Havok & Wolverine – Meltdown #1-4 (March – October 1989)
Written by Walter Simonson and Louise Simonson
Artwork by Jon J Muth (Havok) and Kent Williams (Wolverine)
Spoilers (from thirty-two years ago)
In 1989, was there any character more popular than Wolverine? This was the period where the X-Men were living in Australia, and the world believed they were dead. Chris Claremont was the most celebrated writer in comics, and Louise Simonson was working on the secondary mutant books, such as New Mutants and X-Factor (maybe with her husband Walter on art right then?).
The Simonsons decided to take two X-Men, Wolverine and Havok, and cowrite a story featuring them in a prestige format miniseries, that was designed to be pretty experimental, and published through the Epic imprint. The painted art for this book was by two different artists who had been building names for themselves by working on more mature titles.
What made this book unique was that the two artists each focused on one character. Jon J. Muth painted Havok and the scenes that he was the focus of, while Kent Williams took care of Wolverine and his scenes. I can’t imagine the difficulty they must have had keeping things visually consistent.
What’s really strange about this project is that all I remember about it is that I found it vaguely confusing, and didn’t really get it. I think Apocalypse is in it? Honestly, the only clear memory I have is the way that Williams elongated Logan’s unique hair.
I’ve been wanting to revisit this book for years, so it’s time to dig in and see if my fourteen year old self was just wrong about this book, like I think he must have been.
Let’s track who turned up in the title:
Villains
- Dr. Neutron
- General Meltdown
- Quark (Scarlet McKenzie)
Let’s take a look at what happened in these books, with some commentary as we go:
- The series opens with a lengthy discussion between a General Meltdown and a Dr. Neutron, who basically reveal that they manipulated events so that the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melted down during what was supposed to be a test of its safety functions. We get to see, in an abstracted way, the events leading up to the meltdown, as individuals made mistakes or bad decisions, while also seeing that the two men narrating these events are playing chess. They decided that their goal, to stop then-Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and his reform agenda. It’s clear they intend to try something else next. Logan and Alex are on a short vacation together on the Gulf coast of Mexico, and have made a bet about which of them will use their powers first. Logan’s misreading of local customs (he called someone’s sister a ‘puta’) leads to a big bar fight that Alex stays out of. After Logan has finished, they walk through the town chatting. As they pass a building, we “hear” a voice saying that he or she has their target under surveillance, but since that person hasn’t used their powers yet, they don’t know if they should proceed. The person they are talking to suggests they force the issue. The next morning, some of the men from the bar turn up at Alex and Logan’s hotel, and shoot at them. The two X-Men run from them, and jump in a red Thunderbird convertible, dragging the woman whose car they stole with them. They leave the Mexicans behind, but are soon pursued by another car. This has gunmen dressed all in black in it, and it stays on them despite their attempts to lose it in the countryside. One gunman, who is likened to Darth Vader (but has more of a Terminator vibe) rips through their car’s roof to continue shooting at our heroes with a laser weapon. They approach a rickety-looking bridge that is surrounded by more dark-clad gunmen. They drive the Thunderbird across the bridge, but can’t find their pursuers. When Alex sees that their car is flying above them, he decides it’s time to lose the bet, and uses his powers to blast them. When they get out of the car, the woman confirms that she knows who they are, and shoots them with bullets that immediately put them both down. Later, Logan comes to in a hospital where the doctors are surprised to see him recover, seeing as he was shot full of bubonic plague. The doctors tell Logan that Alex is dead, and whisper to each other that he won’t make it until morning. Logan finds one of the bullets in his arm, and passes out after examining it. Once Alex feels better, he leaves the hospital, and is watched as he wanders the town (the people watching him reference the fact that the woman, Quark, filled him with enough plague bullets to kill . Logan heads straight to the town graveyard, where he finds Alex’s grave (I mean, I get that they bury plague victims in a hurry, but I don’t know how you get a tombstone made that quickly). Logan smells something odd, and exhumes Alex’s corpse, which is actually just a rock-filled piñata. He vows to find his friend.
- Logan is back at the bar where he got into the fight with the Mexicans, trying to figure out who put them up to attacking him at his hotel. He learns that they weren’t local, aside from one man who is cousins with the main guy. He goes to see this man, and learns that the men were paid to pick a fight with Logan. Among the man’s pay, Logan finds a Russian coin, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, and learns the name of the town the cousin came from. Alex wakes up in a hospital bed, and doesn’t recognize Quark (also called Scarlet McKenzie), who is now his nurse, as the woman who shot him with the plague in the first place. He has a hard time believing that Logan would be dead, which is what they tell him. Scarlet gives him an injection, and then goes to the roof with three other men. They’ve outfitted a ruined and abandoned building to look like a hospital. Their goal is get Havok on their side, through brainwashing techniques, and they make plans to use subliminally altered television to achieve this. Quark reports over video screen to General Meltdown, who is running this whole operation. She discusses how Alex can’t be seen on their cameras (this is the era where the X-Men were believed to be dead and had been rendered untraceable by Roma). He has a workaround suggested by Dr. Neutron. We see Meltdown, and he’s kind of strange looking – his appearance reminds me of the terrible 90s villain Cyber a little, but is also a little more Neanderthal than that. He learns that the asylum that he lives in is going to be inspected soon, so he plans to bribe the inspector. He goes to see Neutron, and we get a sense that they intend to use Havok’s powers to achieve a proper nuclear meltdown like they’d intended for Chernobyl. Alex talks to Quark, getting to know her a little better, but also recognizes that there’s something going on with his TV, so he blasts it. Quark is trying to make it seem she is romantically interested in Alex as a way of bringing him over to her side. Later, she talks to Neutron about how surprised she is at his level of intuition. Logan finds the helicopter the Russians used to transport the Mexicans, but it’s burned out. He asks a local taco stand owner, who he was told would have some information, about the Russians, but is turned away empty handed. When Logan leaves, the man immediately calls the Russians, not realizing that Logan is still listening. Logan has him say he’s staying at a specific fleabag hotel. Scarlet walks Alex around the fake hospital, to help him regain his strength, and suggests that some spies are going to come looking for him. Logan waits at the hotel, and when he hears someone in the hall, he expects an attack to come. Instead, whoever it is just blows the whole place up, with him in it. When this guy reports back that he’s set off his “fireworks”, and mentions that he’s returning to the “haven”, he’s surprised that Logan cuts his way out of the trunk of his car and attacks him. Logan knows about Distant Haven, and that it is in ruins, but assumes that this is where Alex is (really, this part is pretty weak and circumstantial). He kills the Russian. Scarlet comes to Alex telling him that a spy is there for him. The spy asks where Logan is, claiming to be representing the US government. He says that he thinks Logan was kidnapped by Russians and taken to a secret place in Poland. When the spy gets aggressive, Scarlet steps in, and the man hits her. Alex hits him, and knocks him out. Alex wants to leave, and take Scarlet with him, so they make arrangements. That night, they sneak out (I’m not sure how they kept a man tied up in Alex’s room all day, based on one punch). Alex blasts a hole in the wall so they can get away, and doesn’t seem to notice that the building he’s been in is a ruin. They take Scarlet’s motor scooter to an airfield where she’s arranged for them to leave in a biplane. Around this time, Logan makes it to the ruins, and sniffs out Alex’s trail. There is an explosion that blows up the ruins, and burns off Logan’s clothes, leaving him nude. He recognizes Scarlet’s scent, and starts to pursue them, and sees their plane as it lifts off. He yells Alex’s name. Alex is able to hear him over the plane’s propellers, but Scarlet convinces him that it was the explosion she heard a while ago. He sees the fire where the hospital was, and Scarlet suggests it was the spy’s friends who did it. It’s not clear if they are now going to try to fly this biplane from Mexico to Poland…
- Alex and Scarlet fly through a storm, towards an airfield in Merida, where Scarlet has another friend who can help them. Logan figures that’s where they’re going, and looks in his pack, which survived the explosion that ruined his clothes, and pulls on his Wolverine costume. He hears another Russian reporting in over radio, and kills him. Logan threatens whoever he was speaking to, and finds the guy’s helicopter. General Meltdown and Dr. Quark discuss this latest turn of events. As Logan flies the helicopter, he thinks through what’s going on, and figures that Quark/Scarlet is responsible. Meltdown descends underneath the asylum to a practice room where he uses his radioactive powers to blow up simulations of things like tanks and naval cruisers. He wants something more challenging, so the computer gives him a simulation of a city, and after blowing it up, he runs out of power (this sequence could be a lot more clear). We learn that he intends to use Havok to feed his own powers (is it just me, or do his plans change around a lot?). Scarlet and Alex arrive at the airfield in Merida, which is abandoned. She suggests that Alex get some rest while she goes to the washroom. Once there, she contacts Neutron and reports that she fears Alex is getting a little suspicious of her and her friends who keep supplying them with airplanes (she’s told him she can get a jet from a friend). She tells Neutron she has a plan to further entrap Alex, and also has an idea how to manage Logan. This plan involves her taking off her dress and putting on a trench coat. She goes to wake Alex up, and gives him a coat to wear in Poland. She tells him that her friend Charlie is coming with a jet any minute (where was he that he can get there that quickly?). When Alex asks about the friends, she confesses that the biplane guy is a former lover, who she suspects is involved in the drug trade. This Charlie guy is more of a mercenary. It’s worth noting that Scarlet first introduced herself as a Peace Corps worker, so Alex is showing the same good judgement he exercised when he got with Madelyne Pryor… Charlie arrives and they head straight for Poland. Once in the air, Scarlet keeps praising Alex, and then seduces him (I wonder if he’s curious why she’s not wearing anything under her coat). Meltdown and Neutron talk some more, and worry that Quark’s “Scarlet” persona is taking over. Neutron noticed that she referred to Alex by name a few times. When Logan gets to the air field in Merida, it’s actually full of people. He asks about Alex, and is told that they are staying at a local hotel. He heads there but finds it empty, save for Scarlet’s dress. He’s attacked by a flying drone that tases him, knocking him out. Some Russians come and retrieve him. Neutron now plans to bring Logan to Alex, figuring that it will trigger him to use his powers fully. The Russians package Logan into a crate and put a brainwashing device on his head, figuring it will work better on him than it did Alex. Alex, Scarlet, and some guy named Janos ride horses through the Polish countryside, crossing some mountains into the Soviet Union. They have been travelling for three days, heading for an old KGB installation that has mechanical sensors, so they couldn’t drive. When they finally get there, the place looks abandoned, and Janos takes off. Alex finds recent tire tracks, and decides to go into the place alone to investigate. It appears completely empty, but when he sends some tendrils of his plasma energy along the floor, the ceiling collapses and an enraged Logan, yelling “Death! Death!” drops in front of him and attacks him. Alex can’t figure out what to do, but then Logan regains lucidity and speaks to him. At that point, he stabs Alex, so Alex fires his energy at Logan, killing him. Alex cradles his body, and vows to get revenge on the people behind this mess.
- Alex, upset and confused, talks to Scarlet outside the KGB base. She wants him to look around for clues, but he doesn’t believe there will be any. She manages to trip over a partially burned blueprint of a nuclear reactor in India, which has with it information suggesting (in English, I suppose) that there will be maintenance done on it in a few days. Alex figures that whatever they are planning on doing there, they didn’t want him to be involved in, and that’s why they tried to take him off the board (of course, he never questions how, if he was just on vacation in Mexico, he’d even know that there might be a threat to nuclear safety in India, leaving aside completely the fact that the world believes he’s dead). He tells Scarlet that he’s heading to India, and that he now isn’t sure the CIA has been involved in any of this stuff. First, he buries Logan in a shallow grave, wrapping him in his coat as a shroud. Scarlet asks if his healing factor would bring him back, but Alex assures her that he’s dead. They ride out on their horses (I don’t know how they intend to get to India). Dr. Neutron and General Meltdown talk about how things are going. Meltdown intends to get Alex to fire all of the reactor’s radiation at him. We see that the chess game they’ve been playing has pieces made to look like them, and Havok. Logan wakes up, and digs his way out of the grave. He finds the blueprints from India in the coat Alex left, and figures that Alex wants him to follow. Alex (who is now in his Havok costume) and Scarlet drive a jeep across a desert in India, approaching a mostly abandoned nuclear facility that is on fire. Alex wants to enter alone, but Scarlet wants to go with him; he tells her that he thinks he loves her. She scrounges a radiation suit off a dead body and they enter, finding that whoever caused the fire has trashed the control room. They make it to the core, and find it about to melt down. Alex is absorbing energy, but can’t get the various control rods back into their slots (is there any possibility that you can just get to these places? That even in her suit, Scarlet wouldn’t be dead by now?). Alex goes deeper into the reactor to absorb all the energy he can, and that’s where he finds Meltdown. Meltdown goads him into blasting him, and Scarlet watches, wishing this wasn’t happening. Scarlet takes off the headpiece of her suit (this has to guarantee her death, right?) to tell Alex to run away, and Meltdown blasts her, killing her. Engraged, Alex unleashes all of his power on Meltdown, who keeps absorbing more and more energy from him. Meltdown is about to drain him completely when Logan turns up and starts slashing at Meltdown. He finds that his cuts heal almost immediately, and is hurt when Meltdown blasts all the flesh from his left arm, leaving only adamantium-encased skeleton. Trying to figure out what to do, Logan picks up a control rod and throws it at Meltdown, impaling him with it (which seems unlikely, given the rod doesn’t look pointed). Logan throws more and more of these rods at him, and finds that each one weakens him a little more. Meltdown figures out that the rods are blocking him from absorbing energy from Alex, and now, when Logan slashes at Meltdown, it causes him pain. Meltdown, cut to shreds, just kind of disappears. Alex is working to absorb the chain reaction taking place in the reactor, and asks Logan to scram the rods (I’m pretty sure the word is used incorrectly, and is not a verb), but he has trouble doing that, so Alex has to fire all of the energy he’s absorbed through the roof and into space. It’s clear that the reactor is cooling down, and only now they can hear sirens in the distance, so Logan grabs Alex and carries him out. They drive off in the jeep that Alex came in. Later, in civilian clothes, they hang out in Bombay. Alex talks about how wonderful Scarlet was, and Logan decides he doesn’t need to know that she was behind all of their problems in the first place. Back in Siberia, Neutron puts away his chess pieces, and we see he has other familiar ones in a box (we see The Punisher, Captain America, Daredevil, and Spider-Man. He meets the new superintendent of the asylum he stays at, and talks about his megalomania.
Yeah, this was all pretty odd. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed this series, but I can understand how at fifteen, when I was reading this in installments, I had a hard time following the plot. I think it’s funny that I remembered General Meltdown as Apocalypse somehow, but that’s beside the point.
This story was way too convoluted. A Russian asylum patient with nuclear powers wanted to stop Gorbachev’s reform agenda (a theme that came up in my recent Suicide Squad column too), so he orchestrated the Chernobyl disaster with the help of his chess-playing fellow inmate. When that didn’t work, they decided to capture an X-Man who the world believes is dead while he was on vacation in Mexico, so that they can manipulate him into going to Poland and then going to India so he can power up said asylum patient so he can then do something with that power to further destabilize Gorbachev’s policies, ensuring a return to the Soviet way of life. To do that, he recruited an American woman who is a master manipulator (possibly with two personalities), and a small army of operatives, including a bunch of Mad Max Terminator looking dudes who drive around rural Mexico in classic cars. When I write it like this, it makes perfect sense, so I don’t know what I was confused about.
Really, this whole series is a vehicle for the cool art experiment, where the two painters collaborated, and solely handled one character and their associated scenes. The pages where Alex and Logan are together are exciting for the reason that both painters worked on the same panels. Williams took a much looser approach to his art, making Logan’s physique more malleable and slouchy. He also painted Meltdown, so that he looks like an odd little troglodyte. The more I thought about it, the more I considered him a mix of Cyber, the Inhumans’ Alpha Primitives, and a Sam Kieth character. Muth’s art is much more realistic, and his characters, including Dr. Neutron and Quark, are much slimmer. It looks like they alternated on covers.
The art is cool. This was an era where fully painted comics were still a novelty, as was the lovely square-bound prestige format. These two things helped to give the comic a more mature feel back in the day, matched with the looser restrictions on colourful language. I enjoyed looking at this book a lot more than I did reading it.
I’ll say again that the story was disappointing. In the late 80s, Walter Simonson was known for his incredible Thor run (which I should tackle here some day), while Louise Simonson was a well-respected editor who was coming off highly respected runs on New Mutants and X-Factor, as well as Power Pack. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that this story ran off the rails so hard.
I also don’t love the way Alex is portrayed as such a goofball throughout this story. He should have been more wary of Scarlet/Quark, especially since this is set just after his disastrous affair with Madelyne Pryor, his brother’s ex-wife turned Goblyn Queen. Actually, what do writers have against Alex? I feel like he’s only ever been given any respect in Peter David’s X-Factor and Howard Mackie’s Mutant X, although that is something I’d need to reread to be sure of.
Wolverine is Wolverine. He pretty much is handled correctly, although his healing factor is pretty murky here. He takes a long time to recover from the plague bullets, and from being “killed” by Alex, yet when Meltdown burns off everything between his left elbow and hand, he just wraps it in a jacket (I should talk about how the characters keep changing into outfits they couldn’t possibly have with them), and keeps using his hand, despite the total lack of muscles connecting it.
Anyway, I’ve always wanted to read this book again, and I’m glad I did. I’m always going to support oddball projects like this, and would rather read something that doesn’t live up to the extent of its creators’ ambitions for it than something that was just churned out. I appreciate Epic Comics for always trying.
Next time around, we’re going to be looking at another oddball title that didn’t get anywhere near enough time or space to develop, but brought its artist a lot of attention, and set up a new government agency in the DC Universe that’s still around today.
If you’d like to see the archives of all of my retro review columns, click here.
