Name: James "Logan" Howlett
Aliases: Wolverine, Weapon X
Age: Who the hell knows, pretty sure he doesn't even know.
Gender: Male
Height: 6 feet, 2 inches
Weight: 181 pounds
Build: Muscular
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Black
Skin Tone: Fair
Tattoos/Scars/Piercings: None
Loner * Animalistic
Personality: Wolverine is a gruff loner who had a strong sense of personal honor. He also had a wild, animal-like nature to him and a savage, or "berserker," rage which he tried to control. He is also perfectly at home in the wilderness. He is known as one of the most fearless, brave, and dangerous men in the world, stated by Steve Rogers. Wolverine had established himself quickly as the X-Man most willing to permanently deal with their adversaries.
Wolverine's life began in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada, sometime between 1882 and 1885, a couple of weeks before the 19th of April. 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' grounds-keeper, Thomas Logan. As a boy, James was notably frail and prone to bouts of 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., in 1897. James was constantly under the pressure of his grandfather, Mr. Howlett, who believed that James required constant punishment by a strong hand, in order to be raised properly. "Firm, but fair," was what Mr. Howlett said to justify his abusive actions.
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 towards Rose, which James reported to his father. In retaliation, Dog killed James' puppy, leading to the expulsion of Thomas and Dog from the estate.
Thomas, in a drunken stupor and armed with a shotgun, 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 the backs of 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 and Rose later 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 of "Logan", in order to hide his identity. Within months, as the hard work of mining and the tough environment provoked traumatic changes in his body, Logan grew to be unusually healthy and ferocious, displaying enhanced agility and strength, possessing animal-like heightened senses that rivaled any animal's and learning to break the rocks by hating and bullying them.
Later, Logan stated that it was a piece of his grandfather's devil personality. In his adulthood, James came to resemble the appearance of the groundskeeper much more closely than his legal father. Logan became a valuable and admirable figure among the small community of miners, due to his hard work and strong ethics, earning him the respect of his peers.
Even the foreman, Smitty, who became a surrogate father figure to Logan, was impressed with him. Logan even gained the nickname "Little Smitty", due to their similar work ethics, and this brought him into conflict with Cookie Malone, Smitty's original favorite.
Cookie took an instant dislike to Logan and continually hurt him, until Smitty came to his rescue. Cookie even shortened the fuse to an explosive of Logan's, killing five men. Cookie also cut Logan and Rose's rations, so Logan hunted deer in the woods and gave the extra to the neighbors, which made him more loved. Logan was immune to the elements, due to his healing factor, and even ran with the wolves in the forest, learning to hunt like an animal. Logan also defeated Cookie in a cage match, where he earned the nickname "the Wolverine." It was said that no one could beat Logan in a cage fight. After his victories, Logan would hear "It's not the size of the dog in the fight. It's the size of the fight in the dog" a phrase that he repeated out loud to make it come true. During this period, Logan developed strong feelings for Rose, but could not act on them for the sake of their guise as cousins. Smitty, who had been mentoring Logan all these years, had also grown close to Rose and the two eventually fell in love and became engaged, much to the scorn and surprise of Logan, who later accepted the situation for the sake of Rose's happiness.
Meanwhile, his grandfather, Mr. Howlett, was in failing health and asked Dog to find Rose and his grandson, so he could make peace with them before he died. Dog agreed; however, Dog (who had become a physically formidable man himself) decided to track them down, so he could kill Logan. Dog hunted Logan and Rose down so easily that it seemed he had a preternatural skill for tracking.
On the night that Smitty was due to leave the mining town with Rose, Logan fought him but allowed him to win, hoping to reconcile with him and Rose, but Dog finally found and confronted Logan. Dog reminded Logan of his past as James Howlett and that fateful night back on the estate that had changed all their lives. The two fought fiercely in the middle of the street and, despite being the physically stronger of the two, Dog was eventually overpowered by the enraged Logan.
As Dog lay unconscious, Logan unsheathed his claws, for the first time in public (to the shock of everyone watching), and was about to deal the deathblow, when Rose leaped in to stop him, but was accidentally impaled by his claws. Horrified, Logan held her in his arms as she died. Stricken with grief and guilt for the death of his first love, Logan fled into the nearby woods, where he lived in self-imposed exile in a feral state with a pack of wolves for months, if not years
Logan became a mercenary in Madripoor. Sometime later he met Chang, a businessman working for the firm Landau, Luckman & Lake. He met and romanced Seraph, a diminutive woman employed by Romulus, who had instructed her to form such relationship. In the next years Logan realized that Seraph and other acknowledges were under a single authority, but he didn't know, or care who it was. Possibly on his first trip to Japan, Logan encountered members of the ninja sect known as the Hand. The Hand extorted Logan into fighting Sabretooth, who was another Romulus operative murdering women in Tokyo. Logan defeated Sabretooth and thought he was dead, without knowing of Sabretooth's healing factor.
At some point later, Logan traveled to another frontier community in the Canadian Rockies and met a young Blackfoot Indian woman, named Silver Fox, with whom he fell in love. The two shared a cabin together and lived happily for a time. Logan had made a new life for himself: hunting and farm chores around the homestead now his daily routine, but, as ever, there were other forces at work in his life. On Logan's birthday, Sabretooth, possibly under Romulus' orders, brutally attacked Silver Fox, raping her and leaving her for dead, the first of many birthday "surprises" from him to come. Enraged, Logan battled him in a bar, only to be defeated and left for dead. Sabretooth then manipulated a feral, mindless Logan into believing the people of a nearby town had ordered Silver Fox's death, prompting Logan to slaughter the inhabitants of the town, persuading him that "the townspeople are afraid of you--they don't want you around. So, they got rid of the one thing keeping you here."
Later, employed by the Hudson's Bay Company as a fur trader to the Blackfoot Indians, Logan defeated the demonic snake-worm, known as Uncegila, a feat which earned him the Blackfoot warrior name of "Skunk-Bear" (or "Wolverine").
Abroad, largely unseen conspiracy thus began to shape Logan, now robbed of his conscience and free will, into the perfect killer. Wherever Logan went, Creed, one of his handlers, was not far behind.
In 1939, when World War II began, Logan returned to the Devil's Brigade, again under Burr's command, although his memories of Burr's crimes were mostly purged. Seraph was like Logan's handler in Madripoor, and she prepared him for more covert missions for Romulus. In the summer of 1941, both she and Logan worked with the U.S. super-soldier Captain America and others in order to sabotage an alliance between the Hand and Baron Strucker, luring the Hand's Jonin, their leader, out of hiding. Natasha Romanoff, now a Romulus operative, wanted to kill the Jonin, but Logan, regretting how he trained her to be an assassin, killed the Jonin himself. Later that same year, Logan, under orders to recruit or kill the Cap, worked with him and Bucky in Tunisia, where Logan met Sgt. Nick Fury. Finally, Logan decided not to kill Captain America, creating a rift between Seraph and himself.
In 1942, Logan spent some time in the Sobibor Death Camp in Poland, where he psychologically tortured three Nazi commandants by simply never speaking and returning every time they ordered him executed. While at Sobibor, Logan was known as "Prisoner Zero."[43] A year later he surfaced in Newell, California, overseeing inhumane experimentation on Japanese prisoners of war. Even though Logan had been a hardened killer, he was atypically cruel during this period, his personality probably altered by Romulus. In 1944, Logan participated as a paratrooper for the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, during the Normandy landings on D-Day (June 6th), as well as the liberation of the Netherlands. He may have also been a spy for the Allied Forces, conducting many special covert missions. In 1945, Logan was captured by Japanese soldiers in Japan, where he was sent to a prison camp near Hiroshima. Logan escaped from his cell along with Lt. Ethan Warren, an American soldier who was also captured, and found refuge and love in a local Japanese girl, named Atsuko.[44] Unfortunately, Lt. Warren, himself a mutant, returned and murdered the girl and the two men fought, until both were caught in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that destroyed much of the city. Logan survived, but was devastated to lose another woman in his life.
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. Nevertheless, Weapon X only used mutants as superhuman operatives on international tasks. He was then placed on the Black Ops squad run by the CIA, called Team X, with Sabretooth and Silver Fox (it's unknown if they remembered their past history at this point), 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 1963 Silver Fox betrayed Wolverine and Sabretooth to enemy soldiers, and she fled Weapon X.
In 1968, Wolverine 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 he 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. The team retrieved the Carbonadium Synthesizer and Janice Hollenbeck, a double agent. However, Sabretooth, apparently was aware that Wolverine had regained his memories, killed Janice to reinforce Wolverine's conditioning about innocents dying when he overstepped Romulus' boundaries. He quit Team X, but fell back under Romulus' influence, turning to atypically sadistic activities. On that same year, while in Vietnam as a Russian adviser, Logan tortured and brainwashed Frank Simpson, now a soldier, into becoming a murderous madman, known as Nuke.
Eventually, Team X did dissolve, and despite his relatively exemplary service record, Logan drifted out of official channels for a time. His memory of his bone claws returned (or perhaps more accurately, was allowed to return by Romulus), and Logan began to see himself as nothing more than a mercenary and a hired killer. Either because of this change in self-perception or more memory tampering, Logan was on better terms with Creed than he had been in years, considering him a good man to have his back. Times were changing in America, however, as the general public and the government slowly began to recognize the presence of mutants in their midst. Logan soon realized the government was now actively hunting mutants. Deciding to make a stand against this sort of treatment, Logan recruited Creed to help him obstruct the government’s plans.
Logan and Creed rescued or located a number of young mutants. Logan brought his recruits to a safe house in Upstate New York for further training. Creed took a particular liking to Holo, an eighteen-year-old girl with illusion powers who helped him feel like a man beneath his bestial exterior. Seeing a chance at happiness, Creed tried to get out of the fight and take Holo with him before things turned bad, but Logan and Holo convinced him to remain with the group. Holo believed in Logan and helped calm his own doubts about his goals and leadership. Logan’s plan was to pit the government against the bottom dollar, using sabotage and guerrilla tactics to make hunting mutants too expensive to continue. Once the agency was weakened, he and perhaps Creed would offer their services as mutant agents voluntarily in exchange for the younger mutants being allowed to remain free and unmolested by the government.
Unfortunately, the government pushed back far harder than Logan anticipated. The fanatical anthropologist turned cyberneticist Bolivar Trask provided the agency with mutant-hunting Sentinel prototypes, and the deformed mutant Virus used his mental powers to infiltrate Logan’s group on behalf of the government. Despite the warnings and plea for common ground proposed by Agent Fred Duncan, a violent raid was launched on Logan’s safe house, leading to a number of deaths. The worst of it came when Virus mentally forced Creed to lethally wound Holo with his claws. As the distraught Creed fled with Holo in a vain attempt to get her medical care, Logan stayed behind as his dream, and the house literally collapsed around him.
In the aftermath, the mutant department did collapse from over-expenditure. Only the cautious Fred Duncan was still employed to research “the mutant agenda,” and the government’s position on the matter went back to square one. Despite this “victory,” Logan hated himself for failing Victor and getting the others killed. He was trying to drown his sorrows when Creed arrived at the bar to confront him. Victor made it clear he blamed Logan for Holo’s death, and costing Creed the only chance at happiness he would likely ever see. Creed coldly told Logan he wasn’t there to kill him, but if Logan ever picked himself up and dared to be happy about something again, Creed would be there to take it away from him every time. As Victor departed, Logan stumbled out into the parking lot. He was met by Canadian government agents and, with nowhere else to go, Logan agreed to return to service.
But before leaving Canada, while in his Lotus Seven, Logan was pumped full of Thorazine, beaten, and kidnapped, by a group of armed men from the Weapon X Project, possibly under Romulus' orders. The man known only as the Professor, Dr. Abraham Cornelius, and Dr. Carol Hines began to examine Logan while he floated in a containment tank. Logan's skeleton, including his claws, was bonded with the indestructible metal known as adamantium, making it unbreakable, and his personality was buried beneath the most intense brainwashing he had ever undergone. While in the tank, Logan was put under deep hypnosis, telling him that he was not a man or individual, and being a man disgusted him. The Project wanted Logan to believe that he was an obedient animal and that individuality lead to suffering and death. Reduced to a near-mindless state, Logan was forced by Weapon X to slaughter every inhabitant of the small town of Roanoke as a test. Logan proved too difficult for the Weapon X Program to control and, after many years, he broke free of the programming, fell into a berserker fury and escaped the facility, with the help of the Winter Soldier, killing nearly everyone except for the Professor, Dr. Cornelius, Dr. Hines, and Malcolm Colcord, who later became the Director of a new Weapon X Program. Wolverine's healing factor was probably exhausted by his ordeal, since over the next few years he healed more slowly than ever before.
Driven into savagery by the experiment, Logan wandered the forests of the Canadian Rockies for months, living in a feral state, ironically, not far from the place of his birth. It was during this period Logan saved the life of a creature, known as Hunter in Darkness, one of a race of feral beings apparently mystical in origin. A psychic link of some sort was established between the two, to resurface in later years. On occasion, Logan's human personality surfaced, to the extent that, years later, he was able to recall pleasant experiences in these woods. Years after this experience, Logan's memories of much of his past would remain clouded, as a result of the Weapon X experiment and additional false memories during the procedure as well.
During his leadership of Alpha Flight, Wolverine was approached by Charles Xavier, attracted by his fight with the Hulk (as Romulus expected), who was looking for mutants to help his students, the X-Men, to escape from the island-being known as Krakoa. Wolverine resigned from Department H to accompany Professor Xavier and rescue the captured X-Men.[50] Wolverine, under Romulus' instructions, tried to assassinate Xavier, but he broke Romulus' hold on Wolverine by blocking the effects of his programming. Neither man knew their enemy's identity at the time. After Krakoa was defeated, Wolverine decided to stay with the X-Men, at the School for Gifted Youngsters.
- Enhanced Mutant Physiology: Wolverine is a mutant who had been given an unbreakable skeleton by the Weapon X Program and augmented by Apocalypse. 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 primary mutant power is his accelerated healing process that enabled him to regenerate damaged or destroyed tissue with far greater efficiency than an ordinary human. He can regenerate greatly damaged or destroyed tissue within a few seconds. Wolverine's accelerated healing powers have been commonly referred to as his mutant healing factor. The full extent and speed of Wolverine's healing factor isn't known. He has been shown to fully heal from numerous gunshot wounds, severe burns covering most of his body, and regenerate missing eyes within a matter of seconds. Among the more extreme depictions of his accelerated healing factor involves him having his skin, muscles, and internal organs incinerated from his skeleton only to fully regenerate the tissue within minutes. He can simply regenerate missing limbs or organs in a matter of hours. Adamantium played a crucial role in the speed of Wolverine's healing as well because of the fact that it produced a poison that his immune system fought off regularly. It is said that without the adamantium, his healing rate would increase. This power even amends psychological wounds inflicted as a result of traumatic experiences; however, Wolverine's healing powers forces his mind to suppress the memories, sometimes resulting in amnesia. Wolverine sometimes calls this his mental scar tissue. Wolverine's healing also provides him with an extended lifespan by slowing the effects of the aging process. He retains the health, appearance, and physical vitality of a man in the physical prime of his life, despite being well over 100 years of age. After his apparent resurrection, it seems he has regained his healing factor.
- Superhuman Strength: His natural strength is augmented by the demand placed on his musculature due to the presence of over 50kg/100 pounds of Adamantium bonded to his skeleton, which also removes the natural limitations of the human skeletal structure by allowing him to lift weights that would damage a human skeleton. Wolverine has been depicted with sufficient strength to break steel chains, support the weight of a dozen men with one arm, and lift the 955-pound Ursa Major over his head before tossing him across a room.
- Superhuman Speed: Wolverine is able to 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 to have been more enhanced than anything else, as he has frequently kept up with Spider-Man in combat, and blitzed people before they pull their trigger fingers.
- Superhuman Durability: Wolverine's bones and muscles are harder and denser than that of an ordinary human. Due to his healing factor and Adamantium skeleton, he can virtually heal from any injuries that result in massive tissue damage or loss such as multiple gunshots wounds, slashes, puncture wounds, blunt force trauma, etc.
- 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 actual humans.[18] He is able to physically exert himself at peak capacity for several days before fatigue toxins in his blood begin to impair him. He has shown himself capable of fighting Omega Red for at least 17 hours without any rest, despite he was exposed to Omega Red's death spores. His lung capacity is at the superhuman level enabling him to hold his breath for extended periods of time underwater and on multiple occasions he was able to fight against the Hulk underwater for long periods of time.
- Superhuman Reflexes: Wolverine's reflexes are similarly enhanced, they are also superior to those possessed by the finest human specimens. His reflexes are comparable to that of Captain America, due to his superhumanly acute senses. He is able to dodge from multiple gunmen at close-range, though he relied mostly on his healing factor. On several occasions, he was able to dodge Cyclops's optic blasts with ease.
- Superhuman Agility: Wolverine's agility, balance and bodily coordination are enhanced to levels far beyond the natural physical limits and capabilities of the finest human specimen. Wolverine's agility is sufficient to allow him to dodge multiple bullets. Other times, he is able to jump nearly 30 ft high without a running start.
- Insulated Weather Adaptation: Wolverine's body is highly resistant to certain elemental extremes, particularly cold, to the extent that he could sleep nude in subarctic conditions with no apparent injury.
- Animal Empathy: Wolverine has the ability to sense the emotional state of animals on a basic level such as fear, anger, happiness or pain. He can even communicate with them to make the animal aware of his actions and or his intent.
- Superhumanly Acute Senses: Wolverine possesses superhumanly acute senses that are comparable to those of certain animals. He can see at far greater distances, with perfect clarity, than an ordinary human. He retains this same level of clarity even in near total darkness and complete darkness. His hearing is enhanced in a similar manner, allowing him to detect sounds ordinary humans cannot hear at a greater distance, enough to hear a teardrop in another room that has thick walls with enough focus. He is able to recognize people and objects by scent, even if they are well hidden. He can track a target by scent, even if the scent has been greatly eroded by time and weather factors, with an extraordinary degree of success. Wolverine can also use his keen sense of smell to detect lies due to chemical changes within a person's scent. These senses stems from, at least partially, his constant cellular regeneration, as well as his enhanced physical capabilities.
- Retractable Bone Claws: Wolverine's skeleton includes six retractable 12-inch 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 skin between the knuckles tears and bleeds, but the blood loss is quickly halted by his healing factor. Wolverine can unsheathe any number of his claws at once, although he needs to keep his wrists straight at the moment 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 they are extended. The claws are made of bone, unlike the claws of normal mammals which are made of keratin, and were originally believed to be bionic Adamantium implants. Like his son Daken, the bone claws are sharp and dense enough to slice through substances as durable as metals, wood, and stone
