The Many Origins Of Wolverine
...T
o his fans, Wolverine is an enigma. Recent stories about his travels have taken him forward through time, backward through time, and all over the place, from Madripoor to Japan to Canada!...W
olverine #25 is a plausible Wolverine origin story. It tells the tale of a young Native American boy cast into the wilderness by his Indian tribe. Befriended by wolverines and raised as one of their own, the boy adopts the instincts of an animal, yet can reason with the intellect of a man....O
ther early Wolverine stories include "24 Hours" featuring Sabretooth from Wolverine #9-10 and "Wild Frontier" from Marvel Comics #93-98 which shows a pre-claw Wolverine as a member of the Blackfoot Indian tribe in the early l800's......W
olverine's next major chronological appearance is "Madripoor Nights" from Uncanny X-Men #268. It places him on the island of Madripoor in the South Pacific during 1941 as he teams up with a young Captain America to battle a ruthless Nazi commander named Baron Strucker......T
he next milestone in Wolverine's life appears in the acclaimed Weapon X storyline from Marvel Comics #72-84...Wolverine is transformed into an indestructible weapon of a super-secret group by an adamantium bonding process. Unfortunately, the memory implants from the Weapon X program convolute Wolverine's memory of these events......I
t is certain that Wolverine was a member of the Canadian Secret Service before Weapon X. Previous encounters with Sabretooth in X-Men #4-6 hint at the fact that they were even teamates....W
e also know that Sabretooth is definitely not Logan's father, because in Wolverine #42 a S.H.I.E.L.D. medic confirms that blood taken from the two is different......W
e also know that Wolverine's relationship with Silver Fox is genuine since the log cabin that Logan and Silver Fox shared in Wolverine #63 really does exist...
Character Profile: Wolverine
A mutant by birth, Logan was the subject of a secret program sponsored by the Canadian government to create the ultimate secret agent: Weapon X. Undergoing the program's tortuous procedures against his will, Logan had adamantium molecularly fused to his skeleton, rendering his bones virtually unbreakable. Part of the adamantium process manifested itself as three one-foot long retractable claws that projected from the back of each of his hands.
Escaping into the Canadian wilderness, Logan wandered naked with no memories of his previous life, until he was found by scientist James Hudson, the man in charge of forming Alpha Flight, Canada's government-sanctioned superteam. Recuperating quickly--due to his mutant healing power--Logan became one of Alpha Flight's most valuable members and took the code name Wolverine.
Logan later...joined Prof. Charles Xavier's second team of X-Men...Throughout many of the X-Men's battle, Logan has been the team's last hope, fighting back from near-insurmountable odds...
Never a team player for long, Logan has often struck out on his own...he's faced some of the world's mightiest villians and heroes, battling to a victory or a standstill...
Still unaware of his true origin, many of Logan's adventures have led him to sites that were significant in his past...Logan has learned that many of his memories are only memory implants apparently inserted when he received his adamantium, and that the Weapon X program may have had a much darker purpose than he ever imagined.
The Weapon X Files
I
t has been made very clear...that Wolverine has been around for a long time. If you believe all the versions of his history, Wolverine was raised in the woods by kindly wolverines, danced with wolves on the American prairie, fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1937, fought against Nazis with Captain America in World War II, and was a soldier for the CIA and the Canadian government during the Civil War....I
n telling the tale of how Wolverine got his adamantium [Marvel Comics Presents #72-#84], [Barry] Windsor-Smith firmly anchored the mutant's beginning to a specific point in time--namely, 1964....[Larry] Hama has revealed that the Weapon X program that gave Wolverine his adamantium also gave him his memory implants. That means Hama is free to say what was real and what had been implanted...
...I
nstead of just creating Wolverine, Weapon X was the lab that created covert super-soldiers for Canada...responsible for Sabretooth, Silver Fox, Maverick, Mastodon, and presumably many others....I
t is assumed that he is Canadian by birth, but this has yet to be confirmed...The only truly personal piece of information that Wolverine has revealed about himself is that he is known to some by the name "Logan."PRE-20TH CENTURY
...T
he earliest chronological Wolverine story was "Heir Aid," from Wolverine #25...The tale told of a young boy (resembling Wolverine) who was cast out from his own people because he was small and weak. The boy, suffering from amnesia and wandering aimlessly, was befriended by wolverines and raised as one of their own. Over time, the boy adopted the instincts of an animal but maintained the intellect of a man...Thus, if Wolverine was indeed the boy in "Heir Aid,", he may be hundreds of thousands of years old....T
he story ["Wild Frontier", Marvel Comics Presents #93-98] shows a pre-adamantium Wolverine...dancing with wolves as an adopted member of a Blackfoot Indian tribe in the 1840s...This story arc also hints at Wolverine's possible immortality and his experiences in and out of the current time stream....I
n that tale ["24 Hours", Wolverine #9-#10]...The story shows a young Wolverine battling Sabretooth, who had just raped and killed Wolverine's Native American lover, Silver Fox...The story appeared to be set during the Gold Rush circa circa 1840...[but] until the mid-20th century, Canada had many rugged frontier towns, so the story doesn't necessarily have to date back to the 1840s...The entire "24 Hours" episode may have been a memory implant, as it has since been revealed that Silver Fox hadn't ever died and still was alive in the present...20TH CENTURY
WORLD WAR II
T
he next chronological mention of Logan came in Wolverine #34. Tracking a murderer, Logan teamed with an old Canadian Mountie named Doolin...Doolin reminisced about hisWorld War II experiences, namely the eve of D-Day in 1944. Stationed in Ranville, Normandy, an 18-year-old Doolin told Wolverine about the courage of his platoon corporal, whose name sounded like "Logan"--even though Doolin had no idea what Wolverine's real name was...
...I
n Wolverine #78, the vampire Bloodscream recalled that he met Wolverine on the same night Doolin referred to in Wolverine #34...Bloodscream noted that Logan had not aged since Bloodscream saw him in Normandy, nor had he aged when he saw him next, 50 years later, in Madripoor (Wolverine #4).THE 1950s
...W
hat is known about Wolverine's activities in the Cold War years mostly is revealed in X-Men (vol. 2) #4-#7, where he was shown to be a high-level field operative working with Maverick and Sabretooth. The story, set 30 years ago, showed the three in service of both the CIA and the Canadian government...the adventure shows a pre-adamantium Logan, which suggests that he had yet to undergo the Weapon X treatment. However, Maverick is wearing his characteristic mask, suggesting he already may have undergone the Weapon X program...The 1960s
...W
olverine's pre-adamantium days ended around 1963. It can be assumed that he'd taken some hard knocks during his tenure as a spy, since the Weapon X storyline begins with a burned out Logan, fed up with the system and intent on drinking and drugging himself into a stupor. The adamantium-bonding process lasted 18 months, so Logan effectively became Weapon X in late 1964 or early 1965.DEPARTMENT H
...U
nder [James] Hudson's [Vindicator] sponsorship, Logan was trained...as an agent for Department H. It was during this time with Department H that Logan officially was given the codename Weapon X and his distinctive blue and gold costume...Aware of Logan's berserker tendencies, the Canadian government tried drug and hypnotherapy to cure him of his rages, but the animal still lurked within the man...D
uring this period, Hudson was developing the idea of Alpha Flight, a super-group made up of Canadian heroes. Accordingly, Logan was being groomed for leadership of the group...THE X-MEN
T
he most catastrophic event in Logan's life since the addition of his adamantium came in X-Men #25, when the metal was removed forcibly by Magneto. After recovering, Wolverine discovered that his claws were actually made of bone and only had been coated with adamantium. Through further research, it was shown that Wolverine's mutant genes allowed the adamantium-bonding process to be successful. It also was shown that the adamantium actually retarded Wolverine's mutation. Without it, he had begun to mutate to a more feral state...TODAY
L
ogan adapted to life with bone claws fairly well until he recently became aware of the machinations of Genesis. Thanks to Genesis, Wolverine now has reverted to a beast-like creature, barely resembling Logan either physically or mentally. This latest transformation begs the question of how much Wolverine will remember about his past if or when he reverts back to human form. While he appears to still recognise former friends, as seen in Wolverine #100-101 and Uncanny X-Men #332, are his memories still intact?
Ongoing Clues to Wolverine's Origins
W
ell, as of Wolverine #106, we discover more clues to his origins. On his visit with Elektra to visit her family in Greece, Stavros, one of her friends there, said that he knew of a Canadian from World War II. During this time, this Canadian had given him a dagger to use offensively. When asked by Logan if he remembered the name, he just replied "We called him 'Canada'". Near the end of the novel, we see Stavros with the dagger...and on it was enscribed the words "Cpl. Logan". Perhaps another hint to his origins? Only time will tell.