

52 comments:

  1. How the hell did this man, Pacella, keep getting work? Having Panosian as his inker makes things worse. If I had the time, it would be interesting to find out which better (so, anyone) artists, had no work coming out that month. Even in his subtype of work, Pacella sucked. MC Wyman or Andrew Wildman were much better

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    1. Apparently, Marvel thought his weak Liefeld impression would sell books. I agree that pretty much anyone would have been better.

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    2. I just Googled Mark Pacella and on the plus side, it looks like he eventually became a much better artist. It appears he eventually started doing storyboards. Dan Panosian became a good artist too. Not defending their work here, but it's nice to see that, unlike a certain X-Force co-creator, they both honed their craft and bettered their skills.

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    3. Indeed. I do think they were definitely aping Liefeld intentionally (either because they were told to do so, or rightly believed it would get them more work), much like Herb Trimpe did in the 90s as well. So it's good to know they did indeed stretch their craft beyond aping that style.

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    4. Herb Trimpe did try to mimic Liefeld, but his page composition was better. Dan Panosian got much better, and he is the artist who made the X-Men comic books within "Logan", I think

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    5. Dan Panosian ended up growing out of the Image style and got his own unique style that I really enjoy. In fact, Panosian did the art for the X-Men comic featured in the Logan movie.

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  2. Anyone knows why Marvel didn't turn to class artists in this era such as John Byrne, Rick Leonardi, Paul Smith, Jackson Guice and anyone else who had previous experience as an X-artist and could have fared well?

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    1. Byrne was over at Dark Horse doing his creator owned NEXT MEN at this point; it'd be a few years yet before he came back to Marvel. Smith was doing animation work (I think), though he'll come back for a few issues of X-MEN post-Age of Apocalypse. I'm not sure what Leonardi & Guice were up to at this point, but I assume their more traditional styles weren't considered acceptable replacements for the Image Guys by Marvel at this point in time.

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    2. I can answer Rick Leonardi, at least: he was the regular penciler of SPIDER-MAN 2099 at this point in time. Its first issue is cover-dated November 1992, just a month prior to this one.

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    3. Ah, yeah, I thought he was one something at the time, but couldn't remember what.

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    4. Leonardi was just starting SPIDER-MAN 2099 with Peter David at this time and both would be at it for some time. Marvel seemed to have little problem with him being an actual name artist with Ron Lim of X-MEN 2099 among the artists of the line.

      In fact, PAD seems to have been quite heftily worked at the time with that title and HULK, maybe even so heftily that giving up X-FACTOR wasn't all that unwelcome thing, because that book and the hassles with the X-office over the crossovers probably was much more work than the other two. "You took my book for other characters!" would actually be a great excuse for that end.

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    5. Oh wait, I know what Jackson Guice was up to as well: he was the penciler of ACTION COMICS for about three years beginning in '92.

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    6. Wolverine learns that Sabretooth didn't kill her, though she did knock out one of Sabretooth's teeth.

      Yup, we're in the nineties. Kudos for carrying the "uppity squaw said no" from #10 and through the false memory scenarios in Dreams of Gore in #48-50 though. I guess. In #62 when believed-dead Silver Fox appears Sabretooth says he thought he killed her, to which she replies: "You certainly tried" and ka-booms him noting that she's been waiting long to do that.

      This issue shows us Psi Borg's true form, not masked by telepathic illusions, which is basically that he's a robot at this point.

      Old geezer in a life support armor is my understanding of that. Sabretooth notes that towards the end of the book. Of course, you don't get to be a 'borg otherwise.

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    7. Terry Shoemaker was well known around the X Office, after several X Factor fill ins. Andrew Wildman and John Hebert too, after working in X-Men Adventures. In addition, pairing Pacella with any veteran inker, like Al Milgrom or Dan Green or Greg Adams, could have improved the work somehow

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    8. I don't think Al Milgrom's inking has ever improved someone's pencils ever.
      -Pushpaw

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    9. @Pushpaw: I couldn't agree more re: Milgrom. :)

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    10. Daniel -- Not to be pedantic, because I know what you're getting at (there were plenty of artists far superior to Pacella available at this time), but for the record, I don't believe X-MEN ADVENTURES existed yet. Andrew Wildman was penciling G.I. JOE when this issue came out.

      (And in fact I just checked to see which JOE was on the stands with a Dec. '92 cover date and it turns out to be #131, one of my all-time favorites from the series' final couple years: With General Hawk injured and out of commission, Duke leads the Joes in repelling a full-scale Cobra assault on the Pit!)

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  3. "Firsts and Other Notables
    Mark Pacella, fresh off a stint stinking things up on X-Force and X-Factor, fills in for Mark Texeira. A swipe-prone artist, this image of Sabretooth, lifted from X-Men #7, particularly stands out (I'm sure there's more)."

    I'm sorry, but where is the image?

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    1. I think it's the very cover

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    2. Heh. Apparently, I forgot to upload it. It's been added. Thanks!

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    3. I checked now. Thank you! It's very ugly, I totally forgot that... And I have no words about Wolverine's mouth.
      I think, after Marc Silvestri, Adam Kubert's work is nice.

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  4. I’m still unsure about this: Maverick says they need to track down what’s messing with all of their “aging-suppression factors” — but Wolverine and Sabretooth have “aging suppression” built into their innate mutant healing factors, not as a byproduct of the Weapon X program tinkering with their genetic code. Or is the point that Maverick, Wraith, and the (now-dead) Mastodon also had/have healing factors and whatever’s going on is messing with that? A healing factor would of course be helpful for physical Weapon X modifications like Wolverine’s adamantium bone casings, but per the original Weapon X serial Logan’s healing factor was a surprise to those experimenting on him. [pause] So, I just looked up that blog entry, and Teebore said, “the fact that he's a mutant with a healing factor is unknown to everyone involved until after they begin working on him; later stories will retcon this idea,” to which I responded in positive fashion because “the way it unfolds here, given how thorough the documentation on / surveillance of Logan seems to be, is hard to swallow.” However, I remain confused on the chicken-and-egg of this “aging suppression” deal. I'm fairly sure the storyline doesn't mean to retcon the retarded aging granted Wolverine and Sabretooth by their healing factors as something instilled in them by the Weapon X program but the way Psi-Borg and the other characters specifically refer to “aging-suppression factors” rather than, or absent the context of, general healing factors is throwing me.

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    1. Weapon X is obviously a super-soldier program, and aging supression seems to be the standard in those circles: Captain America has it through his serum, so does Nick Fury have his own version. A cynic might make something about the need to keep these long history characters viable beyond the sliding timescale, but I digress.

      In #50 the X-Men found the file about Weapon X where sleeper agents were to have "integral weapons systems"; if they were in any way to be as extensive as that of Wolverine's, some kind of healing power is pretty much a must for the subject. None of them seem to ever have shown any, though.

      Re: Logan's healing power being a surprise for Professor, Cornelius and Hines is a matter that Professor brings up when calling to his boss and not being impressed how he isn't getting all the intel and how that makes him look incompetent in the eyes of his subordinates. Though, as Hines easily deducts Logan's healing power from his health record and the conflicting lack of any scars on his body. I don't know if it was a "survival of the fittest" kind of test to which the mystery boss may or may not be somewhat partial to, but those above the professor in the hierarchy a) probably picked Logan as the experiment subject and b) knew about his healing power.

      Weapon X obviously happened after all the Team X nonsense that actually happened; I think Logan checked somewhere 1967, "the summer of love", as the time of the Experiment X, and the professor & co. come into the picture and the lives of all Weapon X subjects only at this point and start messing with their memories.

      Though, Wolverine was supposed to escape from the Experiment X compound to be found by the Hudsons and it really looks like the professor only met him the first time during the experiment, so exactly at which point did they mess his memories is actually a big question. This all may not add up.

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    2. "Experiment X," "Team X," "Weapon X"?? Too many X there. I wonder who came up with the "brilliant" idea of doing that. It should have stopped with Weapon X, which was a great name that Barry Windsor had created.

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    3. remember that some of those Xs are the roman number 10

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    4. "Experiment X" comes from Windsor-Smith's WEAPON X; the professor does in the opening pages the nifty trick with his glasses that reflect part of the text as "X MEN". It's legit."Weapon X" comes from Claremont though in UNCANNY #109 where "Weapon Alpha" Jimmy Hudson comes to bring him back home.

      To "Team X" I refer to only with considerable amount of pain.

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    5. @Blam: I *think* the idea is (and keep in mind, this is all muddied by various retcons and I admittedly haven't been reading these mostly "meh" issues very closely) that while Wolverine & Sabretooth have an innate "age suppression factor" thanks to their healing factors, the others do not - their age suppression was artificially created somehow by the Weapon X project.

      Now, something is messing with that, and they're trying to figure out what. In order to do so, they need to learn how it was created/applied in the first. And apparently, in this issue, Psi Borg learns it has something to do with Wolverine and his healing factor, along with psychic pain (or something).

      @Licinio: It should have stopped with Weapon X, which was a great name that Barry Windsor had created.

      Technically, the Weapon X moniker was in place at the time of Wolverine's debut in INCREDIBLE HULK; he's referred to as that in that story.

      Smith applied the name to the project that created him, and Hama then ran with the idea further to establish that it affected other mutants as well.

      Then Grant Morrison came along and did the whole "X means ten" reveal, as Daniel said, but since there was already an established program that churned out experimented-on mutants beyond just Wolverine, the Weapon X project referenced in these issues was retconned into being an offshoot of the "official" Weapon X that created Wolverine.

      Or something like that.

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    6. Though the earlier hints at Brian Xavier having been up to hilt in these mutant super-soldier shenanigans where X marks the spot would get a nice payoff with his son professor Xavier having a bit of generational angst and daddy issues and create his own mutant team for more virtuous purposes and have it carry the same 'X' in the name.

      "For their x-tra powers" lol. :D

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    7. I stand corrected with the 'Weapon X' term origin.

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    8. // This all may not add up. //

      You don’t say. 8^)

      I was definitely conflating Weapon X with Team X, apparently in error, probably because I still think of “Weapon X” as Wolverine’s original Department H designation in parallel to Vindicator/Guardian as Weapon Alpha — I bought X-Men #109 off the racks and it long held a cherished place in my collection — at least as much as I associate it with the serial from Marvel Comics Presents, which came along much later in terms of how the passage of time telescopes from our youth, and the stuff that spun out from that.

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    9. So Logan was part of Team X with Sabretooth et al., after which he was hijacked by this Weapon X or Experiment X program and given the adamantium, then once the Hudsons took him in after finding him wandering feral in the Canadian woods he became part of the Department H government-agent superhero deal and just happened to be given the designation Weapon X?

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    10. I hadn't read the newer comments yet; sorry. While they don't change my comments above, I'm happy too see Teebore at least explained my "age-suppression" confusion well enough.

      And now I'm confused all over again by the Weapon/Experiment/Team X distinction(s). 8^P

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    11. Blam, I don't think they just "happened" to give the Weapon X moniker. There's no way Department H comes out of this smelling like roses. What they have at their disposal in HULK #180-181 is more or less what they were trying to create in Experiment-X, and Weapon X gets name-checked in those shenanigans.

      "Team X" was probably a bunch of super-soldier candidates held close by; they weren't probably supposed to know of each other's powers but Sabretooth at least was suspecting in Berlin that Wraith is a teleporter.

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    12. And because Silver Fox was never shown as part of the initial Team, I have hard time not thinking of her as Yoko and the rest of the gang as The Beatles. Mastodon is Pete Best because he never got to be as famous.

      I wonder if the mixture of nationalities ("North from West Germany, Creed from god knows where") was because "Weapon X" was the phase 2 in a joint Western shadowy super-soldier program, where maybe only Canada got what they were going at in the end with their guy (Maverick initially claims to be the representative of West Germany, but then shows up with Aldo Ferro). This would obviously be in direct conflict with the "internally packing sleeper agents" scenario mentioned in #50, unless that was merely a smokescreen for whatever purpose. To fool the professor/Cornelius/Hines type middle hierarcy hands-on guys maybe?

      Stupid agent shenanigans.

      Then there is obviously the question of where the Carol Danvers/Michael Rossi era fits in.

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    13. Yeah, I didn’t even throw in the whole thing with him being a member of the Canadian military, which back when it was first referenced I just took to be a position granted him as a by-product of his Department H activities — not ceremonial, exactly, but still kind-of adjunct to his real purpose, as a cover story or perhaps an extension of whatever his commission was once upon a time back when we knew nothing of his time before the Hudsons took him in.

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    14. The ceremonial bit flew out of the window at the latest when we learned that Logan had been in Normandy during the D-Day in very official capacity. Also Sasquatch wouldn't probably have called him "Captain Logan" in UNCANNY #120 if it didn't have some meaning to back it up.

      But, happily in #139 the man himself tells us that after the Hulk/Wendigo debacle he was out of the country a lot, doing his "James Bond" number.

      I have this far considered it funny how in the latter issue Logan does the "you didn't ask" not unlike the speaking Japanese earlier when Kurt overhears Logan being called Logan by the Alphas, but that's actually damn sad that no one ever even asked him. They've been through the Dark Phoenix stuff at this point for crying out loud!

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  5. Whenever this comic is brought up, everybody seems to take the "real" memory of what happened to Silver Fox at face value. To me, it's always seemed like a euphemism for rape. The full quote is, "That uppity squaw said no, and she knocked out my tooth!" I don't take that as saying that it was Sabertooth's tooth being knocked out that was the catalyst Psi-Borg speaks of, but instead him wanting to sleep with her, her violently objecting, and Wolverine discovering the result.

    As further evidence, we were shown earlier in Wolverine #050 a false memory of Silver Fox's, wherein Logan is beat up for being with her, and promptly leaves her at her prom. Could this have had the same catalyst? After all, whatever happened at that cabin, we know from Wolverine #010 that Wolverine fought Sabretooth for revenge, and got his ass kicked as a result. Could he have left her after that, as he did in the implant?

    She's certainly had the time and the resources to piece this together by the time she sees Wolverine in #062, which would be a much better explanation of her attitude towards him then simply believing he dumped her at prom.

    Clearly this subject was too dark for Hama to state it outright, but I've always believed this is what was hinted, and was wondering if anyone else thought there was merit to this idea?

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    1. It's not even euphenism; that's exactly what happened and only thing Hama doesn't do here is spell it out here or have the art show it explicitly. I think Austin went beautifully around it here because no one wants another Identity Crisis on their hands. But, you're right:

      Psi-Borg outright tells Logan that Silver Fox's death wasn't the traumatic event used as catalyst for the false memories when he melts away the medicine pouch to show a tooth of Sabretooth's to Logans horrid realization, and later on he forces Logan to watch "what Sabretooth is doing to Silver Fox" in the cabin.

      I would find your reasoning about the false prom memory in #50 also accurate. Logan was left with the memory implant that Silver Fox was dead, Silver Fox with the memory implant about Logan leaving her after getting beaten in "her" prom. The Weapon X folks probably wanted the subjects apart from each other and made these memory implants to that end.

      I can't find the quote now but at some point Psi-Borg also berated Logan for being less than heroic or something re: the cabin incident, which would fit the bill here if Logan couldn't deal with the whole thing and left her because of that. Though Sabretooth necessarily didn't so much want to sleep with her per se but possibly rather to hurt Logan through her woman after the aftermath of the Berlin debacle as shown in X-MEN #6.

      Silver Fox was handcuffed to a radiator in the Windsor terrorist hideout scenario where the "I teach you to say no" again came up, and the radiator haunts a plenty in these hallucinations of Logan, but, thankfully, there very likely is no water circulation radiator in a cabin, so that doesn't factor into this one. Keep your eyes open where one has been and will be seen.

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    2. I definitely think the question of what Sabretooth "really" did to Silver Fox could be interpreted as rape, though I will admit that wasn't my first thought - I chalked it up as a more general physical savaging/torture routine, in part because that seems to fit Sabretooth's general animalistic MO more than rape (he's usually portrayed more as a brutal, savage, animal-like killer, not necessarily a sexual predator), in part because, however thinly veiled it may seem now, I do question whether Hama intended that to be the takeaway in 1992, when superhero comics were still a bit gun-shy (relative to today) about even suggesting via innuendo something like that happening in the solo title of one of Marvel's best-selling characters, and in part because I just don't really want to have consider something as serious and complex as rape (especially when knowing it's not going to used as a springboard to actually tackle the issue in any way, let alone a meaningful one) being revealed in a story that also features an old man in a robot suit nearly being crushed to death by a falling death-robot kicked into a hole by a firework-manufacturing teenager, just before said old man turns into a man-eating tree, all drawn by Mark Pacella.

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    3. It's a good point you have about the general purpose torture. Though, "uppity squaw said no" being the catchphrase for the arc would strongly hint specifically to rape. Which phrase goes back to Claremont and #10.

      In a bit awkward development, the other Madame Hydra popularly had part of her face incurably scarred when escaping a revolution in Eastern Europe (CAPTAIN AMERICA #113) and I have a vague remembrance that someone at some point would have expanded it also to that direction. Unless it was merely Nathan Adler in his alternative scenario for Jessica Drew's parentage.

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    4. Thanks for the reply, glad to know I'm not inserting unnecessary darkness into an already dark scenario. I'm not sure about that timeline, this happening after the break-up of Team X, but it's so hard to say, what with the layers of implants and the general murkiness of Wolverine's past. Definitely agree the rape was about hurting Logan, not satisfying his desire though.

      Huh, I hadn't realized that the Windsor terrorist was another implant over the cabin. Great catch. I haven't noticed any radiators in his hallucinations myself, but I'll definitely be on the lookout for them from here on.

      While Sabretooth doesn't explicitly rape women in general, he does have a bit of an obsession with violence against them, which may be as far as Marvel is willing to explicitly show for such a high profile villain. It's the repeated use of that phrase, whenever Sabretooth and Silver Fox are brought up, "She said no," that made me believe that's what was intended in the first place.

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    5. Actually now that you say it aloud, I only realize that the picture of the cabin on the calendar in Logan's flashback of the Windsor terrorist hideout was given a pay here. When he goes on rampage on the actual sets Logan's finds out a calendar with a giant artichoke on it instead.

      The artichoke was in Castroville, CA, where Silver Fox's prom apparently according to the wall banner was taking place; Castroville's probably around San Francisco from where Silver Fox had a memory implant of an apartment of hers with the terrorist hideout set.

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    6. // always seemed like a euphemism for rape //

      My reaction was that there was no question of the implication and that it was a questionable revelation — if not entirely surprising, given the conventions of modern male-dominated melodrama; in fact, it disappointed me for just that reason.

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    7. Obviously one has to go "so you just had to?" at Hama for this twist of events and the needless plot device, but it's not like the whole sexual violence scenario wasn't hanging around there on the fringes for the whole of Claremont's run on UNCANNY: young Storm famously took the life of her would-be rapist, and there just can't be a singular mugger or street gang ever who won't go "you hafta be reel nice to us" or "now we gonna have some fun" at a purpoted female victim before Storm or Selene or Havok or someone appears to beat them up, suck their life-force or melt their car.

      It's very bothersome now as an aged reader, more so because as a kid I as a rule failed to question the needfulness of these scripting choices.

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    8. Rape as a female character’s galvanizing event on the path to the full realization of her own purpose is sketchy enough, if only when/because it’s such a quick go-to. At least neither Silver Fox’s presumed rape nor presumed death before this were the raison d’ĂŞtre for Wolverine becoming Wolverine — but when Sabretooth’s “uppity squaw” comment appeared in conjunction with the remarks of Psi-Borg’s you pointed out earlier I all but literally rolled my eyes and thought what a commendable step up from her fridging. The scenario of heroes of either gender stopping that street gang from committing sexual violence, in particular against random civilians, doesn’t cause me the same frustration because like robbery and murder it’s the kind of crime said heroes are specifically out on patrol to prevent. None of which is to say that rape can’t be used with care and intent, although even as I type those words — and despite the fact that the virtual room here is almost entirely male — I feel uncomfortably like it’s “mansplaining”. Austin made the point above that the mere glancing suggestion of rape in a serialized superhero saga, or at least at this moment in this particular and very popular serialized superhero saga, rests so uncomfortably among the genre stuff that perhaps Hama should be given the benefit of the doubt in terms of our inference.

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    9. The complaint about street gangs was meant as UNCANNY specific. The X-Men are not the type to patrol the streets; one of them always just happens to stumble on such a scene. Frank Miller famously still gets called on his portrayal of 1980's NY as a crime-infested hellhole with accusations of his personal political motivations having played into it, but the Claremontian one is maybe even more bleak in this regards concerning the occasions when the heroes will fail to show up.

      The element of fridging kind of hovers there though, because in WEAPON X Logan was a chronic alcohol abuser at the time of his kidnapping for the Experiment-X, and this continuity implant here supposedly could be considered as one reason for why he was. This is of course probably creative negligence and mismanagement more than anything intentional.

      On a side note, it may take copious amounts of alcohol to drink to forget if your healing factor keeps regenerating the brain cells.

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  7. Is it around this time that Sabertooth becomes bulkier? I recall vividly that during at least the Silvestri era he was around the same height as Wolverine.

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    1. Sabretooth definitely got bulkier around this time, but he was never the same size as Wolverine. Silvestri drew him tall and broad shouldered, but very lean, I guess with Texiera drawing Wolverine so lanky, Sabretooth needed a size increase to maintain the disparity.

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  8. Lovesick Logan btw completely failed to ever realize that it was Silver Fox who schemed to have Mariko poisoned. We weren't told if any of that was Hydra business of revenge at an old foe or if it was all a personal grudge at Logan. Silver Fox's modern appearance in #50 happening because her personally created computer flag went up upon there being action on the NSA "Logan" file would suggest it was pretty much personal. Also, apparently she was with Hydra by 1972 when she created the flag.

    So Logan had a false memory implant of losing his loved one, and the said loved one then went to make it reality with his other loved one.

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    1. I remember being really disappointed with this part of Hama's run originally, but this read through is giving me a lot more insight into it. It still has its weaknesses, but thanks for the great analysis, it's vastly increased my enjoyment of his run.

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  9. Mark Pacella vies with Marat Michaels as the worst professional comics artist in history.

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