Wolverine #14 (1989, October)

Follow me on Twitter (@XMenXPert). Happy Indigenous People Day! (And happy Fuck Columbus Day.) Today, by PAD, Buscema, Sienkewicz, Wright, and Bruzenak, “The Gehenna Stone Affair (Part 4 of 6): Flying Wolves.”

Is that a baboon wearing pants?

Logan and his friends are catching up with the plane with the vampires, so Logan goes to get changed. In Madripoor, Captain Tai is talking to O’Donnell about the dead twins, and O’Donnell’s got the shiny rock. He refuses to let Tai have it, and he refuses to let Lindsay hold it. Back on the plane, Jessica thinks about Lindsay, and about her job working for the Prince, and the fact that the Prince will want that stone fragment stolen from Burt. Their plane catches up, above the vampire plane, and a vamp leans out and starts shooting at them with an assault rifle. So Jessica dives out. Because she’s like that. I do love that she doesn’t even say anything as she does it. Just opens the door and jumps. Like it’s a totally normal thing for her to do. In fairness, she is a superhero, so doing crazy shit is pretty much par for the course. Anyway, she’s soon joined by:

He’s finally put on the costume.

14 issues in, and he’s actually put on his Wolverine costume. Funny how long it took for us to actually see Wolverine in the Wolverine comic. Regardless, he jumps out and takes out the guy with the gun, and regroups with a totally unsurprised Jessica.

Your disguise was an eye patch, dude.

I do like that Jessica knew all along, and over the next few issues, it’ll be a great running gag that everyone knew. But for now, there’s a different joke that amuses me more than it really should.

Poor shark!

I just picture a shark swimming along, minding its own business, and suddenly, some dude drops on top of it. Like, this shark doesn’t want to eat people. It’s never eaten a human in its life. And then, whomp, a guy just falls onto its head, right out of nowhere. That poor, poor shark. Maybe the shark even has a history with stuff like that happening? It’s just got the worst luck of any shark ever. All the other sharks make fun of it. “Oh, there’s Steve! Hey Steve, get your snout stuck in anything today?” Yes, I’ve decided the shark’s name is Steve. Steve the Shark. He’s the comedic relief character in a shark-based cartoon, the victim of various pratfalls and humiliations. I have officially put entirely too much thought into a stupid joke in a Wolverine comic. I have put more thought into this joke than I have put into Logan as a character.

Anyway! Wolverine and Jess slip inside and beat people up, and then Jess goes out the plane door. Back in Madripoor, Lindsay seduces O’Donnell for a chance to hold the stone. Huh. Weird that they weren’t already bangin’, honestly. They’re both attractive, charming, and available. O’Donnell seems the type to love sleeping with women, and Lindsay strikes me as sexually independent. So yeah, I could definitely see them as Friends With Benefits. The plane! Wolverine fights a dude transformed by Ba’al. The fight ends up wrecking the cockpit, so the plane goes down, and Wolverine and Jessica barely get onto a rope ladder from Archie’s plane in time.

So this effectively marks the end of the Patch disguise. Not entirely, it keeps popping up from time to time. Hell, it was even seen in Old Man Logan. (And there’s a mutant gang in X-Men Blue who take their inspiration from “Patch,” too.) But with this issue, Patch as a legitimate disguise that works is over. After this, it becomes a joke. End of an era, people!

Oh, and I guess the issue as a whole is actually pretty fun. There’s a lot of fighting, but it’s done well, it’s cool and exciting. Jessica getting to kick some ass is always nice to see. The plot doesn’t get advanced much, but meh, who cares, Wolverine and Jessica drew jump out of a plane to land on another plane and beat up pseudo-vampires. Sometimes, you just gotta let superhero comics be stupid and entertaining. Buscema’s still not my thing, but he does fight scenes very well, they’re easy to follow, with a good flow and ebb to them.

So, this isn’t some classic issue, but it’s still enjoyable.