Wolverine is all face on this cover. This was one of Finch’s early weaknesses, he drew people’s heads too small, like there wasn’t enough room in their skull for a brain. I made a joke about this on a forum once, and to my surprise, he was there, saw it and said he’d try to do better. I was kinda mortified. But he quit doing it, so… maybe I helped! Despite how last issue ended, Spider-Man appears on one panel of the last 2 issues of this story, so we’re gonna do the quickest possible recaps here. Which, for me, is probably still going to be a long post, but look, the blog is free. We open on Wolverine coming up out of the vat in the Weapon X project, more or less as it happened in the original. Professor X has taken Wolverine to this moment in his memories because, as he recaps a little, he thinks this lady hunting him might be a threat to all of the X-Men. He wants Logan to look around the room and see if he recognizes people. He sees the woman who’s been hunting him, and begins cutting between his memory of her and her shooting him in the face last issue until he freaks out.
Lgona explains that he can sense everyone distrusts him, Xavier gives a nice speech about earning their trust, then says he’s going to make a call. That call is, surprise surprise, to Nick Fury, and they argue about the situation and who should take care of it. Meanwhile:
Ya know, I thought that was Peter at the table with them, but maybe it’s Iceman. Is Iceman even in this book? I don’t remember. So little of this story has actually featured the X-Men! Well, Logan goes outside after Jean makes the stank face at him, and she follows him out to say she does not forgive him for trying to kill Cyclops and his being there is a gift and if he crosses her, she’ll kill him, you know, the classic love triangle! Then they both sense something, and we cut to a helicopter coming in. They have blundered too close, and get attacked and blown up by the Phoenix.
So, then, UXM 39.
Gotta make being passed out after blowing up look sexy, after all. The others have found her, and she’s freakin out because she killed those guys and she can’t shut out anyone’s thoughts. Professor X has Nightcrawler teleport her back to the mansion. In this universe, his teleport cloud is orange to match their uniforms. She keeps freaking out, and Xavier tells Kurt he’ll handle it and to leave. In a warehouse in Woodstock, the lady from this story is being dressed down via 2000s-era web cam by a mystery man who says she wasn’t authorized to do all the stuff she’s done, she botched the job, she sent their target back to Xavier where he’s off limits, and she’d now cut off. She says this is war, and he says she’s a casualty. Then he cuts the feed, everyone looks at each other, and Cyclops blows the door open.
Ok, yeah, I think that was Iceman sitting at the table, looking exactly like Peter Parker. Finch will get much better at, like, drawing unique people later, as I recall. It’s also worth noting that, in this universe, as I recall, Professor X designed all their suits himself, and they do something. Like block them from mutant sensors or something? Like they serve a very important purpose, so he made them himself. And all the girls, the underage girls, are in lil croptops and hip huggers, and all the guys are not, so you know, Professor X is pretty gross! Anyway, faced with certain capture at best, the crazy lady shoots all her goons and then herself before anyone can stop her. Everyone is horrified, especially young Kitty, and Logan lets out a primal scream as helicopters arrive.
Dugan once again reiterates that Logan being on the cover of Time was a lightning rod, and these people wanted to expose him and show the world how evil mutants are. As he leaves, Dugan says, “Hey, read a book. Slavery split this country in two,” and asks who knows what mutants will do. This particular thing sticks out to me for reasons that won’t matter for years on this blog, but… I’ll try to remember.
So was that lady his wife? Who knows, we never will. Bendis and Finch will take the title to #45, with what I remember as a series of one-off stories, and then Brian K. Vaughan comes in for a long run with artists like Brandon Peterson and Stuart Immonen that really woke this book up and made it work better than it ever had, but that’s outside our purview. And that’s it for this block. Kind of awkward to end on comics that don’t even star Spider-Man, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Now it’s back to the mainline continuity for awhile.