From Cassius Comics

Wolverine
Real Name	James Howlett, alias Logan, Jim Logan, Patch, Emilio Garra, Peter Richards, Mai'Keth
Base	Born somewhere in Alberta, Canada. Currently based out of New York City and Westchester, New York. Frequent resident of Canada, Madripoor and Japan.
Stats	5'3", 195lbs. (300 lbs. with adamantium skeleton) / Blue eyes, medium length black hair and sideburns. Pronounced, animal-like canine teeth
Affiliations	Member of the X-Men, the X-Treme Sanctions Executive and the Avengers. Former member of the Secret Defenders, The Horsemen of Apocalypse, Alpha Flight. Former agent of The Weapon X Program, Team X, Department K, Department H, the C.I.A. and S.H.I.E.L.D., former soldier in The Devil's Brigade, former unwilling pawn of Hydra.
First Appearance	Incredible Hulk #180 (cameo, October 1974), 181 (full, November 1974)
Created By	{{{creators}}}

Also known as Weapon Ten, Mutate #5601, Weapon Chi, Weapon X, Experiment X, Agent Ten, Canada and Wildboy. See also Death VII (James Howlett)

Contents 1 Origin 2 Powers 3 Trivia 4 Affiliation

Origin

The younger of two sons born to the wealthy John and Elizabeth Howlett, James Howlett was born some time in the late 19th century. A sickly child, James was ignored by his mother, who spent time in an institution over the death of her elder son, John Junior. As a child, James befriended a girl named Rose (brought from Ireland to be his companion) as well as Dog Logan, the uncouth son of the Howletts' groundskeeper Thomas. As he grew older, Dog became obsessed with Rose, and after Dog tried to assault her, Thomas Logan was fired and both Logans were evicted from the premises. Returning that night to try to convince Elizabeth to leave with them, it was revealed that she had carried on an affair with Thomas. When unexpectedly interrupted by the other Howletts, Thomas shot and killed John. This trauma prompted James' mutant powers to manifest, causing his hands to sprout bone claws, which he used to kill Thomas and scar Dog's face. Driven mad by the sight, Elizabeth forced her son from the house and promptly committed suicide.

To quash possible scandal, James' grandfather ordered that he and Rose leave Alberta. James' traumatized mind was affected by his emerging healing factor, leaving him a partial amnesiac. Eventually, James and Rose turned up at British Columbian quarry, where Rose identified James as her cousin Logan, the name James would use for rest of his life. His healing power and new environment soon turned Logan into a strong, rough and healthy young man, who secretly embraced his bestial nature by running with a wolf pack, hunting and killing prey with them. After years in the quarry, Rose accepted a proposal from the foreman Smitty, alienating Logan. Logan took out his aggression as a cage fighter, earning the nickname "the Wolverine". Logan eventually fought Smitty himself but allowed him to win, mending the rift between them.

Not long after, Dog arrived at the quarry, having been sent by Logan' grandfather to retrieve him, but with the intention of killing him instead. During battle, Logan accidentally impaled Rose, killing her. Stricken with grief, Logan ran into the woods, his healing factor again protecting his mind by erasing most of his memories, including any knowledge of his bone claws.

Logan wandered the Canadian wilderness, returning to society to take up residence in the Rocky Mountains. There, he met the man who would become his greatest enemy: Victor Creed, known to locals only as "Sabretooth." Sensing his similarity to Logan, Creed immediately took a disliking to him. Logan himself was happy, having found love with a Blackfoot native named Silver Fox, with whom he lived in contentment. Tragically, on the day that Logan thought was his birthday, Creed attacked Silver Fox, raping her and leaving her for dead. Pushed past the brink of sanity, Logan attack Creed in a berserker rage, but Creed defeated him due to his far greater experience. Unable to bear the loss of his love, Logan left the community to wander again.

Logan eventually returned to civilization again to take work from the Hudson's Bay Company. On assignment in the homeland of the Blackfoot tribe, Logan confronted and slew the demonic being Uncegila. By sheer coincidence, the impressed Blackfoots gave Logan the same name he had used years before, "Wolverine." Once again, Logan's mind erased his memory of the incident, as demonic manifestations proved to be too much for him to handle.

Wandering again, Logan came to more populated parts of Canada, enlisting with the Army to fight in the first World War. Though Logan himself remained oblivious to the fact that he possessed any superhuman powers, his military superiors saw something special about him, assigning him to a unit known as the Devil's Brigade, led by the superhumanly strong Silas Burr. During this time, Logan embraced Christianity and once again found love with a woman named Janet, but Burr soon inexplicably slew her, and when attacked by Logan, Burr mercilessly beat him and gouged out one of his eyes. This trauma was also suppressed by Wolverine's ever-present healing factor, and when his eye regrew weeks later, Logan convinced himself that it had just been damaged, and healed naturally. His religious beliefs did not survive the event, and Logan has been a decided atheist since.

At the war's end, Logan began to increasingly use the identity "Patch," which he first adopted after his fight with Burr. Leaving the Army, Logan traveled to China where he met Chang, an agent of the mysterious organization Landau, Luckman and Lake. Logan and Chang had a number of adventures together, undocumented and unexplained, though they may have involved time travel. In Shanghai, Logan first met the master martial artist Ogun, then serving in the Japanese Imperial Army. Logan stood up to Ogun to protect an old man, and impressed by Logan's show of spirit, Ogun offered to train him. Logan declined, though it would not be the last time they crossed paths. Logan's further travels through China are unrevealed, though it may have been during this time that he first met Gomurr the Ancient, Adam Destine and Black Crane.

After a few years, Logan traveled to the isle of Madripoor where he met Seraph, the self-proclaimed guardian against the Hand. Seraph helped Logan to rein in his bestial nature and taught him much of morality and responsibility. As Patch, Logan developed a reputation in Madripoor that would linger for decades. Seeking ways to better himself, Logan journeyed to Japan and accepted Ogun's offer of instruction, coming to see him as a father figure and Japan itself as a second home. Though Logan trained with Ogun for years, he left before finishing his training in order to further explore Asia and Europe. By the mid 1930s, Logan had taken to traveling with fellow mutant adventurers Raven Darkholme and Irene Adler, idealistic lovers who would later co-found the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as Mystique and Destiny. For his part, Logan also fought in the Spanish Civil War, and later went to Russia, where he befriended the Romanova family. He formed a particular bond with the youngest of the family, a girl named Natasha, who referred to him as "Little Uncle".

At the beginning of World War II, Logan returned to Madripoor to help Seraph defend the island from the Hand, also teaming with her and Captain America in 1941 to combat Baron Von Strucker. The three also teamed to rescue Natasha Romanova from the Hand, who had sought to train her as an assassin. Logan returned to Canada and re-enlisted, after which he was sent to Greece to train resistance forces, fighting at least once alongside Nick Fury. Logan rose to the rank of Corporal in the First Canadian Parachute Battalion, and on June 6th, 1944, Logan and a number of other Canadian soldiers dropped behind enemy lines as a part of the battle of Normandy; during that military venture, Logan first met the pseudo-vampire Bloodscream, who he would come up against again years later. Most of Logan's other wartime activities are unknown, though he spent a winter below Monte Cassino in Italy and may have witnessed the British invasion of Dresden, and may have even encountered Hitler himself.

After the war, Logan returned to Japan where he battled the alien despot Kimora, and Seraph's influence inspired Logan to spare the defeated creature's life. Logan may have also returned to either Russia or China, where he became disgusted by the rise of totalitarian communism. It may have also been during this time that Logan became enslaved by unknown parties, something he kept a secret from even his closest friends for decades to come. In any case, Logan eventually returned to Canada and began to do freelance intelligence work, allowing LL&L to handle his affairs in exchange for occasional work. Splitting his time between Canada, Madripoor and South America, Logan was soon known as one of the deadliest field agents on the planet. Logan also allowed himself to seek romance again, becoming involved with a Calgary hotel owner who called herself Cracklin' Rosa.

While protecting a scientist for LL&L, Logan was attacked again by Kimora. Logan was defeated, though his life was saved by the arrival of his old friend Chang. Seeking inner peace, Logan left his mercenary work and returned to Japan, where he spent at least five years training with a sensei in Jasmine Falls. Logan achieved tranquility, but it was soon taken away when Chang tracked him down and convinced him to help stop Kimora's bid for world domination. Though Logan was hesitant to unleash the beast within him after spending so long learning to control it, it was only by letting go that he was able to stop Kimora's plans. Afterwards, Chang offered Logan a full-time position with LL&L but Logan declined, returning to his freelance work. It was roughly around this time that Logan removed the dangerously violent Frank Simpson from his home in a dirty operation that saw Wolverine kill the boy's babysitter and convince Simpson's father to commit suicide. Logan was soon badly wounded, and though he still refused to acknowledge his mutant nature even in the face of his overwhelming healing ability, the situation convinced him to rethink the values of working with a team.

Returning to Japan to train further with Ogun, Logan was sent by Ogun to train under the master Bando Saburo, who was known for teaching warriors to reclaim their inner peace. In Saburo's village, Logan met a woman named Itsu, and they soon fell in love and married. After training with Saburo for four years, Logan learned that Itsu was pregnant. To celebrate, Saburo organized a ceremony in which five ninja would attack Logan, who would respond by non-aggressively dodging their strikes without attacking back, thus proving his mastery of his rage. Logan performed perfectly until an explosion went off in the mountains above the village. Logan instinctively popped one of his claws, puncturing the arm of one of the five ninja.

Saburo declared that Logan had failed, and asked him to leave the village until he could pass the test. Before he could leave, Saburo informed Logan that the explosion was caused by Muramasa, a demon swordsmith dedicated to creating soulless weapons out of honorable men. Logan returned to his home to say his farewells to Itsu, only to find her dead. Thinking that she had been killed by Saburo's people, Logan swore allegiance to Muramasa. Amused, Muramasa vowed to create a sword so powerful that it could defeat even Logan himself.

In the early 1960s, Logan became an agent for the Weapon X Program and was assigned to the black ops Team X. The Weapon X program's supervisors immediately recognized Logan's superhuman abilities and managed to artificially duplicate his healing factor and retarded aging for use in their other operatives. Meeting Team X for the first time, Logan was shocked to see that his teammates included both his old enemy Victor Creed and Creed's victim Silver Fox, who had survived the attack decades ago. While Logan's healing factor had already suppressed most of his memory of the attack, all three had their minds reconditioned by their telepathic ally Psi-Borg, allowing them to work together with a minimum of conflict. Now primarily using the name Wolverine, Logan led Team X, which soon expanded to include members Maverick, Wraith, Mastodon, Vole and Wildcat.

Team X performed a number of operations in Cuba and Southeast Asia; but while on a mission in Cuba, Silver Fox betrayed Creed and Logan to Cuban forces, likely due to a failure in the memory implant that kept her from remembering Creed's attack long ago. Silver Fox then went underground, resurfacing years later as an agent of Hydra. In 1968, Logan and Creed were sent to the Soviet Union on a mission to sabotage the Soviet space program by assassinating their super soldier Epsilon Red. The mission was cancelled at the last minute, though Creed chose to satisfy his bloodlust by slaying Epsilon Red's innocent wife. A while later, Team X was sent to Berlin to sabotage an East German super-soldier program and extract a double agent. During Team X's escape, Creed slew the agent to keep her from slowing them down, an action that infuriated Logan. Logan received a number of injuries during the mission, and the speed at which they healed afterwards finally forced him to face the revelation that he was more than human. The disturbing realization and his anger with Creed prompted Logan to leave Team X, which soon disbanded without him. The memory implants that Psi-Borg had placed in his mind reacted negatively with Wolverine's own healing factor, causing his memories of Team X to become increasingly fragmented over time.

Logan did at least one tour of duty in the Vietnam War, where he was reunited with Frank Simpson, now an adult enlisted in the U.S. Army. Captured by North Vietnamese forces, Simpson was brutally tortured in sessions overseen by Logan, who posed as a North Vietnamese soldier himself. Though Simpson seemed to possess no memory of their meeting when he was a child, Logan made a major impression on him now by carving an American flag into the man's face. Simpson escaped and massacred a village, which appeared to be exactly what Logan had been assigned to orchestrate in the first place. After escaping, Simpson covered his scars with a full-color tattoo of the flag and became Nuke, an amphetamine-popping secret weapon of the American military.

In the early 1970s, Logan began working for the Canadian black ops group Department K, unaware that the group had secret ties to the Weapon X program. He was partnered with fellow mutant Neil Langram and was reunited with Cracklin' Rosa. Logan frequently worked alongside Nick Fury (then a high-ranking agent in the C.I.A.) and his life was saved at least once by high-ranking agents Richard and Mary Parker, the now-deceased parents of Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man. During this tour of duty, Logan's healing factor was pushed to the limit when he was trapped underneath a glacier and forced to feed on strips of his own flesh until he was rescued six months later.

Several years later, Langram was approached by the Hellfire Club in a bid by the group to expand its powerbase. Langram refused and moved to expose the group, but was slain by Creed, now a mercenary under the Hellfire Club's employ. Langram's death was investigated by Logan and an American spy named Carol Danvers (later Miss Marvel), and the two soon became lovers. Following the trail to a Canadian branch of the club, they were attacked by Sabretooth, who revealed the Hellfire Club's long-term plans of forming a mutant army to fight in the inevitable war between mutants and humans. Sabretooth escaped by detonating a bomb, though both Logan and Danvers survived. Danvers took their findings to the American Senator Robert Kelly, and though any immediate effects of her report are unrevealed, they may have influenced Kelly's anti-mutant fervor years later. Logan's report to his superiors was dismissed as baseless paranoia, and Department K's top brass began to lose trust in him. Logan himself began to obsess over his mutant nature, diving into a life of drug and alcohol abuse in what he rationalized as an attempt to test his limits. After inadvertently shooting another agent on a firing range, Logan was dismissed from Department K. With nothing left holding him to his current life, Logan planned a trip to the Yukon, hoping to leave civilization to wander again as he had decades before.

Before Logan could finalize his plans, he was abducted by agents of the Weapon X program, which planned to use him as a human guinea pig in an experiment to create the ultimate killing machine. Adamantium was bonded to Logan's skeleton including his claws, which he unconsciously extended for the first time in over seventy years, shocking everyone present. Though brainwashing and powerful memory implants, Logan's conscious mind was completely suppressed, and operating on pure instinct, Logan was forced to slaughter the complete population of the small town of Roanoke. Logan eventually broke free of his mental conditioning, slaying most of the Weapon X personnel present before escaping into the Canadian wilderness. Logan roamed the woods in a bestial state for months, forming a psychic bond with the feral being the Hunter in Darkness. His rage was quelled somewhat by a Lakota chief, and he was given refuge by a Weapon X victim known only as the Native.

Logan eventually encountered a young couple on their honeymoon, Heather and James Hudson. Operating on instinct, Logan attacked, but was taken down by a shot from James Hudson's rifle. After recovering, Logan regained enough of his humanity to be horrified by his newly discovered claws, incorrectly believing them to have been artificially implanted in his body. His muddled mind left him with no memories at all of the Weapon X experiments, though with support from the Hudsons, he clawed his way back to sanity and rediscovered his lost humanity. As thanks, Logan joined Department H, a superhuman-based government agency formed by James Hudson.

Soon after recovering, Logan sought a consultation with Dr. Myron MacLain, the inventor of adamantium. Logan soon found himself the target of Sabretooth and Hydra (under the orders of Silver Fox), though he was helped by a number of former allies, including Nick Fury, Carol Danvers and Natasha Romanova, now going by the name Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. Though Logan and his allies triumphed, he had no memory of any prior contact with any of them. In addition, Sabretooth decided for unknown reasons to make a point of stalking Logan every year on his birthday.

With treatment, Logan regained many of his memories of his past and underwent psychotherapy to suppress his animalistic fury. He returned to field duty, and whether through design or ironic coincidence, he was given the codename "Weapon X". Performing assignments seen as just short of suicidal, Logan soon rose to the rank of Captain in the Canadian Air Force. In one of his first missions, Logan teamed with Danvers and pilot Major Ben Grimm in a mission to Russia. He then spent four months in Hong Kong, infiltrating the Triads and going up against the deadly assassin the White Ghost.

Nearly three years after Logan was found by the Hudsons, the first superhero team of the modern age made their presence known in the form of the Fantastic Four (whose number included Major Grimm in his new form as the Thing). Inspired by the Fantastic Four, James Hudson retooled Department H into a super-team, which he planned to call the Flight. Hudson made it clear that he wanted Logan to lead the group, but the unsure Logan sought advice from his old mentor Seraph. Returning to Madripoor, Logan met Seraph's new protégé, the Viper, and aided both women in further battles with the Hand. Logan was abducted by Sabretooth and rescued by the Viper and Seraph, though Sabretooth struck the latter with a fatal blow before leaving. Lying near death, Seraph asked Wolverine to look over the Viper in her stead. Inspired by Seraph's sacrifice, Logan returned to Canada and agreed to join the Flight and eventually lead them, while still dividing his time abroad.

While waiting for Hudson to assemble more candidates for the Flight, Logan was assigned to apprehend the 40th Century Canaanite warrior D'Von Kray, who was stalking the time-traveling Cable; teaming with Cable, Logan apprehended Kray, who was taken into government custody. Logan also successfully completed an assignment to retrieve a prototype armor created by Hudson and stolen by Hydra.

Pressured by the government to produce more superhumans, Hudson ignored warnings from Logan and exposed a convicted murderer (code-named Bedlam) to a process designed to activate any latent superhuman abilities within him. Logan also spent time in Japan continuing his studies with Ogun and overseeing the Japanese government's anti-Kaiju program. Upon returning to Canada, Wolverine recruited detective Sean Bernard into the Flight; wearing Hudson's recovered armor prototype, Bernard took the name Groundhog, becoming the last member of the Flight.

A month later, Egghead led a group of mercenaries in attempting to extort money from the Canadian government with the threat of a nuclear warhead. In their first mission, the Flight responded, with disastrous results. Though Egghead was defeated, Flight trainee Saint Elmo was killed, Groundhog resigned, and the remaining members proved themselves to be unready for field work. Based on this, Hudson reformed the Flight into three groups of increasing proficiency: Gamma Flight, Beta Flight and the premier team, Alpha Flight.

During his time with The Flight, Logan briefly found romance with teammate Narya (Snowbird), though their relationship ended badly. Logan also became a mentor of sorts to Wild Child, a young mutant with a fury similar to Logan's own, and to Aurora (Jeanne-Marie Beaubier), whose multiple-personality disorder caused her to empathize with Logan's fractured memories. Logan also worked with Nick Fury on a number of consecutive assignments both immediately before and after Fury became the director of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Logan also defied orders to rescue Danvers from behind enemy lines, in one of his last black ops missions.

Seeking advice from his sensei once again, Logan returned to Japan, where he discovered to his shock and dismay that Ogun had turned to the dark side, and was now an assassin who hoped to enslave Logan to his will. Escaping back to Canada, Logan was captured by the Leader, who planned to use Logan, the demigod Hercules and the Deviant Karkas in a campaign against the Hulk. Wolverine escaped and freed his fellow captives, but by sheer coincidence, he was sent up against the Hulk soon afterwards anyways, when the Jade Giant wandered into Canada. Battling both the Hulk and the Wendigo, Logan found himself brought to a rare stalemate. Still prepared to take over as leader of Alpha Flight, Logan took a few final military assignments, including a mission to communist territory where he reunited with yet another former lover and partner, Charlemagne.

Back in Canada, Logan and James Hudson were forced to put Bedlam into suspended animation after all efforts to rehabilitate him failed. Left to question the direction Department H was taking, Logan found his life complicated further when he realized that he had fallen in love with Heather Hudson. As such, Logan soon shocked his friends and teammates by accepting an offer by Charles Xavier to join a second generation of X-Men, assembled to free their predecessors from Krakoa, the Living Island. When most of the original team resigned following their rescue, Logan decided to remain with the X-Men, developing a romantic interest in Jean Grey and a rivalry and contempt for X-Men field leader Cyclops (Scott Summers). Logan was soon attacked by Creed in one of the madman's yearly assaults, reminding him that his past was never far away.

Though wary of forming bonds with any of his teammates, Logan soon formed a close friendship with the teleporting mutant Nightcrawler and began to pursue Grey, to her annoyance. Logan's libidinous intentions were stymied when Grey was replaced by the Phoenix Force, a duplicate so perfect that it fooled even Logan's superhuman senses. After a number of adventures with the X-Men, Wolverine was attacked by his former friend James Hudson, who had donned his own robotic armour as Weapon Alpha, serving as leader of Alpha Flight in Wolverine's absence. The X-Men managed to drive Hudson off, but a confrontation between the two teams seemed imminent.

Some time later, Logan returned to Japan for the first time since his last encounter with the turned Ogun, and he chanced to meet Mariko Yashida, cousin of the former X-Man Sunfire. The two began to fall in love, but were separated when Wolverine was forced to leave Japan with his teammates. Their flight having been diverted to Canada, the X-Men were attacked once again by Hudson, but even with Alpha Flight backing him up, Hudson was unable to capture Logan and his teammates. Following the "death" of Phoenix (still thought to be Grey by her teammates), Logan returned to Canada and made his peace with Hudson and the rest of Alpha Flight, even joining them in a battle with the Wendigo. He also reunited with Mariko, and the two acknowledged their love for one another.

Months later, Logan was stunned to discover that Mariko had been forced by her father Shingen Harada to marry one of his criminal associates. Logan pled with her to annul the marriage, but Mariko was resolute in her belief that she was duty-bound to her father, despite the shame his Yakuza dealings brought to her. Shingen did all in his power to drive Mariko and Logan apart, but they remained true to their feelings, and Logan was forced to kill Shingen in a climactic final battle. Mariko declared Logan to be her champion, annulling her marriage and presenting to Logan the honor sword of the Clan Yashida. Mariko and Logan announced their engagement, but Mariko left Logan at the altar, secretly under the control of Mastermind, who also forced her to renew the ties between the Clan Yashida and the Yakuza. Once freed from Mastermind's influence, Mariko asked Logan to leave her to undo her shameful actions so she could be worthy of him once again. Though heartbroken, Logan agreed to leave her to her own devices.

Though Logan and the rest of the X-Men returned to America, they were brought back to Japan not long afterwards, where they were forced to battle a giant dragon. Unable to save a woman from the dragon's attack, Logan promised to protect her daughter Amiko, adopting the girl as his foster daughter. Logan soon realized that his lifestyle didn't leave room to raise a child, so he left Amiko in Mariko's care. While still in Japan, Logan learned that his teammate Kitty Pryde had become Ogun's pawn. Logan managed to exorcise most of Ogun's influence from Pryde before killing Ogun, though the once-honorable samurai master would return as a spirit to bedevil both Pryde and Logan in the years to come.

Logan was met with news of James Hudson's apparent death, and he agreed to help Heather Hudson in her plan to continue her husband's work as the armored Vindicator. Logan was also soon attacked by Lady Deathstrike, who accused Logan of stealing the legacy of her father Lord Darkwind, the creator of the first adamantium bonding process. Deathstrike was defeated, but in her madness she had herself transformed into a cyborg in order to continue her quest for revenge.

When the X-Men responded to a brutal "Mutant Massacre" in the Morlock tunnels, Logan came up against Creed for the first time since his earliest days as an X-Man, though they were left at a stalemate. Not long after that, following a battle with the Adversary, the X-Men were seemingly killed, though they survived and secretly relocated to the Outback in Australia. Logan also returned to Madripoor where he befriended the crime lord Tiger Tyger and re-established his Patch identity, helping to maintain the balance between the many criminal groups on the island. In Seraph's memory, Logan also bought in as a part-owner of Seraph's old tavern, the Princess Bar. Logan also spent some time in the Savage Land where he had a brief affair with a native woman named Gahck, who secretly bore him a son. Returning to the X-Men's base in Australia, Logan was ambushed and crucified by the Reavers, a group of cyborgs that included Lady Deathstrike amongst their numbers. Logan was rescued by the young mutant Jubilation Lee (Jubilee), who he would come to see as a surrogate daughter.

During one adventure not long afterwards, Logan was affected by a chemical attack and left as an amnesiac. Though the chemicals were purged from his system, they reacted negatively with his memory implants, leaving him with even more gaps in his memory than he had before. Searching for details of his past, Wolverine crossed paths with his old enemy Silas Burr in Madripoor. Now calling himself Cyber and equipped with an adamantium exoskeleton, Burr sought to take over Tyger's interests in the criminal underworld, though he was defeated by Wolverine, who was forced to overcome a crippling fear of Burr that their confrontation years earlier had subconsciously left him with. Logan also began to remember the atrocities that the Weapon X program had done to him, even managing to locate and explore the long-abandoned lab where he was experimented upon.

Logan soon returned to Japan to battle the Hand, who responded by poisoning Mariko with blowfish toxin. Forced spare his true love from a prolonged and painful death with a quick killing stroke, Logan swore revenge again the Hand's leader Matsu'o Tsurayaba, promising him a slow and excruciating death. For years following, Logan made an annual visit to Tsurayaba to disfigure him in some way, though it is unknown if Tsurayaba yet lives.

When the artificial healing factor derived from Wolverine failed and killed former Weapon X agent Mastodon, Logan was forced to team with the rest of Team X, including Silver Fox and Creed. Psi-Borg was revealed to have disabled Mastodon's healing factor, and during the confusion of the ensuing conflict, Creed finally succeeded in killing Silver Fox, leaving Logan to mourn yet another death.

Soon afterwards, Logan was nearly killed in battle with Magneto, when the master of magnetism ripped the adamantium from Wolverine's bones, extracting it through the pores in his skin. His healing factor pushed to its limits, Logan miraculously survived, though he soon discovered that the adamantium in his system had somehow worked to keep his bestial nature in check, and his humanity was now once again in jeopardy. To his surprise, Logan also rediscovered his bone claws, forgotten for almost a century.

Months later, Creed was captured by the X-Men and taken into detention at the X-Mansion, where Professor X attempted to rehabilitate the violent killer. Creed eventually escaped and was met by Logan, who Creed verbally taunted. Pushed over the edge, Logan sunk a claw into Creed's brain, lobotomizing him. Taking a leave of absence from the X-Men over his actions, Logan was soon captured by Genesis, who hoped to transform Logan into a Horseman for Apocalypse. After murdering Cyber and reforging his adamantium into a new skeleton, Genesis attempted to replicate the Weapon X bonding process; this time, Logan's body rejected the foreign metal, mutating him further into an more animalistic state. Logan escaped, and with help from the ninja Elektra, managed to reclaim his humanity soon after.

Several months later, another ghost of Logan's past came back to haunt him when the Viper returned to his life, now one of the world's most dangerous terrorists. Forcing Logan to fulfill his promise to Seraph by marrying her, Viper used her new status to take control of Madripoor and exile Logan from the island. Forced to battle both the Hand and Hydra on Viper's behalf, Logan was forced to fight alongside Creed, who had recently successfully undergone the adamantium bonding process himself. Logan was then abducted by Apocalypse, while a Skrull was sent to rejoin the X-Men in Logan's place. Removing the adamantium from Creed, Apocalypse successfully returned it to Logan's body, transforming him into the Horseman Death. As Death, Logan stalked the X-Men for his new lord, but he was soon captured and his true persona was restored; following this, Logan rejoined the X-Men.

Viper soon invited Logan back to Madripoor to deal with the spirit of Ogun, who now hoped to claim Logan's body as his own. Injured in the ensuing battle, Viper agreed to divorce Logan in return for medical attention, freeing him from his bond to her. Nonetheless, Logan's past continued to dog at him, when surviving Weapon X scientist Malcolm Colcord manipulated Logan into hunting down other Weapon X escapees by using the same process that had forced Logan to attack Roanoke years before. Colcord also recruited Creed and bonded a new set of adamantium to his bones, but Creed immediately went rogue and attacked Logan, nearly killing him before Colcord reined him in.

After recovering from Creed's attack, Logan became a teacher at The Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, which had gone public as a haven for young mutants. Logan also became determined to learn the truth behind the Weapon X Program. Teaming with Summers and Fantomex, Logan infiltrated the World, headquarters of the Weapon Plus Program, the Weapon X program's newly-discovered parent organization. Logan managed to learn much of both programs' pasts before being attacked by Weapon XV. Defeating his attacker, Logan was left stranded in space, and though Jean Grey came in a shuttle to save him, both were left trapped on the ruins of Magneto's Avalon space station, which was now hurtling towards the sun. They were saved when Grey accessed the Phoenix Force, allowing her to resurrect Logan despite his complete immolation. Returning to Earth, Logan and Grey found Manhattan in the grip of "Magneto" (secretly Xorn in disguise). At the verge of defeat, "Magneto" struck Grey with a lethal electromagnetic pulse; thrown into a rage, Logan decapitated the impersonator.

Following Grey's death, Logan's feud with Summers reasserted itself, centered on Logan's disgust at Summers' new romance with Emma Frost. Despite this, Logan continued on as a teacher at the Xavier Institute until being captured and brainwashed by the Hand. Logan was unleashed by the terrorist group and slew dozens of heroes and villains who were then resurrected as servants of the Hand. Logan was eventually captured and deprogrammed by S.H.I.E.L.D., who declared him to be a temporary agent long enough for him to dismantle the entire Hand organization. Despite his actions, Logan was allowed back as a teacher at the Xavier Institute and was admitted into the newly reformed Avengers.

As a side-effect to M-Day, Logan's memories were restored in their entirety. Going off the grid of the intelligence community, Logan tracked down elements of his past, leading to a confrontation with the Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes). Barnes revealed that it had been he that had killed Logan's wife Itsu so many years before, but he had been under another's control at the time. Furthermore, Barnes had defied orders by sabotaging the Weapon X facility, allowing Wolverine to escape. Leaving Barnes without any further conflict, Logan returned to Japan and confronted Muramasa, who gave to Logan his honor sword, telling him to "wield it like an angry god".

Now armed with the deadliest of weapons and finally aware of who he was after, Logan staged an invasion of the White House, confronting the Secretary of State, a Weapon X sleeper agent. Before Logan was able to extract any information from the woman, she was silenced by a Shiva robot; though once a formidable foe in the past, the Shiva was easily dispatched by Logan using his new weapon. In retaliation for the attack, elements within the American government reactivated the long-thought-dead Nuke, sending him after the man who had manipulated his life decades ago.

Nuke was unleashed in South Vietnam, a situation that Wolverine walked into despite it being an obvious trap. After a bloody battle, Wolverine got the better of Nuke and prepared to deliver a killing blow, but was blindsided by the arriving Captain America. An initial skirmish was won by the Captain when he gained control of Wolverine's sword. With Wolverine as his prisoner, the Captain explained that he felt responsible for Nuke, a product of an attempt to recreate the Super-Soldier Program, but Wolverine countered by suggesting that Nuke was actually an attempt to recreate Wolverine himself. Before they could discuss the matter any further, Nuke recovered and attacked them; Wolverine was driven into a berserker rage, but the fight was broken up by the arrival of Cyclops, Hellion and the White Queen, the latter of whom had discovered a malevolent influence in Wolverine's mind.

Some time later, a tragic turn of events came to pass in Stamford Connecticut. When the New Warriors attempted to subdue a group of villains, eight hundred innocent civilians were killed when the criminal Nitro used his explosive powers to annihilate a suburban neighborhood. Taking it upon himself to personally hunt down Nitro, Wolverine was forced to work with a strike-team led by Iron Man. Confronting Nitro, the heroes were devastated, and Wolverine's flesh was disintegrated, reducing him to just his indestructible skeleton. Despite this, Wolverine somehow regenerated, and managed to take Nitro by surprise.

The two fought, and Wolverine revealed that Nitro's powers left a small "safe zone" around the villain himself, which Wolverine capitalized upon by remaining so close that Nitro's explosions couldn't affect him. Two agents of an unknown organization then arrived, as did Janus, an Atlantean sleeper agent charged with avenging the death of the Atlantean New Warrior, Namorita.

Powers

Logan possesses a superhuman healing factor that allows him to regenerate damaged or missing parts of his cellular structure at speeds far exceeding that of a normal human. His power is such that he can recover from anything short of a fatal injury in days, if not hours. Logan is also immune to all diseases, poisons and drugs as well as the naturally-produced fatigue poisons produced by the human body, giving him superhuman agility. He also possesses reflexes and agility at superhuman levels, though much of those are counteracted by the strain of operating with a metal skeleton, and slight-superhuman strength which is slightly increased by his metal-covered bones' durability. Logan's healing factor also notably retards the aging process; though now over a century old, Logan is still as physically fit as a man in his twenties, and doesn't look much older than forty. Most importantly, his healing factor keeps Logan from dropping dead from the trauma caused to his body by having more than one hundred pounds of metal inside of it. In a recent battle with Nitro, Wolverine somehow regenerated from nothing by his skeleton, indicating that he may well be incapable of dying from anything short of complete molecular dispersion.

Logan also possesses superhuman senses, most notably scent. He has trained himself to recognize people by their scent as easily as by physical appearance, and he can track a target over virtually any distance or terrain. Through training, Logan has also learned to move in complete silence and with incredible stealth.

Logan's skeleton includes three naturally-occurring bone claws in each arm, which extend from between his knuckles to a length of one foot and retract into his forearms between his skin and bicep muscles. When fully extended, the claws are fully within his hand, allowing him full mobility at the wrist. These claws are naturally tougher and sharper than normal human bone, allowing him to use them to cut through most substances. Logan's claws and skeleton have been covered with the virtually indestructible metal adamantium, allowing his claws to cut through virtually any surface depending on thickness and force exerted.

Logan is one of the most formidable hand-to-hand combatants on earth, having been trained in countless forms of armed and unarmed combat techniques by numerous military, investigative, martial art and superhuman groups. He is an expert marksman and an unparalleled undercover operative, and is experienced with most forms of weapons, computers, vehicles, explosives and assassination techniques. He is fluent in English, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Cheyenne, Lakota and Spanish, and has some knowledge of French, Thai and Vietnamese.

Logan is an expert swordsman, and has trained himself to fight with swords and daggers as if they were a part of his own body. He has also designed a unique and incredibly effective technique designed to take full advantage of his claws. Logan currently wields Muramasa's honor sword, which can cut through virtually any substance.

Trivia

• Reportedly, writers Dave Cockrum and Chris Claremont intended for Wolverine to have been an actual mutated wolverine, not a human or mutant at all. This was dropped when Marvel editor Stan Lee vehemently disagreed with a story that revealed that Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) was a mutated spider, insisting that her origin be changed in a follow-up story.

• In addition, Cockrum had intended for Wolverine to be in his early twenties, which was changed when Steve Ditko drew him unmasked as a hirsute forty-year-old. On the flip side of the coin, Ditko had planned for Wolverine's claws to be a part of his gloves, something that Claremont overruled.

Affiliation

Logan is a member of the X-Men, the X-Treme Sanctions Executive and the Avengers, a former member of the Secret Defenders, The Horsemen of Apocalypse, Alpha Flight, a former agent of The Weapon X Program, Team X, Department K, Department H, the C.I.A. and S.H.I.E.L.D., a former soldier in The Devil's Brigade, and a former unwilling pawn of Hydra.

He is the former lover of Silver Fox, Charlemagne, Miss Marvel (Danvers) and Snowbird, among many others. Additionally, Logan bore an unnamed child with the Savage Land native Gahck, and his genetic material was used to create the clone X-23.