Not my favorite rendition of Wolverine. But maybe his first appearance on the blog in his new-ish suit for Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men, which is underway at this point. It was, I seem to recall reading, designed very much by committee, everyone trying to figure out the perfect suit. And somehow still ended up with it being mostly schoolbus yellow. I have never understood. They say Wolverine is Del’Otto’s favorite character, which makes his vaguely off-model take on the character all the more strange. This issue, we open on the “one year ago” portion of the book, with Captain America defeating some terrorists trying to kidnap an ambassador at the United Nations. Between this and TAC 6-10, it’s getting dangerous to be a UN official in the Marvel U! Cap was disillusioned after, unsure about the direction the world seems to be going, when he was visited by Nick Fury, who feels the same. He said there’s something bad going on, but that the Avengers can’t help. That he needed something secret. Egads, perhaps a secret… war??? We then see that Nick went to Matt Murdock and Luke Cage the same way. And then, naturally, since we’re looking at this series…
When Millar had Peter say Nick knew his secret, I thought maybe he revealed he knew in this, and I forgot, but instead it’s one of Bendis’ infamous “that thing one time”s, which is certainly not uncommon, and I’m left to wonder if Nick really did know Peter’s secret, or Bendis and/or Millar just decided he did. With the resources of SHIELD, he could certainly have figured it out if he wanted to. But who cares who Spider-Man is, if you’re on Nick’s level? I don’t seem to recall him knowing in anything I’ve read, which doesn’t leave much wiggle room. Well, anyway, our man ran down to the airport and was almost late for his flight to Latveria that he just accepted without being told why he was going there, and was excited to be going first class for the first time in his life [citation needed, I bet Joy Mercado flew them expensive in Web back in the 80s], until he saw who else is in the plane.
This sequence caused a whole bunch of chaos on the internet. Wolverine can’t get drunk due to his healing power. Or can he? Bendis said he could get drunk for just a little while if he really tried. This was not well received. Me, I was just thinking about how Peter and Logan have met out of costume at least twice, in Spider-Man Vs. Wolverine and Todd McFarlane’s 2nd arc of Spider-Man in issues 6-10, both very Wolverine-centric plots with Spider-Man along for the ride, which one assumes Logan would recall. And probably more than that, those are just the ones I read as an impressionable youth and absorbed like a sponge. But I’m sure B would also attribute this to Logan being drunk, if pressed.
Oh, look, Angelina Jolie is here. That’s cool, why not just jam as many celebrities into my comics as possible? This was also controversial. But me, I was mostly noticing that Del’Otto recycled the Luke Cage head there from issue one, and wondered if that was going to be a thing. Spoilers: It is! Well, the gang arrived at the American embassy in Latveria. Peter Parker was very nervous. Luke Cage made a solid joke about raising the black population of Latveria by 150% when he stepped off the plane. And Matt Murdock was none-too-pleased to run into Natasha Romanov(a). No one can decide whether to use the “a” or not. Even Bendis, who as I recall, went with the “a” in Daredevil, does not here.
Who could have known this mystery girl would eventually be the star of a 5-season TV show, sort of? At least a character with the same name. Well, the gang retired to… some monochrome, hazy, otherwise unidentified in the Del’Otto mode, where Fury appeared to finally tell them what they’re doing (After fielding a bunch of questions from Peter Parker about how conspicuous it was that they flew together for something secret).
Hey, that sounds like something Uncle Sam would frown on! I mean, only because Fury was explicitly told to let it go in this particular instance, not based on, like, all of US history…
That is the least-Captain America-looking face Captain America has ever had.
Seems bad! The back of this issue includes Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe profiles of the principals, and a transcript of one Daisy Johnson, age 17, interrogated by Nick Fury, Jasper Sitwell and Clay Quartermain. We learn a whole lot about her. She’s got the superpower to make earthquakes. She is the daughter of Mr. Hyde, but was adopted and didn’t know she had powers, or that he was her dad (Or that she was adopted) until she stole from a record store and used her powers by accident and got pulled in by SHIELD. Fury then offered her training and a job in SHIELD. Anybody ignoring these text pages because they don’t have pictures (More people than I’d like to think!) were missing out on vital info. Then there’s a lil thing on how they designed the covers.