The man now known as Logan was first called James Howlett. Born to an influential family in a homestead in Alberta, he was a sickly, if normal child. He had two fierce companions, a boy - taller - the son of the groundskeeper and a girl who came to visit from the town from time to time. His time here it seems was relatively short, cut so in part by struggles with family. His mother had been sick for as long as he'd known her and the groundskeeper had been causing problems for his father. He believes that he left the family home after a violent altercation. While hardpressed to decipher it's nature, he remembers this to be when he discovered that he was more than human. He was a mutant, with fantastic abilities. He fled and never looked back, working odd-jobs when it suited. It wasn't until 1914 and the conflicts surrounding the First World War that he truly understood the nature of his abilities. Through no fault of his own, it was entirely possible that he was unable to die.

He fought his way through the better part of the twentieth century with little or no care for his own well being. He lived dangerously. He drank. He put himself in positions that would kill any normal man. He saved people, not for any selfless reasons but because he could. He wondered whether he was doomed to repeat himself for ever. He longed for an escape route. In 1984, that was provided.

It was at this, his lowest point that it seemed that his fortune's might have changed. He was approached by a suit with a unique proposition: join a team of mercenaries like yourself. Use your natural gifts in service of your country. He says yes and everything goes black.

The next thing he remembers to any degree of strength occurs more than a decade later. He remembers a pain like no other and simultaneously a feeling that there were eyes direclty scrutinising him. As he floats in that vat, diodes and needles like tendrils against restless skin, he burns with the pain of rage. In this novel autonomous moment - the first in a long time - the animal within, the creature they created takes charge. It lashes out. Unsheaving the claws they gave him, unable to understand them, he shatters his liquid cage and emerges, far more animal than man. In a rabid frenzy he leaps at the person nearest, bloodlust translating into actions. As the blood drips down he turns to the smell of fresh air. He had to get out. With all the heft the Weapon Plus program had, not a man put in his way could stop the Wolverine escaping. And escape he did, running deep into the forest.

He lived as such for a time. In a confused animalistic furvor he began to hunt alongside the wolf, shelter amongst the trees. Already wild, he could now be free. But this was no life. A man living as a dog. Thoughts of the life before tortured him as he grazed.

The period of the wild man ended with James Hudson.

Finding the pitiful creature while out one night, he took him home with him. With the help of his wife Heather in particular he was nursed back to health. Back to sanity. When that came, Logan a new man, the Hudsons offered to put him up for a while, until he found a job. When they learnt of his skills and abilities, as well as what little of his past he could remember, they made the offer. Wolverine became the newest operative of Department H, a top-secret organisation built as a peacekeeping agency in the heart of Canada. He has served off and on with the agency for the best part of ten years at the point in which out game begins. And not a sniff of a psychic professor to be seen.