The Untold Truth Of Wolverine

If you only know Wolverine from the movies or mainline X-Men comics, you really don't
know him at all.
The character got his start from some extremely humble beginnings, but Wolverine — aka Logan,
aka James Howlett — has grown to be one of Marvel Comics' most popular characters...and
a bankable star on the big screen to boot.
But even though he's best known for his swagger, there are more than a few weird and maybe
even embarrassing events scattered throughout his cigar-chomping history.
Let's have a look at the untold truth of Wolverine...
Punisher, Spock, and a 12-year-old girl
Once Wolverine became a popular character in Marvel Comics, he started popping up in
a whole lot of crossover stories.
And that's led to some truly insane match-ups that sometimes left Logan as the loser.
Like, a big-time loser.
For starters, In writer Garth Ennis' grim 2001 Punisher series, Logan and the Punisher
faced off.
Being a master tactician, the Punisher went to extremes to make sure Wolverine couldn't
come after him for a while.
The story finds the duo in an uneasy alliance to take out some criminals, but takes a dark
turn when the Punisher decides to just get rid of Wolverine, too, and unloads a clip
into Wolverine's manhood.
Healing factor or not, that's gotta hurt.
Then he runs him over with a steamroller.
That's...thorough.
Wolverine also met the crew of the USS Enterprise in the 1996 Star Trek/X-Men crossover comic.
When the X-Men meet Spock, Wolverine doesn't want to cooperate, and lunges at the Vulcan
to knock him out.
But, since he's a fictional character who's never seen an episode of Star Trek, Wolverine
is not aware of the infamous Vulcan Nerve Pinch.
It goes something like this:
Spock takes Wolverine down, at least temporarily.
Later on, Wolverine does get the drop on Spock after he's knocked down, but Round 1 definitely
went to Spock.
Finally, Wolverine also had a small but memorable role in Runaways, a comic that focused on
a team of teenagers who realize their parents are actually super villains.
One of those missions brought the team into the path of a few of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
and it did not go well for Wolverine.
At all.
The Runaways' youngest member, 12-year-old Molly Hayes, is also a mutant.
Her power is a whole lot of super-strength.
When Molly gets scared that the Avengers want to take her away from her friends, her fight-or-flight
instincts kicks in — and she punches Wolverine clean out of the building, with Logan crashing
face first into the snowy street outside.
Does that healing factor apply to pride, too?
It’s not Wolf-erine
When Jackman landed the role of Wolverine in the first X-Men movie back in 2000, he
was woefully unprepared for the role.
How bad was it?
He didn't even realize a wolverine was a real animal, so he started studying up on wolves
to bring an animalistic quality to his performance.
Jackman wasn't very familiar with the comic character, so he just assumed Wolverine was
a guy who acted like, well, a big, angry animal.
Yeah, kind of like that.
So he just acted like a wolf in his first few scenes, to the point that director Bryan
Singer had to ask him to cut it out.
He told Rolling Stone about the embarrassing ordeal in 2013:
"I said, 'Yeah, man, I've been studying wolves and I think if we could bring that to the
screen—' and he goes, 'What?
You're not a wolf, man, you're a wolverine.'"
Lucky for everyone, Jackman killed it anyway — animal confusion or not.
He was a bad guy
Going back to his first appearance in the comics, Wolverine was actually introduced
as a bad guy in 1974’s Incredible Hulk #180, with his first full appearance coming in the
next issue.
The creative team was looking for a new character to slug it out with the Hulk, since he usually
went through villains pretty quickly — being, y'know, the Hulk and all.
Wolverine was just the Hulk's latest challenger at the time.
He wasn’t even introduced in an X-Men story, and was never actually meant to be a member
of the team.
The X-Men were already well-established at this point, but when the character proved
popular from his time in the Incredible Hulk, Marvel decided to bring him back for some
new appearances and flesh him out — eventually incorporating him into the X-Men as part of
a larger relaunch with several new characters.
Wolverine next popped up on 1975's Giant-Size X-Men #1, and the rest is history.
Artist Herb Trimpe, who was the first to draw Wolverine for publication, told Film Journal
that Wolverine was introduced as a "secondary or tertiary" character "with no particular
notion of it going anywhere."
Now he's a flagship character.
Not bad for a guy who wasn't supposed to live for more than two issues, right?
Heavy bones
Wolverine was born with claws made of bone and a near-limitless ability to heal himself,
but he wasn't born with that nifty metal skeleton.
That came due to Logan's time in the Weapon X program, where the shady government group
took advantage of his healing factor to coat his bones with the super-strong comic book
metal adamantium.
Marvel says all that shiny bone-coating weighs a total of 105 pounds.
For the sake of comparison, the average, non-metallic bone skeleton weighs a bit less than 30 pounds.
So, that’s a whole lot of extra weight to lug around, even if you are super-jacked,
man.
Tiny tough guy
Since he's loosely inspired by the real-life animal, it's no surprise that Wolverine is
actually pretty short.
According to Marvel, the comic version of the character is a mere 5 feet and 3 inches
tall.
In the comics, they do a pretty good job of showing his small stature when he's hanging
around in a group, usually making him the shortest guy in the room.
But while the comic character is short, Hugh Jackman is actually a towering six-foot-two.
To make sure we wasn't looking down on everyone else, director Bryan Singer used some classic
Hollywood angles to at least try and make the tall leading man look a bit on the shorter
side.
Never a manimal
There's been a rumor going around for decades that the character of Wolverine was originally
conceived as an actual wolverine — who got mutated into a man, sorta like the Ninja Turtles,
but hairier.
In fact, that alleged origin was actually mentioned in the the DVD extras for X-Men
Origins: Wolverine.
But it turns out it's not true.
After hearing this "true" story touted for years, creator Len Wein broke his silence
to officially deny the reports and tell the real story of Wolverine's creation.
Here's how he explained it:
"I absolutely did not ever intend to make Logan a mutated wolverine.
I write stories about human beings, not evolved animals … The mutated wolverine thing came
about long after I was no longer involved with the book."
And what does Wolverine himself think of the rumor?
Movie mainstay
Where some comic franchises have already been rebooted a few times, X-Men is still going
strong in roughly the same continuity launched all the way back in 2000.
Okay, sure, X-Men: Days of Future Past did some housecleaning with the timeline, but
it's still a lot of the same actors all these years later.
But even when the series was prequel-ized with younger actors as part of First Class,
the ageless Wolverine was still around.
Hugh Jackman starred in the first three X-Men films, plus X-Men Origins: Wolverine, then
in the similarly titled sequel, The Wolverine, and closed out his solo film series in the
beloved Logan.
He also played a key role in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and had bit roles in X-Men: First
Class and X-Men: Apocalypse.
The only film he wasn't in?
The R-rated hit Deadpool.
But even though Wolverine didn't show up in the flesh, Ryan Reynolds' foul-mouthed mercenary
did sport a Jackman mask and make plenty of Wolverine jokes.
So, really, he was there in spirit — and that's good enough for us.
"Who's b----- did I have to fondle to get my very own movie?
I can't tell you, but it does rhyme with 'Pullverine.'"
Thanks for watching!
Click the Looper icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love too!

The Untold Truth Of Wolverine

Latest Posts