Issue(s): Marvel Comics Presents #132, Marvel Comics Presents #133, Marvel Comics Presents #134, Marvel Comics Presents #135, Marvel Comics Presents #136 (Wolverine story only)
Cover Date: Jul-Sep 93
Title: Brothers in Arms: "Trouble in paradise" / "Alone against the Coven" / "Chain reaction" / "Off the cuff" / "Cat's game"
Credits:
Dan Slott - Writer
Steve Lightle - Penciler
Steve Lightle - Inker
Mark Powers / Michael Kraiger - Assistant Editor
Terry Kavanagh / Richard Ashford - Editor

Review/plot:
With five issues and 8 pages per issue, this isn't a very long story. But it's the longest story that we've seen from Dan Slott so far.

This story features the return of Cyber, who (per the blurb summarizing the first part of this story), "returns with the sinister arcane might of the Coven". That doesn't seem like a good way for Cyber to return. From what we've seen of Cyber, he doesn't seem like the arcane type.

Wolverine is vacationing on a tropical island when he sees one of the islanders running for her life. She's being chased by the Coven.

Wolverine slaughters them all.

The end!

No, wait, there's a lot more.

Wolverine and the woman, Kayla, sleep together, and she says that she's put her mark on him.

Which means that if the rest of the Coven want to bring a Dark Age to the world, they'll have to kill him now instead of her.

Meanwhile, the more super-villainish oriented members of the Coven are with Cyber, inspecting their slaughtered companions.

I said Cyber doesn't really fit in with these guys, and he agrees.

But they say they're going to kill Wolverine, so he sticks around.

Instead of waiting for the Coven to come after him, he goes to them.

Wolvie gets past the first couple, but the one called Bloodshadow is able to dodge all his attacks and hit him in "vital nerve clusters", knocking him out. When he wakes up, he's manacled to Cyber with an adamantium chain.

The Coven watch Wolverine and Cyber fight, but eventually knock them both out to preserve them for a sacrifice.

They are to be dipped into a vat of acid. Cyber tips the platform so that his adamantium hand goes into the acid, melting off his constraints without harming him. He then frees himself and Wolverine (since Wolvie is still chained to him). They escape with a gem that the Coven was using in their ritual.

Meanwhile, Kayla goes to a group of resistance fighters who are gathered at the place where the gem is supposed to be returned to. The resistance group only wants Wolverine to enter to return the gem, but since Cyber is chained to him, they are both allowed to pass. And now i can finally stop flipping back through these issues going, "Wasn't Cyber working with the Coven?". Because this all turns out to be a ruse to get Cyber through the temple door.

There were actually hints about this earlier, with the Coven whispering to each other to "make it look convincing".

Cyber even has a key to remove his half of the adamantium manacle. He attaches his half to a temple wall. Wolvie pulls it out, but is stuck dragging a rock around.

With the temple now "defiled" the Coven are able to enter as well. But they still have to kill Wolverine for their spell to work. When Wolverine fights Bloodshadow this time, he lets out his berserker rage, making himself impossible to predict.

The Coven attack Cyber, too, because of the way things got botched and the fact that Cyber got too rough with the Coven during the fake escape. One of the Coven, Vex, tries to get around the problem of Cyber's adamantium skin by stabbing him in the eye, but Wolverine already tried that trick in Cyber's first appearance, so that eye has been replaced with a cybernetic one.

Wolvie then catches up with Cyber and wraps the adamantium chain around his neck, forcing Cyber to unlock the chain. Cyber is then dropped off a cliff.

With the Coven destroyed, Kayla reveals that the stakes weren't as high as we thought they were. The gem that they were using was replaced by Kayla's people with a fake, so there was no way the Coven could have completed their ritual. But, you know, it's still good that Wolverine stopped them.

Dan Slott has a breezy scripting style that almost makes the mystical mumbo jumbo readable, and Steve Lightle's art is fine (not as abstract as on the Typhoid Mary stories). It's not a great plot, though.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP places this between Wolverine #71-72.

References:

• We learned that Cyber killed one of Wolverine's old girlfriends in Marvel Comics Presents #85-92.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A