Wolverine’s The Best There Is At What He Does Secretly
Nightcrawler: “Wolverine, she called you… Logan?”
X-Men #139 (1980)
Wolverine: “Yup.”
Nightcrawler: “Is that your name?”
Wolverine: “Yup.”
Nightcrawler: “You never told us.”
Wolverine: “You never asked.”
Wolverine has an astonishing number of secrets. He has lived a long life and kept much of it private. Readers knew very little about him when he debuted. Even his real name remained hidden for the first six years. These days, Wolverine doesn’t remember many of his secrets due to amnesia. But we do.
So what are the Top 5 Wolverine Secrets? Let’s find out, bub.
Scene Select
#5 Wolverine’s Angels
[Jubilee is preparing to kill two gangsters]
Wolverine #74 (1993)
Wolverine: “Heck, they killed your parents. It’s a good killin’, ain’t it? Ain’t it?”
Jubilee: “You kill people! You’ve killed so many, and…”
Wolverine: “Yeah. You wanna sit up some night with me and talk to all of ’em?”
Wolverine can be a hard sell for new audiences. He’s short, angry, rude, and often covered in gore from moments of ultraviolence. How do you soften up his image? Give him someone to care for. The first Wolverine Secret is the special women in his life.
Shadowcat was the first teenager Wolverine took under his wing. His training turned the flighty teenybopper into a level-headed ninja master. Once Shadowcat became an adult, Jubilee fell into a similar father-daughter relationship.
Wolverine taking in a teen girl sidekick is half running gag, half rite of passage. He’s repeated the process with Armor, X-23, Ms. Marvel, and the Power Pack, although the last two didn’t become X-Men.
His enemies once weaponized Wolverine’s protectiveness of children. They designed an android bomb to act like a little girl named Elsie Dee and blow him up. Logan defused the bomb and helped Elsie become a hero.
Marvel dropped the ball by casting Pedro Pascal as Mr. Fantastic instead of an older Wolverine. Combine that role with his time as Din Djarin in The Mandalorian and Joel in The Last of Us, and he’d complete the trinity of grizzled badasses raising special children.
#4 Wolverine Secret: Old Man Logan
Logan: “The name’s not Logan, bub. [unsheathes his claws] It’s Wolverine.”
Old Man Logan
Every hero faces their darkest hour. What happens when there’s no way to save the day? When all of your allies are dead or gone? When you’ve completely lost? This Wolverine Secret is how he found his answer.
Fifty years after a supervillain uprising killed most of the heroes, Logan lives a quiet life on a farm. He refuses to fight anymore, even when his family is extorted by the Hulk Gang. Destiny comes knocking in the form of a blind Hawkeye, offering a mission that will get the gang off Logan’s back, which he reluctantly accepts.
Logan and Hawkeye pass through supervillain fiefdoms as they make their way across America. Logan eventually admits that he helped the villains win after Mysterio tricked him into murdering the X-Men.
The duo reach their destination, but learn it was a Red Skull trap designed to catch them. Hawkeye dies before Logan murders the Skull. Returning home, he learns that the Hulk Gang has murdered his family. Logan reembraces his past as Wolverine and massacres the gang.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Wolverine discovered a baby Hulk that he raised as his son. The duo discovered several other children with superpowers or advanced technology, who Wolverine forged into a new generation of Avengers.
Fun Fact: Old Man Logan was the direct inspiration for 2017’s Logan. Marvel appears to be taking another shot at a more comics-accurate rendition in Deadpool and Wolverine.
#3 Sakura Petals Falling
Mariko: “You speak Japanese very well for an American.”
X-Men #118 (1978)
Wolverine: “I had good teachers. I’m not American, though. I’m Canadian. I’m one of the X-Men.”
Mariko: “Shiro has spoken often of you, with much honor. I am Mariko.”
Wolverine: “I’m Wolverine.”
Mariko: “That’s a name?”
Wolverine: “No, Not really. Not among friends. My name is Lo-“
Wolverine has had many lovers during his centuries of life, but they rarely end happily. There is one who tamed his worst instincts and almost married him. This Wolverine Secret is his tragic romance in the Land of the Rising Sun.
The X-Men traveled to Japan for a mission. While seeking a moment’s rest in a garden, Wolverine met Mariko, heir to the Yashida yakuza clan. Logan admired her beauty and kindness, quickly falling in love. They planned to marry, but there was trouble on the horizon.
Mariko’s father Shingen returned from a long absence and announced an arranged marriage for her. Wolverine challenged Shingen to a swordfight for her hand in marriage, but lost because Shingen used poison. Logan won a rematch by impaling Shingen on his claws, making Mariko the new head of the clan.
Wolverine and Mariko’s wedding was interrupted by HYDRA and the Silver Samurai, who wanted to claim Clan Yashida’s resources. Similar disasters kept delaying the wedding until Mariko was fatally poisoned by yakuza boss Matsu’o Tsurayaba. Mariko reconfirmed her love for Logan and had him mercy kill her. Wolverine avenges Mariko every year by hunting down Matsu’o and cutting off another piece of his body.
Fun Fact: Author John Bryne admitted to stealing Mariko’s design and characterization from Shogun’s Lady Toda Mariko. I can only hope that if the MCU introduces Mariko, she will be played by Lady Mariko’s actor, Anna Sawai. The irony is too good to pass up.
#2 Marvel’s Village Bicycle
[Cyclops has assigned Wolverine to three X-Men teams with concurrent missions]
astonishing X-Men #57 (2004)
Wolverine: “Look, bub, I appreciate the faith in me, but I can’t be on all the teams!”
It’s an unspoken rule that a Marvel character hasn’t made it until they’ve met certain heroes. Most of the time, that’s Spider-Man. In the Nineties, it was The Punisher. But Logan is the big kahuna these days. This Wolverine secret is his ludicrous number of crossovers and cameos.
Wolverine began as an independent hero who was recruited for the X-Men. He often knew other characters through his unspoken past. Logan met many new heroes, allowing them to prove their worth by fighting or working alongside him. By the early 2000s, Wolverine was concurrently on the X-Men, two teams of Avengers, having solo adventures, and still doing crossovers. Maybe constant team-ups are why he’s often in a foul mood.
Wolverine’s cameos reached their zenith in 2004. To celebrate his 30th anniversary, Marvel put him on the cover of every comic released that month, regardless of whether he was in the book. That included Marvel’s adaptation of the Anita Blake series, which has no ties to their universe, but still showed the necromancing vampire hunter battling the angry Canadian with knife-hands.
Don’t think this gimmick is limited to the comics. Wolverine’s been the star of every X-Men TV show except for X-Men ‘97. Ditto for the Fox movies, where he only missed Dark Phoenix, The New Mutants, and the first Deadpool. The silly part is that he got three solo spinoffs and the spotlight in Deadpool and Wolverine despite the series already revolving around him.
#1 Wolverine Secret: Weapon Plus
Fantomex: “It’s Weapon Ten, not X.”
New X-Men #129
Weapon X. It was inescapable in the Nineties. Every other Wolverine story had new revelations about the super soldier program that created him, a new victim, another set of false memories. This Wolverine Secret is the true scope of those war crimes.
During World War 1, several scientists discovered the Mutant subspecies and hypothesized a future human-Mutant War. They experimented to create super soldiers for that war and succeeded with Weapon I: Captain America.
The Weapon programs focused on different powers and endgames. Weapon II created cyborg animals, Weapon XIV cloned psychic quintuplets called The Stepford Cuckoos, and Weapon XVI produced a living religion called Allgod. Pre-existing characters like Luke Cage, Man-Thing, and Typhoid Mary were also retroactively made into Weapons gone wrong.
Weapon Plus is still operating, but doesn’t use that name to avoid detection. They’ve switched to fusing different powersets into deadly Weapons. Their successes include American Kaiju (The Lizard mixed with every drug and super serum), Weapon H (who has Wolverine’s powers and can turn into a Hulk), as well as Hellverine (Wolverine transformed into a Ghost Rider)
Didya Get All That?
Even the best mutant can’t hide all his secrets.
Image: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.
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