Wolfpack #10 (May 1989)

It's that time again! It's time to join the Wolfpack in their greatest battle against the Nine! Last time, the Pack found themselves helping the Nine keep the city from falling into chaos. So, what happens next for our scrappy street fighters? Let's find out in Wolfpack #10!

The cover is a Ron Wilson and Chris Ivy piece. It's pretty cool, but it is a bit spoilery. You'll see what I mean.

"Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know"
Writer: John Figueroa
Penciler: Ron Wilson
Inker: Chris Ivy
Colorist: Christie Scheele (credited as "Max Scheele")
Letterer: Jack Morelli
Editor: Terry Kavanagh
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The story begins, naturally, in the South Bronx. We look in on a man sitting on a stoop, scraping a pocketknife on the stone stair. As the man sharpens his blade, he starts thinking about the past.

The man recalls the first time he killed someone. The victim was a 15-year-old Brooklynite during a gang rumble in Bedford Park. When he pulled the knife out of the kid, the man claims it was the first time he felt...alive. He sees the modern gangs as a joke, nothing more than glorified posses full of wannabe-"Scarfaces". One guy has something to say about this man's fashion sense.

"You got a problem with my sweet headband, punk?!"

As shown in the panel, the man compliments the knife-holder's clothes, they just make him look like a refugee from The Warriors. The knife-wielder shows how he feels about the compliment by stabbing the green cap-wearer in the stomach. 

He notices a bunch of kids nearby, realizing they saw everything. He wants them to come with him before the police show up. The boys flee, one remarking he just wanted some crack. Wanted to get his brain good and fried.

The man throws his knife, managing to hit one of the fleeing boys in the back of the leg. The man offers to help him. He just has to take his hand...

...and we transition to the Wolfpack, our heroes busy training.

"Can't catch me, I'm Sam the Slippery Man!" 

Sharon's been recovering very well over the past couple months. Slippery Sam is showing off his skills, his specialty being able to slip in and out of situations. He's feeling a bit cocky. After all, nobody can supposedly touch him. It's why they call him "Slippery" Sam, after all. However, even the best escape artists can be caught, as Wheels shows with the help of a bit of rope.

The group get a visit from Inspector Cassidy. It turns out he has some information for them. He gives them a small stone with an engraving on it.

"Cute rock, Cassidy. What's the point?"

Yeah, the art doesn't show it very well. What the little rock is supposed to have on it is a symbol. In particular, the logo of an old gang called the Wizards. Five years earlier, the police took them down, including their leader, a man named Christian. He's the man we saw earlier. Cassidy worked on the case that brought them down. Christian murdered his partner at the time and also raped the partner's wife. Christian got off on the charge thanks to a technicality, but he did do time for the rape. Five years, to be exact. Now he's out, and Cassidy wants the Pack to watch him. Christian is not a man who will stay out of trouble (as clearly shown earlier), and Cassidy (for perfectly understandable reasons) has a personal issue with him. As for Christian, what is he up to now?

Christian is not a fan of child labor laws.

Yup, he's rebuilding his old gang. The Wolfpack are outside his building. They watch Christian leave with his new Wizards. One of them decides that "this is dumb, I'm leaving".

Christian is understanding of his objection, but he wants to make sure the kid can't talk...so he cuts the kid's tongue off. Christian then loads the injured kid into a van and drives off.

A horrified Sam pursues the van. He leaps on top of the van. Christian hears him land and asks one of his new Wizards to hand him the gun he kept in the glove compartment. Sam tries to get the injured kid out of the van, but Christian ends that attempt with a shot to the chest. 

Unfortunately for Sam, he did not have his bulletproof vest.

He then has his new Wizards shove the injured Sam and the tongueless kid out of the van. The rest of the Pack manages to catch up to the two injured boys. Sam's last words are pleading with Rafael to get him out of the street as he has no desire to die in the street. 

Nearby, Christian is celebrating at a bar with his new gang. Sure, most of them are kids, but he doesn't care. The cops arrive to pick him up, but Christian is not worried. As far as he's concerned, they got nothing on him. He's also too busy feeling alive. The old days are back, baby!

That night, the Pack are still dealing with Sam's death. They all knew the risks of their activities. After all, they were fighting dangerous people. Rafael vows to kill Christian for what he's done. An eye for an eye and all that. Wheels objects to this. After all, do they have the right to take a life like that? There's also something else that Wheels does not bring up. Killing Christian won't undo Sam's death. 

Inspector Cassidy then arrives, saying he'll have to live with Sam's death. He then tells the Pack to let the courts handle Christian. He had to tell Sam's parents he's dead, he doesn't want to tell the rest of their families they're all in jail on a murder rap. Sharon warns him that if Christian isn't jailed, the Wolfpack will deal with him. 

The next day, Christian is on trial. He ends up being let off due to a lack of evidence against him. SO much for the courts, I guess. The surviving members of the Pack witness his release and agree that he's a dead man. 

Christian is in need of some money.

As such, he decides to go hold up a gas station. He and his gang do so, but the station's attendant is not in the mood to play bank to the gang.

"AW, GAWD! GAS TASTES TERRIBLE!" 

He sprays Christian and the Wizards with gasoline. The cops arrive. One of the Wizards, freaked out, fires Christian's gun, the sparks causing the gas station to explode.

Christian somehow survives it, but I can imagine his ears would be ringing from it. All the other Wizards are toasted. He returns to his clubhouse, only to find the Wolfpack waiting for him. He knows what the Pack wants, and he's ready for them. 

He whips out his gun, but Rafael's feet are faster than his trigger finger. With one kick, the martial artist sends Christian flying out the window. Christian's "clubhouse" was on the top floor of a three-story building. So yeah, the landing is going to hurt.

It turns out Christian managed to survive that, too. 

"...how am I not dead?!" 

Yeah. He's alive. Almost every bone in his body is broken, but he's alive. Christian knows that the Pack will be coming down to finish him off. He always chose how he lived, so he will choose how he dies. I can imagine he also wants to deny the Wolfpack the chance to say they took him out. He lights a match and sets himself aflame. He was covered in gasoline thanks to the attendant blasting him with it earlier. As he burns and dies, he repeats his narration from the beginning about the first person he ever killed, and how it made him feel alive. I think the idea here is that he's feeling euphoria. I don't know.

Later on, Inspector Cassidy is at the scene. One cop remarks that the neighborhood is becoming a war zone. He's clearly new in town because it's been pretty much one already. The cop remarks that things are getting worse, but Cassidy has a feeling things are going to get better and better.

Three of the Wolfpack meet up on Rafael's rooftop. Sharon is at home, still dealing with Sam's death. Slag can live with Christian's death, as he brought it on himself. And also, Rafael didn't kill him, he immolated himself. Rafael is torn up about it (presumably, as the art doesn't do a great job differentiating the characters at a distance), and wonders where the line is. Cassidy comes by to visit them. He advises that the Pack must draw it for themselves. After all, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. 

The next day, the Pack prepare for Sam's funeral. The whole neighborhood is there to say goodbye to him. The Pack say goodbye to their comrade, the narration providing a quote from Richard III.

If there is a weak issue of the maxiseries, then in my opinion, it's this one. And it's mainly because of Sam's death. My issue with Sam's death here is a similar problem I had with Margo Damian getting killed off in the Eternals maxi-series I looked at in the past. Much like with Margo, I feel that I never really got to form an emotional bond towards Sam. I did feel sad for the other members of the Pack when they mourned him, but that's because they got to spend time with him and bond with him. 

Also, another annoying thing about Sam's death is remember when his dad's hardware store got wrecked in the graphic novel? We never learn if it ever got fixed up. Also, we never see Sam's dad at the funeral. Cassidy does mention Sam's parents, as in plural, so he likely has a mother. She's not seen here. 

I do get why the creators went with this direction. I really do. Being in the Wolfpack is dangerous. These kids are risking their lives. I understand the intention, but I felt the execution was lousy here. Mainly because we never really get to know Sam over the course of the series. 

Also, I would like to talk about Christian. The comic clearly wants to portray him as especially sociopathic and vicious, but I'm really not buying it. What I mean by that is that he doesn't seem to be, in my opinion anyway, any more ruthless or monstrous than any of the other criminal figures the Wolfpack has encountered in previous issues of the maxiseries or the graphic novel. We're supposed to get this idea that he's from an older time, a time when the gangs were presumably worse than they are now. But again, having read previous issues and the graphic novel, I do think it makes him come off as delusional. 

All in all, I say this was the one issue I did not really enjoy reading that much. If you really want to read this for yourself, I recommend tracking down the 2018 trade paperback Wolfpack: The Complete Collection. Thanks for reading this blog entry! See you next time!