James Howlett was born in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada in the year 1885. His mother, Elizabeth Howlett, was married to John Howlett, a rich plantation owner. His father, James Logan, was one of the grounds keepers at John Howlett's plantation. Elizabeth had become dissatisfied with her husband's lack of sex drive at some point in their marriage, and had started a secret relationship with James Logan to satisfy her needs. When Elizabeth found out that she was with James' child, she tried to pass him off as John's son. The ruse was quickly seen through when James was born and looked nothing like his father; indeed, he shared a number of physical attributes with James Logan. When John found out, he spiraled into crippling depression. Elizabeth and John's marriage splintered as each threatened divorce at the drop of a dime, but never truly went through with it for fear of their own son, John Howlett, Jr.

Grandpa Howlett, father of James Howlett, saw his son's failure and set out to raise his grandsons correctly. He would use physical violence to punish young James and John, stating the moniker "Firm, but Fair" as explanation whenever his methods were brought into question. The two boys grew up in relative peace until John Howlett, Jr. first manifested his powers. A group of locals bullies had attacked his illegitimate brother, and John had stepped in to stop them. One of the kids drew a knife when the fight started to become heated. In response, John's body forced the young Howlett into popping his claws. John Howlett chased off the bullies. Eventually Grandpa Howlett learned of the event. Deeming his son a 'demon' for his mutant powers, Grandpa Howlett paid off a group of local thugs to drown John to death.

James was devastated. His only brother, the only person who seemed to care about him, was dead. His parents were too busy fighting to notice that James had started sneaking out of the house, looking for the men who killed John. Eventually, Wolverine found them, and used his own claws to kill the murderers out of revenge. James later found out that his Grandpa had paid the gang to attack John, and confronted his grandfather. When Mister Howlett tried to hit Logan, the boy lashed out and killed his grandpa too. The town rallied together and burned down Elizabeth and John's estate, and forced Logan to leave because of his crimes and mutation. The child was forced to hunt for survival. He became adept at killing, both people and animals alike.

Eventually Logan met an Indian belonging to the Blackfoot Tribe. The Native American adopted the savage Canadian child, bringing Logan back to the tribe where Logan would spend the rest of his pubescent life. Among the Blackfoots, Logan learned how to hunt and live off the land. The natives accepted the boy as one of them, even going so far as to name Logan "Wolverine," after his strange mutation. While among the Blackfoot Tribe, Logan made friends with a pair of children, Rose and Dog. It was Rose who taught Wolverine the value of life, no matter where it came from. These teachings would later guide James on the path to good instead of evil. Dog taught Logan how to track. They would follow deer for miles through the woods, as silent as the darkness and swift as the wind. It was during these lessons that Wolverine's enhanced senses came into fruition. This is also where James met the first love of his life: Silver Fox, a beautiful Indian girl.

Here, with the tribe, James Howlett was happy. But it could not be so. A mysterious figure, Romulus, ordered Victor Creed to attack the tribe. The Blackfoot Tribe was slaughtered, and James would have died if not for his healing factor. Sabertooth dealt a powerful blow to Wolverine's head, causing James' memories to become fuddled and distorted. Knocked into a near feral state by his future archenemy, James traveled across Canada for the next seven years. He lived like an animal until he met an old miner named Smitty, who offered to take the boy in. James lived with Smitty until the start of the Great War.

Both Smitty and James (now going by the name Logan) joined up with the Canadian military when Britain joined the Great War. Smitty and James were separated when Wolverine (under the influencing hand of Romulus) was conscripted into the Devil's Brigade, a special forces/black ops group that didn't answer to the government. The brigade was led by one Silas Burr, who would one day become the mercenary known as Cyber. Romulus used the Devil's Brigade to fulfill his own agenda as the war progressed, and the brigade was sent to fight in Europe. At one point, the Canadian government attempted to arrest Silas Burr for war crimes he committed previously (namely, burning down a school full of German children) but Victor Creed appeared briefly and freed Cyber.

Wolverine was apart of a massive battle that occurred at Ypers, Belgium on April 15, 1915. It was here that Logan first encountered the forces of the Sentinel Order; a secret society made up of Germany's most rich and powerful, headed by the Trask family. Leading the Sentinels on the battlefield was a powerful angel named Azrael. Wolverine engaged Azrael in melee, and the two immortal warriors crossed blade and claws. The duel ended in the Angel of Death being sent back to whence he came, and Wolverine being cursed with eternal depression for as long as he lived.

After the Great War ended, Logan returned to Canada and lived alone until the next World War. When Hitler declared war on all of Western Europe, Logan once again joined the Canadian military. This time, Romulus did not have his puppet join the Devil's Brigade. Rather, Romulus had Logan placed in a unit assigned under Steve Rogers' command. So Wolverine teamed up with the original Captain America and his sidekick, Bucky Barnes. They were tasked with bringing down Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker and HYDRA, who were reportedly creating some kind of doomsday weapon. Logan and the Captain took down HYDRA and disabled the weapon before it was used, but Von Strucker escaped capture. Later, Wolverine was tasked with in infiltrating Mandipoor and freeing a group of children kidnapped by The Hand. Logan defeated The Viper and her ninja allies, freeing the children (one of which being a young Natasha Romanov) and bringing them back to Britain. During the war Logan encountered a vampire known as Bloodscream, an Asgardian troll named Roughouse, a mutant named the Silver Samurai, and even Nick Fury himself. Wolverine had been present in Nagasaki when the nuke was dropped on the city. If not for his healing factor, Logan would have died.

After the war ended, Logan decided to stay in Japan. He met a master martial artist and Samurai named Orgun, who offered to train Wolverine. Logan accepted, and the two worked together from dawn till dusk for years honing Logan's combat skills, but armed and unarmed. He also learned the code of honor that all Samuari followed, and took it up himself on Orgun's suggestion. Now knowledgeable of the code of Bushido, Logan found himself a home. It was then that he met a beautiful woman named Itsu, whom Logan started a family with. One day, while Logan was out training with Ogun, Romulus sent Sabertooth to murder Itsu and steal Wolverine's son, Daken. Devastated, James Howlett returned to Canada where he was brought on to the Weapon X Program by Romulus. Professor Thorton, Dr. Abraham Cornelius, and Carol Hines were brought in to examine the mutant. It was when The Professor discovered the extent of Wolverine's healing factor that he had the idea to cover his bones in Adamantium. The procedure would kill any normal human, and most superhumans, but with a healing factor like Logan's his body could fight off the Adamantium poisoning and keep him alive. Thorton's procedure was given the green light, and they proceeded to implant Wolverine with the Adamantium upgrades.

With that, Logan's superiors had his mind wiped once more and had Wolverine join Team X. Team X was a group mutants who worked as black ops special forces troops who did whatever Romulus told them to. No one knew exactly who Romulus was, but they knew that he was an ancient mutant with the ability to coarse animals to follow his bidding. The animal within Wolervine had betrayed him, and Logan was under Romulus' control for as long as his feral mind remained intact. For Logan to break free, he would have to acknowledge that he was more man than monster.

Team X consisted of Wolverine, Sabertooth, Maverick, John Wraith, Mastodon and later Deadpool, Lady Deathstrike and X-23. The latter three were all created using Wolverine's DNA and possessed various parts of Wolverine's mutation.

Team X operated during various wars and conflicts throughout the years. They battled the Sentinel Order's Asian division in Korea during the Korean War. When the Cold War began, Wolverine and Sabertooth were sent to Russia to locate a device capable of creating Carbonium, a metal similar to Adamantium but easier to synthesize, and less poisonous to humans when handled without the proper equipment. They encountered the agent known as Omega Red before escaping with the device and delivering it to Romulus. The team split up briefly when the Vietnam War began, with Wolverine sent to take down an out of control super soldier named Nuke. Logan succeeded in bringing the man down, and brought him back to Weapon X before being sent back to Vietnam. Wolverine continued to assassinate various politicians, generals and activists who stood in the way of mutant progress. Romulus' forces clashed with the Trask family and their Sentinel Order as history continued to move on, oblivious to the secret war occurring in the shadows.

Now it is 2012, and hiding their war is becoming harder and harder. The newest member of the Trask dynasty, Bolivar Trask, has taken over Trask Industries in America and started to work on the Sentinel program. Mutants are going missing every day, and Romulus believes Trask is somehow involved. So he was assigned Wolverine with the task of hunting down everyone involved in the scheme and bringing them to justice, freeing his mutant brothers and sisters in the process.

The destruction of the Weapon X facility and the death of Professor Thorton changed everything. The revelation that Team X had been under the mental control of Romulus shook the team to their core. With this information in hand, the team split up and went their separate ways. Wolverine was captured by SHIELD and imprisoned for six months for his crimes against the United States and abroad. During his imprisonment, Logan learns that a team of heroes called the Avengers have formed and taken the Incredible Hulk into their ranks, pardoning him for his past crimes. This news distresses the mutant assassin; that monster had been responsible for his capture. It had caused more damage than Wolverine did in his entire life time; every time Banner let it loose, the Hulk cost the nations of the world billions of dollars in collateral. But who was sitting in a jail cell, surrounded by fifty men armed with the most advanced firearms on the market? Not the Hulk. Just the confused, mind controlled mutant who only wanted to be left alone. He let that frustration and anger that boiled in his gut transform into hatred for the green giant. He'd kill Bruce Banner if it was the last thing he did. That was a promise. A covenant. One he planned to keep.

Eventually word reached Nick Fury that Logan Howlett had been under the mental influence of a far more sinister threat; nothing he'd done was done under his own free will. Therefore, SHIELD's judicial advisers found the mutant to be innocent. But Nick Fury wouldn't let an invincible, immortal assassin go; such an asset had to be exploited. So Fury made a deal with Wolverine. The mutant killer would be allowed to go free. But whenever SHIELD needed some under the table assistance, Logan would work for them; if he refused, they'd hunt him to the ends of the earth. Nick, of course, simply forgot to tell James that he had been found innocent. He spun the proposal as the only way Logan would see the light of day once more. So Wolverine, of course, accepted. The mutant bought a flat in Hell's Kitchen and tried to start up a normal life. He got a job at a local restaurant working in the kitchen, joined a local MMA gym, and even started dating.

By the end of 2013, things were looking up for Wolverine. The few times he was called to work for Nick Fury's "X-Force" were the only times Logan had to pop his claws. He worked closely with SHIELD's mutant team to take down Bolivar Trask and his Sentinel Order. The X-Force fought against the Hulk when the beast went on one of its rampages; Wolverine tried his best to kill Banner, but the Avengers intervened and the X-Force had to retreat to prevent public exposure of their operations.

In February of 2014, Wolverine met Charles Xavier while on assignment for SHIELD. He brought a number of orphaned mutants he'd freed from Trask's forces to the X-mansion, handing them over to the professor. Logan, intrigued by the X-Men's operations, chose to stick around the school and lend a helping hand. Professor Xavier helped Wolverine remember his past. Logan offered his extensive martial arts knowledge to the X-men, training them extensively in the art of personal combat. Wolverine preforms a number of black ops for SHIELD within Latverian Union territory.

By mid-2015, Wolverine was an official member of the X-Men and Fury released Logan from his X-Force obligations. He chose to help SHIELD whenever they needed it; he'd grown attached to the other members of the X-Force, and it offered a way for Wolverine to reconnect with some of his old teammates. It was actually through the machinations of Fury that Wolverine and X-23 reunited, leading to Laura becoming a student at Xavier's school. Kang the Conqueror appeared during that year, and Wolverine (alongside some of the X-Men) assisted the Avengers in bringing the time traveling tyrant down. Another feud between the runt and the giant ensued before the latter was sucked into a time portal by Kang and vanished for the year.

With the return of the Hulk, now calling itself Maestro and possessing an extraordinary intelligence, Wolverine's distrust of the creature grows. The two continue their battles, Xavier and Captain America's attempts to stop them from fighting proving to be less than useless. The X-Force becomes more active in Eastern Europe and Latveria, sabotaging the east as best they can. When war breaks out in 2017, the X-Force embeds itself in enemy territory. The team takes on the guise of a traveling circus, Wolverine now being known as Revolto the Clown. Certain members of the X-Men join the X-Force to help with the war effort. Wolverine duels Doctor Doom personally; he fails to kill the dictator.

The X-Force and the Maestro-led Avengers have a falling out, leading to a small skirmish. The X-Force decide to abandon the fight in France and the UK, leaving the Avengers to that as they attempt to demolish Latveria's infrastructure from the inside out.

By winter of 2019, the X-Force, X-Men and Avengers unite and assault Victor Von Doom's castle with the help of helicarrier Hermes. Wolverine personally leads the mutant attack on Christmas Day, following Maestro and Loki inside. The extinction level event occurs and most of the world is completely wiped out. The annual Avengers New Years party is cancelled.

Maestro's rise to supreme leader of the survivors of the apocalypse is bloody and violent. Anyone who resisted was unceremoniously executed, proving to Wolverine what he'd thought of the Hulk all along: he was a bloodthirsty monster that needed to be put down. Logan rallied what support he could and went into hiding, fighting Maestro at every turn. The Avengers were killed off one by one. Wolverine's rag-tag resistance wasn't able to stop the increasingly insane Hulk's conquest of Latveria, and eventually they ceased fighting all together and ventured into the badlands to avoid the Maestro's wraith. With the destruction of hundreds of mutant communities in 2023, Wolverine disappears off the radar completely. He sets himself up somewhere in the Turkish wilderness, creating a tiny safe haven for wandering mutants from the rabid packs of Maestro's followers. The nameless little town, nicknamed Utopia by its two dozen or so residents, would grow under the vigilante eye of the Wolverine. Fifty some years would pass before Wolverine heard from anyone he knew back in the golden days. He received an ominous message from an old frenemy, claiming that the resistance was on the rise once more.

Bone Claws: One of Wolverine's mutations, Logan was born with six 12-inch long claws that he can protract and retract out of and into his forearm at will. When retracted, these claws are housed between the skin and muscles of his arms. When popped, the claws come out between the knuckles of Logan's hands and cut through the skin and muscle located there. These wounds are temporary thanks to Wolverine's enhanced healing factor, though it's still quite painful whenever Logan releases them. These claws, like the rest of Wolverine's bones, are coated in Adamantium and can cut through nearly anything.
UPDATE: Logan's claws are as sharp as ever, but he worries that one of these days he'll get hit by someone too high above his weight class and his weakening bones will be damaged. On the flip side, Wolverine has adapted his claws perfectly into his fighting style, making him more dangerous than when he was younger.

Healing Factor: Another of Wolverine's many mutations, Logan possesses a powerful healing factor. This healing factor can repair Logan's body from nearly any injury, from anything as minor as a cut to complete and total vaporization. As long as a single cell remains alive, Wolverine can regenerate his body; combined with his Adamantium laced bone structure, Logan is effectively immortal. The time it takes Logan to heal depends upon the injuries he has sustained. Something like a small cut in his skin will heal in seconds. More complex structures, such as bones or organs, take minutes. If reduced to nothing but his Adamantium skeleton, it would take Wolverine anywhere from thirty to forty five minutes to regenerate back to full strength.
UPDATE: Wolverine's healing factor has degraded somewhat, due to the constant radiation exposure as well as the passing of time. He heals slower, and has begun to grow old.

Superhuman Senses: Yet another of Logan's mutations, Wolverine's senses are far superior to those of humans and even animals. Logan can see for miles with perfect clarity in the dark. He can hear a pin drop from a mile away, if he focuses his hearing to their maximum strength. Logan has learned to control his hearing to keep it from being distracting. Wolverine can pick out scents from things that haven't been nearby in weeks, and is able to track them across continents. Combining all of his enhanced senses together, Wolverine is able to detect when a person is lying due to chemicals changes in their systems.
UPDATE: Logan's senses have begun to degrade with his old age and radiation exposure.

Super Strength: Thanks to his constant cellular regeneration and unbreakable skeleton, Logan has developed strength impossible for a normal human. Wolverine can bench press two tons, snap chains with his bare hands, and throw half a ton of weight across a room.
UPDATE: James' strength has lessened as well.

Super Speed: Similar to his Super Strength, Wolverine has used his mutations to surpass human limitations. Logan can sprint fast enough that he disappears from the human eye, and can effectively dodge bullets by following the gunman's hand and moving out of the way before the shooter's eyes register that Logan has, indeed, moved.
UPDATE: Wolverine has slowed down in his old age, but he's still pretty fast.

Enhanced Immune System: Logan's healing factor extends to protecting him from not only physical injury but also sickness and extreme weather conditions. Wolverine can hold his breathe for forty minutes before passing out. He can sleep in subzero climates completely naked.
UPDATE: While his immune system is still incredible, Wolverine's age and radiation poisoning have taken its toll on his body's functions.

Adamantium-laced Skeleton: The Weapon X Program has surrounded all of James Howlett's bones in the indestructible metal known as Primary Adamantium. Nothing on earth or beyond can bend or dent it. The only powers assumed capable of damaging Adamantium are cosmic forces like the Phoenix Force or Galactus. If this is the case, however, is not known for sure.
UPDATE: Decades of one on one fights with the Hulk and other powerful heroes and villains have left Logan's skeleton weaker. Adamantium isn't as indestructible as it once appeared; Logan fears he's a couple of poundings away from receiving a permanent scar to his bones.

Martial Arts Master: When Logan was conscripted into the Weapon X Program, he had a number of martial art styles taught to him by the world's premier masters in the arts. Some of the styles Wolverine has mastered include: Jiu-Jitsu, Taekwondo, Silat, Kung-Fu, Muay Thai, Krav Maga, and American boxing. Logan Howlett is one of the most versatile martial artists on the planet, with the skill to go toe-to-toe with Captain America, Black Panther, and even the immortal Iron Fist. While not as technically masterful as those listed, Wolverine's powers make up for it in a fight.
UPDATE: Unlike his mutant powers, Logan's skill as a martial artist have only grown. He's mastered more styles than his younger years, and claims to have surpassed some of the greats of the old days. This utter mastery of combat is what allows the aging hero to still battle Maestro and his forces; he's learned the perfect way to fight the Hulk, making him infinitely more dangerous than when they first fought.