Issue #4

• Writer - Paul Jenkins
• Artist - Claudio Castillini
• Colorist - Paul Mounts
• Lettering - Dave Sharpe
• Ass't Editor - Marc Sumerak
• Ass't Editor - Andy Schmidt
• Ass't Editor - Nicole Wiley
• Editor - Tom Brevoort
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  Logan realizes he's spent a lifetime chasing his past, but his brother John was there the whole time. He wants to hate him for it but can't. He tells John they told him he died; John knows, shows him a picture of their mother holding baby James. Logan wants to know everything, but first John shows him to another room. The Weapon X tank is there, but John says the program was disbanded a hundred years ago, the participants all retired and dead. Logan and John are the only ones left, test subjects born as freaks, in the wrong time. Logan sadly realizes his efforts were all for nothing; he remembers being experimented upon and, enraged, smashes the tank. John tells him to calm himself, it's been over for decades.

  Weapon X experimented on John, too, and Logan is lucky that his version of the healing factor made him forget the trauma.

  Their father was a camera buff, in the days when you had to stand still for two minutes for a picture. John remembers the mansion being built, and seeing it as a playground, far away from the world. After Logan was born, their mother became melancholic and wouldn't let John play with the baby; one afternoon he snuck up on the carriage to look at him, and saw their mother kissing the gardener, nearby. He later confronted her, became enraged, popped claws for the first time, and slashed her side (Wolverine: The Origin 2). The mean old grandfather had John taken away, promising to get him the best medical help but instead dumping him in an asylum, where he was chained to a wall and forgotten.

  John was the first Weapon X recruit; they named him X and tested his abilities. One day, they asked one question too many, and he killed his guards and escaped (cf. Wolverine II:49). Logan asks why John didn't contact him; he said he would have killed him and the entire family, if Logan hadn't done it first. He and Logan are the same, and John grew to respect him. They crossed paths many times, but Logan doesn't remember, because of Logan's healing factor.

  He says their whole family lied to Logan, and Xavier lied to him, too. He knew about John but wanted Logan all to himself. He offers to ally with Logan, one more time, and to give him the pieces to make himself complete. Logan doesn't remember the offer; John says it'll just cost a few lives, and a few gambling palaces are involved. He takes him through a doorway, saying it's "you and me against the world."

  Logan sits before the bodhisattva on top of the mountain, talking to the voice in his head, demanding an explanation. It's Xavier, who emerges in astral form and says Logan wouldn't have understood. Logan, angry, says although Xavier's dead, he's still putting other people second, and he tells him to leave. Xavier says they're bound together, but Logan's made up his mind, and Xavier disappears.

  John arrives, saying he heard voices, Logan says he was talking to himself. John knows he likes places like this, and that he first claimed to have converted to Buddhism to impress a girl in a bar in Saigon. He says everything he knew was a lie and offers him more than the world: himself. Logan makes his decision, and when John turns his back, he pushes him off the cliff. John falls and screams his brother's name, "James!", but he insists he's Logan.