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Welcome back to my weekly foray into the lives of some of my favorite comic characters in Marvel Snapshot. This week I’ll be taking a look at Wolverine’s mo-hawk wearing, switch-hitting son, Daken! Yes this fellow is quite a beast on the battlefield, and apparently in the bedroom as well. Let’s take a peek into his history, and then catch up on his latest escapades.
Daken is the son of Wolverine and a woman named Itsu. The two met and fell in love in the mid-1940s. Soon after, Itsu was knocked up by Logan, and a few months later was about ready to give birth to Daken when she was shot by the Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes). At this point, a cloaked figure removed the baby from Itsu’s corpse and took him away. Later it is revealed that this figure is the man known as Romulus. He wanted to get Wolverine to come out of hiding and go back to Madripoor. Logan found Itsu shot dead, and for years didn’t know who shot her or why. All of this was revealed in the Wolverine Origins series starting in issue number ten. Daken was then taken to a couple’s home where he was raised as their own until adulthood.
We next saw Daken plotting revenge against Logan,  the man who he believed was responsible for his mother’s death. He orchestrates a scheme to gain access to a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility where Logan is being held. He almost kills Dum Dum Dugan and then guts his own father. Later, during the Original Sin story line, Daken learns the truth with some mental help from Charles Xavier. Daken then knows the truth about his mother’s death and vows to make Romulus pay. He forges an alliance with his father, but it is short lived when he betrays him to the long time Wolverine nemesis Cyber. Ultimately though, Daken double-crosses Cyber and helps Logan find more clues to Romulus’s whereabouts. The two keep trying to find Romulus, but Daken always has an ulterior motive. One of those motives is to find and steal the Muramasa Blade. He eventually gets his hands on a piece of it and has the Tinkerer graft it to his claws.
After all this past history story was somewhat taken care of, we see Daken recruited by Norman Osborn into his Dark Avengers, and then subsequently into the Dark X-Men, albeit briefly. Daken spends most of his time on the Dark Avengers team trying to convince Norman that his loyalty is genuine. He also seems to get a kick out of manipulating people. Part of his powers are that he can emit some kind of pheromone that basically makes people get aroused towards him (male or female). He uses this ability frequently, and usually to further his knowledge or gain information that he doesn’t have access to. He has also been trying to mentally torture Bullseye (Dark Hawkeye) all the while as well. He keeps flirting with him or making comments about Bullseye’s mental instability to try and push him over the edge.
In Siege, we have seen the ferocity of Daken once more come to the surface. For quite a while he was content to just play mind games with pretty much everybody. Daken has proven on the battlefield to be more than a match for some of Asgard’s more elite warriors. Just a few weeks back, we saw Daken and Bullseye’s feud come to a head. Daken winds up kissing Bullseye right on the mouth in front of a platoon of H.A.M.M.E.R. agents in Asgard. In his book, Dark Wolverine, when he arrived in Asgard he was approached by Asgardian divinities who are coercing him to bring about Ragnarok. At the last panel of that arc, he agrees that he should do it because he feels like he was born to kill and manipulate people. Daken is now shifting his activities back to his father’s quest to kill Romulus, but he doesn’t know that Logan hasn’t been totally truthful with him because he knows he’ll betray him again. This story is going to be the last arc of the book due to the fact that it is coming to a close (only to be re-booted soon after). It seems that Romulus wants Daken to take over his empire, and Wolverine will do anything to stop that from happening. Logan has enlisted the help of Skaar, Banner, and Shroud to aid him in this war. Last issue showed the appearance of the rarely used Deadpool to tease the next issue’s action.
Well that is as current as it gets for Daken. He is right smack in the middle of Siege and Wolverine’s secret plans for Romulus. I think Daken is a decent character, but I also think the writing is sometimes a little lazy when it comes to separating Daken from his father. He’s kind of just like Wolverine Jr., but with an “I can make you horny” power and a third claw that extends from his wrist. Hopefully we can get some even better stories from this mysterious yet interesting character. See you next week!


Suggested Reading
Wolverine Origins #10 – current
Original Sin (one-shot)
Dark Avengers #1– current
Amazing Spider-Man #595-599
Billy Dunleavy
billy@comicattack.net