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Art by David Wynne. Prints and cards available at the shop, or contact David to purchase the original.
Welcome to your new favorite miniseries. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #1)
The first 14 pages are a primer on reactor physics and the Chernobyl disaster. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #1)
Also some vaguely sinister chess-playing. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #1)
No, seriously: that’s just straight-up James Dean. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #1)
If you’re not sold on the book by now, please reconsider your priorities. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #1)
Move over, Neal Adams. This is our definitive representation of Havok’s powers. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #1)
Kent Williams is terrifying and wonderful. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #1)
Why, yes, we are going to include every cover. Why? (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #2)
Look at how much information this panel conveys. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #2)
General Meltdown! (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #2)
Wait for it… (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #2)
…and done. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #2)
Havok latches onto genre conventions like a baby duck impressing on the first thing it sees. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #2)
It was really, really hard not to just include the whole damn miniseries in this visual companion. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #2)
(Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #3)
Well, then. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #3)
I cannot get over the way Muth paints Scarlett’s hair. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #3)
One of my favorite sequences from the entire series. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #3)
Dr. Meltdown and his trusty overlays. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #3)
Best image of Havok, or best image of Havok? Hint: Best image of Havok. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #3)
The palpable violence of the action sequences is really, really spectacular. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #3)
And onward. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
In which Havok transforms from James Dean to a young Peter Capaldi. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
THIS PAGE (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
So, so doomed. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
No narrative reason for including this. I just really, really love the art. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
The problem with falling too deeply into a character is that you also end up with their genre-specific weaknesses. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
Ouch. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
Well, that’s one way to do it. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
The way Havok’s powers change when they go out of control is really, really amazing. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
No, seriously. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
HOW COULD NO ONE HAVE REACHED BACK TO THIS SERIES? IT’S A GOLDMINE. (Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown #4)
NEXT EPISODE: The X-Men Anime.
In regards to publishing history, I remember having to decide between this and Wolverine Saga at my local grocery store. I did not have any knowledge of who Havok was at the time because I had just started reading the book with issue 251 and Havok wouldn’t make an appearance for a long time. I think it’s safe to say that it was post Inferno but probably not by many months.
Neutron plays Disney Infinity? Is that why they had to cancel it?
In regards to the differing art styles, when reading these back in the day, I just assumed we were seeing each main character thru the other’s eyes. Alex looked like a James Dean-esque pretty boy because that’s how Logan sees him, and likewise why Logan looks like a cartoony animal monster thing.
OH. That makes a ton of sense. Good call.
Thanks. Means a lot, coming from an X-Pert.
Maybe you could answer another question to:
He was born to an assassin & a demon. He was raised by a gypsy sorceress in a freakin’ circus. So where did Kurt Wagner pick up his devout belief in Catholicism?
*too*
Of course.
Y’know, that’s an interesting question and one I’ve never really thought about.
Given the fact his appearance is fairly standard “demonic” looking, he probably ran into trouble over the years from priests/preachers in towns (which given this is Marvel-Europe would have involved varying degrees of “pitchfork wielding peasant mob”) the circus passed through, and in an effort to understand what they were screaming about, set out to learn what _they_ had learned that had caused them to think like that.
I’d speculate that he read the Bible because that’s what they kept shouting about (Hopefully skipping over most of the stonings and all out wars and the like, and focussing more on the “Love one another/Don’t be a judgemental asshole” side of things) and he found the essential Christian ethos of the aforementioned “Love one another/Don’t be a judgemental asshole” to be one that he could accept and believe in.
Also possible he met a sympathetic, decent, Catholic priest (such people exist, thankfully) who didn’t instantly try to have him exorcised, but talked to him through his questions (which might also explain why he foundCatholicism rather than Protestantism, or any of the other variations on the theme). Possibly he found the repetitive rituals of the Mass to be reassuringly constant given his rather nomadic life.
Guesswork on my part, but it’s a concept that might make an interesting story, provided they promise to never refer to Chuck Austen’s “Holy War”.
I’ll note that in in UXM 246, there is an explicit and hilarious reference to Meltdown, where Wolverine tries the hair gel he “used” in Meltdown, and gets laughed off by Ororo, who also mentions that he picked up the Bubonic Plague aside from the hair gel.
Also, Gabriele Dell’Otto’s interpretation of Wolverine in the Secret War series in 2004 has to be a direct homage of Meltdown, down to the hair and the red cheeks/nose.
heyy i commented on this when it came out. whered my comment go? 🙁
anyways this made me think of THIS EP.
http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/how-a-nuclear-meltdown-works/
Oh wow….i forgot that I owned an insane run of MCP until I listened to this episode…i forgot this storyline. I really remember meltdown.