Wolverine’s Greatest Battle Was Just Recreated with a Hilarious Twist

 Warning: contains spoilers to Hellions #10!

When it comes to awesome comic battles, Wolverine‘s snowbound, no-holds-barred brawl with Sabretooth from 1988’s Wolverine #10 is one of the greats, though significantly less so in Hellions #10, where it just got a hilarious twist. Sabretooth has long made it his mission to track down Wolverine on (what he believes to be) his birthday and hand out a devastating beating. In the recent issue, the tradition continues, but it is interrupted by a new challenger, the feral mutant known as Wild Child, whose presence supposedly intimidates and strikes fear into these famous X-Men characters.

Created by John Byrne in Alpha Flight #1 (1983), Kyle Gibney’s mutant gene activated when he was a child, leaving him an amalgamation of man and animal. Quickly found by the Secret Empire, Kyle was experimented on to turn him into a perfect killing machine. The experiments only made him more lethal and uncontrollable, and his later employ in Department H’s Gamma Flight under the codename Wild Child saw him mentored by Wolverine, who he later followed into the X-Men. As Kyle bounced back and forth between government and mutant super teams, his bestial condition deteriorated, thanks both to his continuing mutation and outside manipulation from Weapon X, Sabretooth, Romulus, and others. Wild Child recently became a citizen of Krakoa, where his feral, anti-social behavior saw him placed on the Hellions, the X-Men’s version of DC’s Suicide Squad, whose rehabilitation consists of them undertaking dangerous missions perfect for their abilities.

In Hellions #10 by Zeb Wells with art by Stephen Segovia, the Hellions have been tricked and manipulated by Jason Wyngarde, aka Mastermind, who is working with the genius villain known as Arcade. Arcade traps the Hellions in his latest version of Murderworld, using Mastermind’s ability to create life-like illusions to tempt the mutants with their specific version of paradise and then torture them with their nightmares. In Wild Child’s case, he interrupts Wolverine and Sabretooth’s annual battle, with the two tough-guy mutants terrified by the arrival of “the big dog” and instantly turning tail.

Wild Child’s time with the Hellions has shown that he requires clear status roles to function, so it makes sense that his paradise would be dominance over other, similarly animalistic mutants. His introduction to Krakoa saw friction with the X-Men due to an inability to identify the Alpha, a struggle that only ended when Psylocke delivered a beatdown that settled the matter. But this scene – while being an amusing version of the famous clash that ends with the hulking warriors running from the spindly, dog-like Hellion – adds the fresh wrinkle that Wild Child doesn’t just want to know where he stands: he wants to be on top.

Sadly, the scene quickly turns hellish, with Wild Child savaged by Wolverine and Sabretooth, ruining the illusion that he could seriously rise to their level of dominance. Although his mutant healing factor will likely survive the attack, his pride is another story, and for a mutant who literally processes the world through his implied status among other predators, that could make Wild Child even more dangerous than he’s shown himself so far.

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