James "Logan" Howlett, aka Wolverine, is a Canadian Mutant and member of the X-Men. Born more than a century ago, the long-lived man has the rage of a beast and the soul of a Samurai. Logan's once mysterious past is filled with blood, war, and betrayal. He describes himself as being; "the best there is at what he does, but what he does best isn't very nice." Logan possesses an accelerated healing factor, keenly enhanced senses, and bone claws in each hand. His bones were coated in Adamantium, an almost indestructible metal, as part of the Weapon X program to make him their ultimate weapon. He would later join the X-Men, a team of heroes fighting for peace between humans and mutants.
Early Life
Logan's life began in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada, sometime between 1882 and 1885. The mutant who would come to be known simply as "Logan" was born James Howlett, the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Howlett (who was married to John Howlett, owner of a large estate) and the Howletts' groundskeeper, Thomas Logan. As a boy, James was notably frail and prone to allergic attacks. He was largely neglected by his mother, who had been institutionalized for a time following the death of her first son, John Jr.
James spent most of his early years on the Howlett Estate grounds with two playmates that lived at the estate with him: Rose O'Hara, a red-headed Irish girl who was brought in from town to be a companion to young James, and a boy nicknamed "Dog," Thomas Logan's son (and James's half-brother). The children were close friends, but as they reached adolescence, the abuse inflicted upon Dog warped his mind. Dog made unwanted advances toward Rose, which James reported to his father. In retaliation, Dog killed James' puppy, leading to the expulsion of Thomas and Dog from the estate.
In a drunken stupor and armed with a shotgun, Thomas invaded the Howlett Estate with his son and attempted to take his former lover Elizabeth with him. John, Sr. attempted to stop him, and Thomas shot him in the head in cold blood. James had just entered the room when this occurred, and his mutation finally manifested: bone claws extended from his hands, and he attacked the intruders with uncharacteristic ferocity, killing Thomas and scarring Dog's face with three claw marks. Already an emotionally disturbed woman since the death of her first son, Elizabeth, completely unhinged, drove James away and took her life immediately afterward with a blast from Thomas' gun.
James, with Rose’s help, decided to flee the mansion after Dog told the police that Rose was the one who killed John and Elizabeth Howlett. The duo decided to ask for the help of James’ grandfather, who gave them some money and told them to run away. The duo then found themselves in the Yukon Territories in Canada, taking refuge in a British Columbia stone quarry under the guise of being cousins. James also assumed the name "Logan" to hide his identity. Here, Logan would become one of the most respected men by the miners for his hard work and eventually gained the nickname “Wolverine.”
As time passed, Logan’s powers grew; he became stronger, his healing factor slowly removed the traumatic memories of his childhood, he accepted his feral nature and started hunting with a pack of wolves. During this period, Logan developed strong feelings for Rose but could not act on them for the sake of their guise as cousins. Mentoring Logan all these years, Smitty had also grown close to Rose. The two eventually fell in love and became engaged, much to the scorn and surprise of Logan, who later accepted the situation for Rose's happiness.
But as Logan accepted Rose’s decision and made sure that both she and Smitty could leave the mine and live a peaceful life, someone from Logan’s past came back looking for revenge: Dog. Dog attacked Logan and started beating him up in front of Rose, but amid the fight, Logan finally remembered who Dog was and what happened the night his father was killed. He then defeated Dog and was about to kill him with his claws, Rose tried to stop Logan, but she accidentally fell and was impaled by his claws which killed her. Shocked by what happened, Logan’s mind shut down, and he decided to abandon the civilized world and live with the wolves.
In the years that followed, Logan was tracked by Dog once again. He encountered Death itself, and he then met Nathaniel Essex, who was obsessed with mutations, and several members of the Creed family before finally coming back to civilization.
Not long after, Logan met for the first time Victor Creed who wanted revenge for what Logan did to his family. Victor captured him and sent him to the Ravencroft Institute, where he was tortured and experimented on by Nathaniel Essex once again. Still, thanks to the help of one of the doctors, Logan escaped.
It was supposedly around this time that Romulus, a supposed immortal being who used and manipulated the members of the Hudson line (Logan's mother's family) for decades, decided to take an interest in Logan.
The Weapon X Experiment
By 1961, Logan, known as Wolverine now, joined the Weapon X Project, part of the Weapon Plus Program, which had been created to fight the mutant menace. He was then placed on the Black Ops squad run by the CIA, called Team X, with Sabretooth, Silver Fox (who surprisingly appeared to be alive and with no memories of her time with Logan), Maverick, Kestrel, and Mastodon. During this time, Logan and the others received memory implants via staged scenarios, telepathic manipulation by Aldo Ferro, and other technology. Weapon X also duplicated Wolverine's healing factor and implanted it in Team X, slowing their aging processes.
In 1966, Logan also helped Nick Fury deal with the Sym-Soldiers in Vietnam, where he discovered the existence of alien life and was possessed for the first time by a symbiote.
In early 1968, Wolverine was called to report in a facility located in Dallas, Texas, where he was shot with Carbonadium bullets, which slowed his healing factor so that Weapon X or Romulus could know how to kill him. The bullets were removed, but Logan awoke earlier than expected, and he regained his memories for the first time in years because they hadn't been altered yet. Logan tried to keep the secret, and he rendezvoused with Team X in Berlin, East Germany, where the team was sent to steal the Carbonadium Synthesizer to sabotage the Russian Super Soldier program and save Janice Hollenbeck, a double agent. After retrieving the device, the team was attacked by the product of this new Russian Super Soldier program, Omega Red. During the team's escape, Sabretooth, apparently aware that Wolverine had regained his memories, killed Janice to reinforce Wolverine's conditioning about innocents dying when he overstepped Romulus' boundaries. In the end, Team X was able to escape from Omega Red, but it seemed the Carbonadium Synthesizer was lost. In truth, Wolverine still possessed the Carbonadium Synthesizer and decided to hide it from the rest of the team. After this event, Logan quit Team X in late 1968.
Department K
After he quit Team X, Wolverine joined Department K, a secret Canadian Defense Ministry branch with ties to Weapon X. Based in Ottawa, he partnered with Neil Langram and worked again with Nick Fury, now a high-ranking CIA agent, and with Richard and Mary Parker (the parents of Peter Parker a.k.a the Amazing Spider-Man). Years later, Langram was sought as an operative by the Hellfire Club, but he refused and was then slain by Sabretooth, hired as a mercenary. Wolverine and Carol Danvers, a young US spy, investigated and infiltrated the Canadian Ministry of Defense, and more precisely, a top-secret research and development agency which was in its early stage of growth, hidden in a sub-basement of a vast government complex: Department H. Within they discovered a list of several names called "The Mutant Agenda," and more troubling the names of both Logan and his dead partner Neil were on it.
Logan and Carol then decided to track Doctor Perry Edwards, who wrote a book about the rise of superhumans and whose name was at the top of the list. The duo found him in New York and saved him from an assassination attempt. They then told him what they had found. He wasn't surprised and explained to them that he had discovered the existence of genetically superior beings living amongst them: Mutants. But more importantly, he also discovered that some of those mutants weren't benevolent and were planning to kill all the members of the inner circle of the Hellfire Club in their search for power. Still, to that end, they needed to keep the existence of mutantkind a secret.
After infiltrating the Hellfire Club to learn Sebastian Shaw and Sabretooth lured more, Logan and Carol went to a Canadian Hellfire Club facility where Sabretooth confronted them. After discovering that Sabretooth killed Perry Edwards and several government officials to make sure the existence of mutantkind couldn't be revealed to the public, Sabretooth told Wolverine details of the Club's intent to guide a war between mutants and humans. Sabretooth tried to kill Logan, and during their fight, he told Logan that it was time for him to admit the truth: he was a mutant just like him, which was why he was so obsessed with mutants.
Logan, realizing that Sabretooth was the one who had killed Langram, proceeded to defeat his foe by stabbing him with his sword. Despite the severe injury, Sabretooth wasn't done, and he decided to bomb the facility, but Logan and Carol escaped in time. Sabretooth survived and also escaped later on. After this adventure, Logan and Carol parted ways. Still, after he started talking about this conspiracy with the Ministry of Defense and bursting into Department H and the Hellfire Club during this adventure, Logan's reputation was now dirt in his country. As a result, he tried to forget about the mutant problem and decided to go to the Yukon.
FACING THE HULK AND JOINING THE X-MEN
Wandering in the woods, Logan was eventually discovered by Heather and James "Mac" Hudson, a young couple honeymooning in the Rockies, whom he attacked, only to be shot by James. While recovering, Logan regained enough of his human persona to be horrified at his claws, believing them to be artificial implants. After recovering his mental faculties with Hudson's help, Logan became a member of Canada's Department H, the superhuman-oriented government agency James Hudson founded.
Sometime after, the Canadian military mobilized to fight the Hulk, but Wolverine received orders from Romulus to attract an unidentified party's attention by fighting the Hulk. Wolverine started a battle with the Hulk and Wendigo.
Wolverine's speed and maneuverability proved to be a match for the two plodding powerhouses, but after realizing Hulk was a more formidable opponent, he changed tactics. Teaming up with Hulk to take out the Wendigo, Hulk threw the Wendigo into a patch of trees, and Wolverine delivered the finishing blow. The Hulk and Wolverine kept on fighting. As Hulk had grown so enraged that Wolverine's adamantium claws failed to penetrate his skin, he finally managed to knock Wolverine out temporarily. Quickly back on his feet and despite his protests to keep fighting the Hulk, Wolverine was ordered to return to Department H while the Hulk was knocked out with a gas bomb and captured.
POWERS AND ABILITIES
Powers
-Mutant Physiology: Logan is a mutant. The Weapon X Program gave him an Adamantium skeleton. Nick Fury's intel classified him as Power Level 9, while the O*N*E classified him as a Severe Threat.
-Regenerative Healing Factor: Wolverine’s body naturally regenerates most (if not all) damaged or destroyed tissues and organs at a rate that exceeds that of any average human. The rate of regeneration is proportional to the damage caused. This process is automatic, and Wolverine has no control over it. His healing factor, however, does not seem to stop Wolverine from feeling the pain of his wounds nor the pain of his body regenerating itself. The speed at which he heals has fluctuated considerably in recent years. After losing his Adamantium, Wolverine's healing factor recovered and increased to a level far above his previous norm. However, it was significantly reduced after his last encounter with Lazaer, the Angel of Death. Its effectiveness (after losing the healing factor, dying, and being resurrected with it intact) has not yet been compared to past values.
-Contaminant Immunity: Wolverine's natural healing also affords him virtual immunity to poisons, viruses, diseases, and most drugs. For example, it is challenging for him to become intoxicated by alcohol. It can be accomplished with extraordinary amounts of alcohol, and even then, the entire cycle of intoxication and hangover can be completed in mere minutes. Wolverine's healing factor has cured him of the mystical curse of lycanthropy after being bitten and turned into a werewolf from vampirism. However, it should be noted that the time it took to cure the werewolf curse was longer than it took to cure him of vampirism. When he was infected with vampirism, he had also been infected with nanites to temporarily deactivate his healing factor and use him as a 'booby-trap' on the vampires.
-Fatigue Resistance: Wolverine is partially resistant to fatigue poisons from physical activity.
-Decelerated Aging: Wolverine's healing factor provides him with an extended lifespan by slowing the effects of the aging process; Wolverine was born sometime during the late 19th Century. Although well over 100 years of age, Wolverine retains a man's health, appearance, and physical vitality in the physical prime of his life.
-Telepathic Resistance: Wolverine has stated he is resistant to the telepathic probing of Emma Frost, the first from level 9 psi-shields implanted by Professor Charles Xavier, and later his healing factor creating “mental scar tissue” blocking it.
-Retractable Bone Claws: Wolverine's skeleton includes six retractable foot-long bone claws, three in each arm, that are housed beneath the skin and muscle of his forearms. Wolverine could, at will, release these slightly curved claws through his skin between the knuckles on each hand. The bone claws are naturally sharp and tougher than normal human bone, allowing them to, even before they were infused with Adamantium they could, penetrate most flesh and many natural materials. After augmentation, his bones became indestructible, and his claws were capable of piercing any material (relative to its thickness and the force Wolverine can exert). The Adamantium bonding process, which affected his bones, effectively transformed them into a new alloy called "Adamantium-Beta," which, combined with his healing factor, prevented his Adamantium skeleton from interfering with his bone marrow's production of blood cells. Wolverine can unsheathe any number of his claws at once, although he needs to keep his wrists straight when his claws pass from his forearms into his hands. When unsheathed, the claws are entirely within his forearms, allowing him to bend his wrists when extended.
-Hot Claws: A new facet of his Adamantium-tipped claws upon his resurrection is to cause them to heat several thousand degrees in seconds. A trait seemingly tied to Wolverine's berserker rage, how hot they can get remains a mystery, but they can reach high enough temperatures to cause gasoline to ignite on contact with it.
-Superhumanly Acute Senses: Wolverine’s super-human senses combine a separate mutant ability, and his Healing Factor since his sense organs atrophy much slower than normal humans. His most improved senses are sight, hearing, and smell. Due to these enhanced senses, Wolverine has claimed he can function in complete darkness as though it were daylight.
-Superhuman Hearing: Wolverine can hear sounds from a far greater distance than any human and is said to be slightly less developed than Daredevil's hearing.
-Superhuman Sight: Wolverine's sight is improved, allowing him to see further than an average human.
-Superhuman Smell: Wolverine’s sense of smell is even more magnified, allowing him to recognize and track objects and people just by smell alone. Daredevil once posited that Wolverine's sense of smell is more developed than his.
-Superhuman Taste: Wolverine can distinguish individual ingredients in food or drink he consumes at a smaller part per volume than an average person.
-Superhuman Touch: Wolverine's sense of touch gives him greater sensitivity to air direction and temperature differentials in his environment. He can sense Cyclops's incoming power beam based on the air pressure shift preceding its arrival.
-Superhuman Strength: Wolverine’s reinforced skeleton allows him to withstand high levels of physical pressure. His strength is also boosted to enhanced levels, allowing him to lift over 800 lbs briefly.
-Superhuman Speed: Wolverine can move at low-level superhuman speeds. He has attacked faster than the eye could follow, and even Spider-Man briefly thought Wolverine was faster than he was in their first fight. His combat speed seems more enhanced than anything else, as he had frequently kept up with Spider-Man in combat and blitzed people before they pulled their trigger fingers.
-Superhuman Stamina: Wolverine's healing factor grants him superhuman stamina and is partially immune to fatigue toxins generated by physical exertion and thus has greater endurance than humans. His stamina has been described as a metahuman, indicating his ability to exert himself for several days at peak efficiency continually.
-Superhuman Durability: Wolverine has superhuman durability due to his healing factor and Adamantium skeleton.
-Enhanced Reflexes and Agility: Wolverine's reflexes and agility are enhanced beyond the capabilities of the average human body. On several occasions, he could easily dodge Cyclops' optic blasts, although this is partly due to his enhanced senses.
-Animal Empathy: Wolverine has been seen to understand the emotions of animals around them and communicate with them on a fundamental level. Wolverine has been seen to be able to show animals his intentions and actions so he would not be perceived as a threat to them.
ABILITIES
-Skilled Tracker: Wolverine is considered one of the world’s most skilled trackers due to his superhuman sense.
-Above Normal Intelligence: Wolverine has an above-normal level of intelligence.
-Master Martial Artist: Wolverine has mastered virtually every form of hand-to-hand combat on Earth. Due to his age and experience, Wolverine has taught many heroes some form of fighting. These include the Black Widow, Rogue, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Primal, Sunspot, Armor, Jubilee, Rachel Summers, Phoebe Cuckoo, and Shadowcat in hand-to-hand combat.
-Weapons Expert: Wolverine is a trained expert with many guns, blades, explosives, and other weaponry due to his experiences as a soldier, samurai, spy, and mercenary.
-Computer and Vehicles Expert: Wolverine is trained in using several computer systems and vehicle repair and is an accomplished pilot.
-Expert Assassin: Wolverine knows several assassination techniques.
-Multilingual: A polyglot, Wolverine is fluent in many languages, including English, Japanese, Russian, Mandarin, Cheyenne, Lakota, Spanish, and Krakoan. Logan also has some knowledge of Farsi, French, German, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese. Notably, he is also one of the few who demonstrated an understanding Doopspeak.
STRENGTH LEVEL
As a result of Wolverine's constant cellular regeneration and the additional weight and tensile strength of his skeleton, he has some superhuman strength, enabling him to press somewhere over 800 lbs.
WEAKNESSES
-Memory Issues: Likely due to his healing factor, Wolverine has experienced large periods without memories of specific traumatic events.
-Sensory Overload: One of Wolverine's weaknesses is that his heightened senses could be taken advantage of. For instance, when Wolverine was fighting the Hulk (Bruce Banner), he was nearly killed by the Hulk's thunderclaps due to his heightened sense of hearing.
-Adamantium Allotropes: Adamantium has thirteen different allotropes (variants) that are very unstable compared to Adamantium because of their different molecular configurations and, thus, physical properties. For example, Adamantium nine caused Wolverine to become dizzy and weak just by being in close contact with it.
-Hot Claws: The new addition to his abilities comes with the drawback of weakening his regenerative ability the longer he has them active, having gone full-tilt berserker during a skirmish with the X-Men leaving him drained of stamina as they absorb energy from his Healing Factor to work.
-Drowning: Of the few ways to kill Wolverine, drowning cuts the brain's oxygen supply. He has admitted that being kept underwater can kill him, with the healing factor only prolonging the agony. Wolverine added that he is not fond of being on the water, as adding nearly 100 pounds of Adamantium to his body reduced his buoyancy.
-Muramasa Blade: Wolverine's only specific vulnerability known to date. Created by having his soul infused into the katana, his mutant healing factor's efficiency is dramatically decreased if he sustains an injury from the Muramasa Blade. Wolverine has been wounded once with the blade, and though the injury was minor, it did not heal completely for two days. Later the blade was broken, and a piece of it was stolen by Daken and laced to the underside of his two wrists' bone claws, similar to his father's bonding process, by Phineas Mason (Tinkerer). Logan later removed the pieces of the Muramasa blade from Daken's arms and buried them with the rest of the blade in an unmarked grave near the Howlett Estate in Alberta. After Logan's death, Laura Kinney and Carol Danvers were tricked into revealing the location of the blade and its fragments to the Orphans of X, who melted it down and forged it into several bullets. With the onset of X of Swords, however, the late Swordsmith made two all-new Muramasa Blades in the depths of Hell. It was evident that the mystic incisor could cut through Adamantium, as stated by Logan himself.
EQUIPMENT
Usually, Logan wore a standard X-Men uniform or street clothes. His gloves often had grooves in the forearm, so they did not tear when he unsheathed his claws.
-Adamantium: Not part of his natural mutant attributes, Wolverine's entire skeleton, including his bone claws, were laced with the rare, artificial, and virtually indestructible metal alloy known as Adamantium - or True Adamantium. As a result, Wolverine's bones are virtually unbreakable. The presence of the Adamantium has further enhanced the already razor-sharp edge of Wolverine's bone claws. Aside from being practically indestructible, the claws can cut through any solid material except Proto-Adamantium (Captain America's Shield). However, Wolverine's ability to slice completely through a substance depends upon the thickness of the substance and the amount of force he can exert. The Adamantium also weighted his blows, dramatically increasing the effectiveness of his punches and kicks. His claws can damage Class 100 durability foes such as the Thing. His Adamantium claws have been shown to penetrate Thanos's chest easily.
-Adamantium Beta: Adamantium Beta is a metal that can bond to the human skeleton. The properties of Adamantium Beta can bond directly into the structure of skeletal material while not inhibiting the living nature of the bone. The only known occurrence of Adamantium Beta was during the Weapon X Project when it experimented on Wolverine. During the second part of the procedure, they laced his bones with Adamantium, and there was a reaction with his healing factor that bonded the metal with his skeleton. As a result of Dr. Jaime Munoz's research, the Adamantium itself can regrow just as Wolverine's natural bones can.
TRANSPORTATION
Various Motorcycles, Avengers' Quinjet and X-Men Blackbird and X-Men Dove, formerly Gateway, X-Men Stratojet, and Professor Xavier's Rolls Royce.
WEAPONS
Throughout his life, Wolverine has used various bladed weapons, most frequently daggers and, at times, swords; as a samurai, he was especially skilled with the katana. He has also wielded many different types of firearms throughout his career as a soldier, a mercenary, and a spy. While he was highly skilled with firearms and because of his perfect eyesight, it was challenging to miss when firing a gun. He has repeatedly stated that he dislikes them and prefers to use bladed weapons. Despite this, Wolverine used guns frequently after he lost his healing factor.
