Wolverine Origins 39

This post contains spoilers for Wolverine Origins 39...

Wolverine Origins 39 pulls together a number of slowly spinning plot threads, and it finally feels like the title has built momentum towards a big blow-out conclusion. Read together (to overcome the slow issue-to-issue pacing), this story is more enjoyable than I would have expected -- given its roots in Jeph Loeb's rightly maligned Wolverine arc, in which all the feral mutants were revealed to be members of a splinter race of "lupines," with an immortal Alpha Lupine named Romulus pulling their strings since prehistoric times. Yeah. From this goofy premise, Daniel Way has managed to extract a compelling tale of subterfuge and control, spanning decades. He adheres to continuity, but adds depth and intrigue to old stories, like Wolverine's first appearance in Incredible Hulk 181.

Wolverine Origins 39 is the issue where Way spells it all out -- or some of it, at least. Romulus, hitherto seen as just a giant, shadowy figure, has formented rivalries and hatreds among a set of characters -- including Wolverine, Sabretooth, Wild Child, Omega Red, Cyber, Daken, and Nuke -- and pitted them against each other to find the last man standing. The reasons remain mysterious (the "contestants" believe that the one who can kill Romulus gets to become Romulus), but what's frightening is how Romulus has inflicted trauma upon trauma on his players -- since their childhoods, it seems -- to mold them into the killers they are today.

By the end of the issue, all the contestants except Wolverine (and Daken, off playing Dark Avenger) are dead. And in the final panel, we get our first clear look at Romulus, and it comes as a bit of a surprise. Up until now, the silhouetted depictions suggested a Hulk-sized Sabretooth. Instead, we see a Sabretooth-sized Wolverine, though an exaggerated one. Four curved adamantium claws adorn each hand, equipped with natural Sabretooth-like claws as well. Romulus is bare-chested but in vaguely Asiatic garb, and his face looks so much like Logan's, my first thought was that we were seeing Wolverine's long-lost older brother, hinted at in Wolverine: Origin and Wolverine: The End. It's a thought worth holding on to. After all, in legend, Romulus was but one brother raised by the she-wolf: he had a brother, Remus, whom he killed, as the story goes. Rather than being the prehistoric alpha dog depicted by Loeb, Romulus may be Logan's brother, and Weapon X may be tied very intimately to Wolverine's origin.