Warning! Spoilers ahead for Inferno #1
In Marvel Comics’ new Inferno event, the X-Men’s Wolverine can’t escape reliving one of his most iconic deaths over and over again. The anti-mutant organization Orchis has grown too powerful with the return of the Sentinel Nimrod, though there’s been very little the mutants of Krakoa have been able to do to stop them. While the island nation has been continually sending teams to try and destroy Orchis, none have been successful despite resurrecting and sending the same mutants with each attempt. This includes Wolverine, who’s been stuck in a brutal loop experiencing one of his most brutal deaths multiple times over.
In this first issue of Inferno from Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti, it’s revealed that Krakoa has already tried sixteen times to destroy Orchis and Nimrod using a variety of means. While a few attempts have involved hiring assassins and sending the alien Brood to do the job, the majority have been the deployment of the same mutants over and over again. However, no matter what they’ve tried everything has failed. Nimrod has proven to be too powerful, able to counter all kinds of abilities and destroying the mutant teams with extreme prejudice. While Wolverine has been a part of the X-Force teams sent with every resurrection, the end result has never been pretty.
Inferno #1 depicts Krakoa’s sixteenth attempt, seeing Nimrod defeating Domino, Omega Kid, and Wolverine as he’s apparently done several times before. However, Nimrod sears all of the flesh from Wolverine’s adamantium-covered bones, a nod to Logan’s most famous death by Sentinel as seen in Days of Future Past. Furthermore, as Orchis reviews the footage of this latest incursion, it’s revealed that they’ve been collecting Wolverine’s skeletons of which they now have several thanks to Logan’s vicious cycle of resurrection after continually experiencing one of the worst ways he’s ever gone out in Marvel Comics’ past.
While Krakoa has a store of adamantium they’ve been using to regraft the metal to Wolverine’s skeleton whenever he needs to be resurrected, they must be running low of the nearly indestructible and rare metal. Logan’s past skeletons continue to fall into Orchis’ hands, and there’s no telling what they might do with them going forward. It’s certainly possible that it could all come back to haunt the former Weapon X with the upcoming X Lives/Deaths of Wolverine event. Perhaps Orchis finds a way to weaponize the adamantium skeletons down the line, forcing Wolverine to fight elements of his own past selves.
In any case, it’s going to be interesting to see where Krakoa goes from here. Seeing as how the resurrected mutants have no memory of the incursions, it looks as though they’re going to keep trying until they succeed (despite their inability to learn and adapt from their mistakes). All Krakoa knows is that Nimrod is back online and Orchis must be destroyed. As such, Wolverine seems determined to stop them at all costs, even if it means continually reliving one of his worst deaths ever.