Ultimate Comics Wolverine #4

Issue Date: 
July 2013
Story Title: 
untitled
Staff: 

Cullen Bunn (writer), David Messina (pencils), Gary Erskine (inker), Javier Tartaglia (colorist), Axel Torvenius (cover), VC’s Joe Caramagna (letters), Emily Shaw (assistant editor), Mark Paniccia (editor), Axel Alonso (editor-in-chief), Joe Quesada (chief creative officer), Dan Buckley (publisher), Alan Fine (Exec. Publisher)

Brief Description: 

In the past, Wolverine finds Magda just after having given birth to their son. She asks him to hide the child as both their employers would be interested in a newborn with a strain of pure Mothervine in his veins. Wolverine goes AWOL and gives the child to the Hudsons to raise. In the present, Jimmy fights Quicksilver, who is willing to kill him. They are both shot with tranqs by Magda, who intervenes and tells Jimmy she is proud of him. Jimmy and Black Box return to Utopia and Jimmy decides to adopt the name Wolverine. Quicksilver is pressed into service by a mysterious female Kang.

Full Summary: 

Calcutta, years ago:

Logan, in contact with his SHIELD team, is walking the slums, looking for Magda who stole a sample of Mothervine. He tells his team he’ll handle this.

He enters the room and finds blood on a bed, a dead woman lying on the ground and is greeted with the words: “Hello there, Daddy. Congratulations, it’s a boy.” Magda announces, holding a gun at Logan in one hand and cradling a newborn baby in the other arm.

Logan breaks contact with his team Magda tells him he’s theirs. Throws a wrench in his plans, doesn’t it? He insists this changes nothing. He’s been tracking her. He knows what she did. Injected herself with Mothervine.

She agrees. She was also hired to retrieve the formula. Mothervine might create living weapons but it could be the key to so much more. When she injected herself, she didn’t know she was pregnant. But now he has to realize this changes everything. She’s been down this road with Pietro and Wanda… seeing her children turned into weapons. She’s sure those SHIELD eggheads would love to examine a newborn with a pure strain of Mothervine in his bloodstream. But she’s betting neither of them is that cruel. They might be mercenaries, killers, not cut out to be parents, but they are not monsters.

She hands him the baby and tells him he needs to go AWOL. She hands him a data drive with information he can either give to SHIELD or to their son. His choice. Their employers will never stop looking for him. Hide him! Give him a chance. She’ll make sure they’ll follow her. Give them a trail of blood. He slashes across her torso. She tells him to find someone he trusts to take care of the boy. She stumbles out.

Now:

Beneath the Grant Park fertility clinic:

On his screens, Quicksilver sees Jimmy sneaking out of his cell and sighs if he must teach him another lesson so soon. He runs towards him… to see nobody there.

Jimmy’s claws come from the ground and cut Quicksilver’s leg. Jimmy was hiding below and Black Box corrupted the video feed. Holding his bleeding leg, Pietro assures them he is trying to save the mutant race. When their mother was pregnant with Jimmy, she injected herself with the last of the Mothervine, not the serum they were using on the other mothers, but the primordial chimeric DNA from which the formula was derived. His blood is the key to Mothervine! With it, they can rebuild the mutant race.

Jimmy snaps those people he is activating aren’t mutants; they are weapons of mass destruction. And he can get bent if he thinks Jimmy is gonna be any part of this.

Quicksilver bandages his wound, moaning how long he worked on piecing this together. Jimmy is the last piece of the puzzle. He saved his life, tried to make him understand. It sickens him that he doesn’t have what it takes to make a sacrifice for the greater good. Luckily, he doesn’t need his cooperation. He just needs his blood. He burrows his fingers into Jimmy’s chest at superspeed, adding the nice thing about his blood is he can harvest it again and again.

Black Box tries to attack him. Pietro tosses him against the wall at superspeed. He remarks Jimmy’s friend is lucky. His ability to communicate with the Mothervine data makes him useful. And he has to be a little more careful with him. Jimmy on the hand, as long as he’s alive, he’ll heal.

He hits Jimmy. It’s unfair, really. His sister could alter reality. Jimmy has the spark of mutant life coursing through his veins. Does he know what he could have done with either of those gifts?

Whatever it is, he’s sure he’d find something else to whine about, Jimmy retorts.

Pietro runs with him at superspeed, which begins tearing the flesh off Jimmy’s bones. He mocks that Jimmy’s father knew how to take a beating. But he is nothing like him, is he?

Jimmy’s teeth begin to change, becoming sharper, and he bites into Quicksilver’s shoulder. Jimmy tells him he better be thankful he is not like his father. He’d kill Pietro.

Pietro tells him if he kills him he’ll kill any chance the mutant race has of rebirth. Jimmy replies that the mutant race can’t be built on the backs of innocent people. He reminds him last time he tried to save the mutants it didn’t work out so well. Quicksilver is the last person he’d trust to save anyone!

How dare he! Pietro sputters. He doesn’t know the choices he made! He knows nothing. He runs at him, threatening to take what he needs from Jimmy’s corpse. Jimmy threatens to gut him when suddenly both are shot with tranqs.

Jimmy holds on to consciousness. A woman in red climbs down, apologizing for the drastic measures. She hopes he understands. A somewhat older Magda announces she just hated watching her children fight. She’s not worried about him. She knows he’ll heal. But Pietro can suffer a bit. He’s been a real &%$& of late. He becomes more and more like his father every day. Jimmy though… is becoming something different. The Logan she knew did some terrible things too. But, as far as being a father is concerned, he got one thing right.

Port St. Lucie, Florida, years ago:

Logan meets the Hudsons. James is an old war buddy. He knows this is no small thing he is asking but James is the best guy he knows. He’s trying to do the right thing here. If the kid stays with him, something bad’s bound to happen. Either his enemies get to him or he grows up like him. He’s theirs and Logan won’t interfere. He wants him to have the chance to be his own man, a good man and for that he needs a good family looking after him. He doesn’t know they are being watched.

Present: Back at Utopia:

Black Box enters Jimmy’s home, asking in how much trouble he got with Kitty for sneaking out of the reservation. She made scary threats, Jimmy replies. Garab tells him he still has all the data on Project Mothervine if Jimmy wants it. Jimmy isn’t interested.

Garab asks if he doesn’t want to know more about his parents. What about the woman he saw? That was his mother, right? Jimmy replies his mother lives in a trailer park in Florida. His father, too. They raised him, helped him to get ready for what was to come, made him who he is. Who he is? Garab asks. Yeah, Jimmy replies and takes a costume out of his bag. Wolverine!

Elsewhere, a hospital room:

A woman looking like a female Kang enters. It took some time to locate Pietro, she tells him. It would seem his benefactor arranged for his medical care to be undertaken in secrecy. His benefactor? Pietro repeats. She tells him not to worry and to concentrate on getting well. She needs his help. Why would he help her? he moans. What makes him think he has a choice? she asks.

Characters Involved: 

present:

Jimmy Hudson / Wolverine II

Black Box
Quicksilver
Magda Lehnsherr
Female Kang
past:

Wolverine
Magda Lehnsherr
Infant Jimmy Hudson
James and Heather Hudson

Story Notes: 

Last time Pietro tried to save mutants, he inadvertently sicced the Nimrod Sentinels on them. [Ultimate Comics X-Men #1-6]

Jimmy’s costume is the one he wore on the cover of Ultimate Comics X-Men #1, but never inside any issue.

Quicksilver’s story is continued in Ultimate Disassembled.

Issue Information: 
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