Writer & Artist Phil Jimenez

Co-Writer Scott Lope

Colorist Rachelle Rosenberg

Letterer VC’s Cory Petit

Come Conquer The Beasts Part One

I do enjoy seeing Jimenez on Wolverine, especially as he co-wrote the issue and added the Jean Grey School to the issue.

This arc is essentially an Anti-Poaching storyline.  Hopefully Marvel submits this for a grant and gets the word out, as I am not sure who is on the Pro-Poaching side of the issue but Jimenez seems to be really coming down on the issue.

I like the call back to an early Uncanny issue where the X-Men think Logan is a savage and kills for killing sake, but he just likes to sneak up on a beast and pet them.  Apparently he did this even during 1931 and in South Africa.  He takes a baby elephant under his wing.  He is currently looking for it in the present year.  Not sure what the life span is for an elephant but 82 years seems to be a long time.

How long do elephants live?  Google tells me 80 years for Asian elephants in captivity and 60 years in the wild.

So this story is already pushing things but I’m getting ahead of it.

Logan is back in South Africa in the present day, on one of his hunts, and smells death.  He sees hyenas and vultures and comes across three rhino corpses.

These rangers show up, and Logan is so angry that he goes into a blind rage and attacks one of them.  He moves on to their lady leader and she finally snaps him out of it.  I sort of love this turn of events as how many times has he just jumped at a guy, killed him and we just take it for granted that that guy was a bad guy?  At least thousands of times?  The leader calls him an Avengers, which I like, he should act as a responsible member of the number one superhero team on the planet.

One of the rhinos is not dead and Logan has to put her out of her misery, heart breaking stuff.

They get back to their base and Logan finds out that the guy he darn near killed will be okay, and Logan makes this off handed joke about buying him a fruit basket and a teddy bear.  The leader states that he should buy them, instead, a few more vests and three new rifles.  He tries to come off as a cool guy but is quickly shown to be the savage and fool that he really is, in this moment.

We get a recap on how the poachers do their business.  I didn’t know the horns and such were used in medicine and “cheap jewelry.”  You would think that if you are going to kill thousands of animals, you would at least use it in expensive jewelry but still, poaching is wrong.

We cut to the Jean Grey School.  First, we get Lockheed pfht-ing at Kroaka.  Then we cut to Kitty Pryde, teaching a class on superhero fashion and codenames.  She is wearing a pink shirt, which Marvel has really been putting her in pink colored outfits when they show her teaching or running the school.  Just something I have been observing.

Quinten Quire is quick to make fun of her horrid multi-color outfit with roller skates.  The bane of all Kitty Pryde fans, as people point to it as an example of how silly the character was.  That and her multiple code names, but it has only been three codenames, so people are going to extremes with that.

Kitty gets a call and Wolverine needs her so she dismisses the class early.  She assigns a paper on crime-fighting in heels, that is due on Friday, which I love that as an assignment.  Broo comments that he liked that above referenced costume.

Kitty explains how the poachers move their ‘goods.’  She mentions Madripoor, a country (only in Marvel) that Logan has a bunch of history with.

We get a flashback to a time, a few years ago, when Patch (Wolverine’s Madripoor disguise, pretty much Logan in a white suit, with a eye patch over his left eye) kills the then prince who ran the country.  At one point, Logan was tricked into marrying Viper, which she married him so that she can rule Madripoor.  Then his son Daken ruled the country – its more the size of an island, like Hawaii size, that’s how big I have imagined it.  Mostly, Tyger Tiger has been the ruler during the off years.  She is essentially the ‘go to’ leader.

Before hanging up the phone, Wolverine tells Kitty to look for his elephant.  Kitty asks out loud, how she should do that and Doug Ramsey shows up and tells her how to do it.  Hopefully this means that Kitty will be in the next issue.  I am pretty sure this is the first time Kitty and Doug have been shown together since his return from the dead and her returning from deep space, so this should have been a bigger moment.

We end the issue with Logan finding the three warehouses and Tyger Tiger are with him, as they enter one of them.  We see a warehouse full of tusks, horns and tiger heads.  It does look disgusting, especially when you realize that each horn represents one rhino, each two tusks is one elephant and well, naturally, each tiger head is one tiger.

Also, Tyger Tiger is apparently cool with the poachers as she is now mad at Wolverine and is going to kill Wolverine.