Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: cable, empyre, excalibur, recaps, wolverine, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

Wolverine Finds Some Time to Chill in Wolverine #4 [XH]

Welcome to X-ual Healing, North Korea's favorite weekly X-Men recap column. There are four X-Men comics that came out last week: Empyre: X-Men #4, Excalibur #11, Cable #3, and Wolverine #4. I'm gonna recap 'em. It's what I do.

But first, anyone pay attention to DC Fandome this weekend? No, me neither. It's kinda hard to fanboy out over a comic book company that just laid off a crapload of people last week. Well, hard for me. Most comic book fanboys… well, they've put up with way worse from publishers. Anyway, there's a Snyder Cut trailer, so at least The Snyderbronies got their due. There was a lot of cool wrestling too. Did you know I recap all the wrestling each week? Find my AEW Dynamite, NXT Takeover XXX, and WWE SummerSlam reports here. And I even got an EX-X-XCLUSIVE interview with Roman Reigns' old teeth (he got new veneers)! The wrestling stuff is starting to gain traction here, which is good. It means I won't be forced to go back to writing more about comics, which I have no desire to do. And that means that you, yes, you, dear readers of X-ual Healing, are the only ones that get to experience my comics-related wisdom! Aren't you lucky?

Alright, enough plugs. Let's get on with the recaps.

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities. Still, thanks to a corporate merger, a line-wide relaunch, and Jonathan Hickman's giant ego, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in all of comics.

WOLVERINE #4
MAR200900
(W) Ben Percy (A) Viktor Bogdanovic (CA) Adam Kubert
THE RED TAVERN!
After getting dressed down by the Quiet Council for rogue activity, Wolverine escapes through his own secret gate to the Red Tavern, a snowbound, backwoods watering hole where he only wants to guzzle whiskey in peace. But Logan soon discovers that peace isn't possible as a twist-and-turn murder mystery unfolds – and at the heart of it all is an enemy from the past.
Parental Advisory
In Shops: Aug 19, 2020
SRP: $3.99

Wolverine #4 Recap

Wolverine arrives at his meeting with the Quiet Council that he was called to at the end of the last issue. He returns Magneto's helmet and says now they're even for the time Magneto ripped out his adamantium back in the 90s Charles Xavier lectures Wolverine on following the rules and cooperating with the government. Wolverine reveals he peed in Magneto's helmet… after Magneto has already put it back on.

The title page indicates this issue will focus on the Omega Red/Dracula storyline. A prose page that follows the title page describes Wolverine heading to "the shadow country," going out into nature to escape humanity and the watchful eyes and minds of the Krakoan government. It's signed by The Chronicler.

Wolverine is in Northern Canada now, where he apparently has his own gate to. He visits the Red Tavern bar, where he orders a drink and plays Hank Williams on the jukebox. A redneck complains about Wolverine's taste in music, and they get into a bar fight, which Wolverine wins. The guy leaves. Wolverine feels there was a familiar scent about him. A cop arrives at the bar and describes seeing some kind of monster eating a moose on his way over. An old cougar in the bar hits on Wolverine, and Wolverine once again feels there's something familiar about her. Wolverine feels woozy, and he goes to the bathroom.

We see a prose page, which is a flyer for a support group for people who have suffered trauma because of mutants. Then in the bathroom, Wolverine, who is feeling very out of it, sees the guy he fought with earlier. His guts are ripped out. He also has a tattoo Wolverine remembers from the Brotherhood militia in Oregon. The cop walks in, sees the corpse, and shoots Wolverine with a tranquilizer dart. Wolverine wakes up in chains. The people in the bar know who he is. He's been coming here for weeks, pretending to be human, but they figured it out. Wolverine recognizes one of the men as a patient from Dunwich Sanitorium. They intend to cut a hole in the ice over a lake and throw him in it to freeze.

As they head outside to do just that, Omega Red is seen following them. It turns out all of the people here are from the mutant trauma support group. A flying bar stool killed one of the guys' girlfriend during a fight Wolverine got in a bar in Madripoor, which is pretty funny. The old lady is apparently Gorgon's mom, and he raped her, which is gross and not the kind of information I needed to know. When Wolverine first started coming to the bar, the guy whose girlfriend was killed recognized him and sent out a call looking for other people who wanted payback, and that's how we got to where we are now.

Wolverine tries to argue that not all mutants are bad all the time. His captors point out he just murdered someone in the bathroom earlier. Wolverine says that wasn't him, and then he figures out what he's been smelling. Omega Red shows up and murders all the humans. Then he breaks open the ice and throws Wolverine in. The issue ends there on a cliffhanger.

This was a fun twist on the classic Wolverine gets drunk at a dive bar story type. I'll let you in on a secret though: Omega Red has always bored me as an antagonist. I don't know where this story is going, but I hope Wolverine does end up frozen in the ice, and then the book picks up 50 years from now when he's pulled out, and he becomes the new Captain America.

The best X-book this week… it pains me to say it, but I think it was actually the event tie-in.

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