Wolverine: 50 Years of X-cellence

In popular entertainment, the term “breakout character” applies to someone who’s meant to be part of a supporting cast, but ascends to a leading role. You can easily name some of the biggest: The Fonz, Urkel, Mr. Spock, and J.R. Ewing. But in the comic pages, few characters have leaped from playing a small role in one story to spearheading the explosive growth of a comic book team that became a pop culture juggernaut. Fifty years later and co-headlining the biggest box office of hit of 2024, there may be no bigger breakout out character than the mighty mutant from the north, Wolverine.

In 1974, Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Roy Thomas suggested the creation of a Canadian character named Wolverine who would share the short fuse of his animal namesake. John Romita Sr., famous for drawing some of the most popular Spider-Man stories of the era, designed the blue and yellow costume; he also recalls adding the notion of retractable claws. Writer Len Wein and artist Herb Trimpe introduced Wolverine in the final panel of The Incredible Hulk #180 in October 1974. The character made his first full appearance in the following issue; a super-powered agent of the Canadian government with enhanced senses and a regenerative “healing factor” that made him extremely hard to kill, Wolverine helped the Hulk battle supernatural monster the Wendigo. After putting in a brief appearance in the story’s wrap-up in #182, Wolverine shuffled off-stage, as it wasn’t uncommon for characters to be created, introduced for one story, and then fade into obscurity.

The following year, Wein was writing a special issue that was designed to revamp Marvel’s languishing X-Men series. The X-Men had launched in 1963 during a period of massive expansion for Marvel and featured “mutant” heroes who were born with their powers. Though the book was decently popular, it struggled in sales. Beginning with issue #67 in April of 1970, X-Men went into a kind of hiatus, with the series reprinting old stories. The characters would pop up in cameos in other books, but they wouldn’t get new adventures in their own book for five years. As Marvel got around to rebooting the team, their then-owners, Cadence Industries, weighed in with the opinion that the new team should feature characters from several countries, broadening the appeal in the international market. Wein and artist Dave Cockrum took that note and ran with it.

In assembling the team for Giant Size X-Men #1, Wein and Cockrum added four brand-new characters: Storm (from Kenya), Colossus (Soviet Union), Nightcrawler (Germany), and Thunderbird (an Apache from Camp Verde, Arizona). They also pulled in three pre-existing minor characters: Banshee (Ireland), Sunfire (Japan), and Wolverine. The new characters were recruited to rescue the original team from the sentient island/creature, Krakoa. Under the command of original X-Man Cyclops, the new team saved the old team. In the aftermath, the original X-Men departed, except for Cyclops, who remained as leader. The issue was a hit, and new stories resumed in issue #94. However, Wein and new co-writer Chris Claremont realized they had a problem: Thunderbird and Wolverine had basically the same personality, so one had to go. With issue #95, Thunderbird was killed off, which was then a rare occurrence in super-hero comics. The new line-up and the shock of a brand-new hero’s death kicked the revamped series into high gear.

With issue #97, Claremont began weaving the labyrinthine plots that would become his, and the book’s, trademark. Wolverine slowly began to emerge as a fan favorite, as his combative personality made him a natural foil for Cyclops. As more information was slowly revealed about the character’s mysterious past (he had no memory of where his adamantium skeleton and claws came from; his name was Logan; he had ninja training, etc.), the more fans got interested. But his biggest moment came in May 1980’s Uncanny X-Men #133. With the rest of the team captured by the Hellfire Club, Wolverine got the spotlight in a bravura five-page opening sequence that essentially established the character as Marvel’s biggest badass. Taking down the Club’s guards on his own, Wolverine squares off against the last one with a classic monologue that made him the Dirty Harry of comics. After that issue, his popularity went through the roof.

By 1982, Wolverine was one of the first characters to get his own mini-series at Marvel. The four-issue Wolverine by Claremont and artist Frank Miller added more layers to Wolverine’s past in Japan while setting up conflicts to be mined in the regular X-Men book. That same year, Wolverine was prominently featured in an episode of the popular Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends animated series; in a story involving the X-Men, Wolverine was front in center of a Saturday morning audience that might not have seen him before. When Marvel made a deal with Mattel to produce both a comic and toy line named Secret Wars in 1984, Wolverine became the first X-Man to get an action figure (alongside major X-villain Magneto). During the 1980s, Uncanny X-Men surged to become the best-selling comic book in America (the series was selling over 460,000 copies per single issue while occasionally shipping two issues a month).

Wolverine finally got his own solo comic series in 1988, making it the third ongoing X-Men spinoff launched in the ’80s. In 1989, the X-Men starred in an animated pilot with Wolverine in a prominent role. It seemed like the characters couldn’t get much bigger, but then the ’90s hit. Marvel decided that the X-Men were big enough that they could handle two monthly books with half of the team in one series and the other half in a second book. X-Men #1, headlined by Wolverine and Cyclops, debuted to sales of over eight million copies for the first issue; it remains the best-selling single comic book issue in America to date. 1992 saw the launch of a wildly popular  coin-op arcade game, but even bigger was X-Men: The Animated Series on Fox (featuring Wolverine, of course), which averaged around 23 million viewers per episode across its five-year run (for context, the highest-rated current prime-time show, Monday Night Football, pulls in just under 19 million viewers).

The X-Men property had been rumored to make it to the big screen since the 1980s, but the X-Men finally picked up movie momentum when Fox and producer Lauren Shuler Donner acquired the film rights in 1994. The Usual Suspects director Bryan Singer boarded the project, and filming ultimately began in 1999. Wolverine was positioned as the main character, and the actor cast for the role was . . . Dougray Scott. However, the Scottish actor had to back out due to injuries and scheduling conflicts. Russell Crowe had been approached to fill the role, but he recommended a fellow Australian actor, Hugh Jackman. Jackman auditioned and was cast as Wolverine three weeks into filming.

X-Men trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers)

When X-Men opened in July of 2000, it was solid hit. The first successful big-budget film adaptation of a comic book super-hero team, it made close to $300 million at the box office. Many observers had thought that the success of the film would rise or fall on the casting of Wolverine, and Hugh Jackman delivered a star-making performance. X-Men was the first of 13 X-title films at Fox and, along with 1998’s Blade, offered proof of concept that Marvel could work on the big screen. The movie was also significant because Shuler Donner made her assistant, USC grad Kevin Feige, an associate producer on the picture due to his extensive Marvel comics knowledge. Hired away to Marvel Studios, Feige was the person who pitched the notion of a series of movies culminating in an Avengers film, paving the way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Disney’s purchase of Marvel in 2009 and subsequent purchase of Fox in 2019, the separate movie universes had a path to combine. They finally did in 2024’s Deadpool and Wolverine, the 14th film featuring X-characters and the 34th in the mainline Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It’s a bold statement to suggest that this pop culture juggernaut rests on the adamantium-infused shoulders of one Canadian character. But Wolverine has been an essential building block for movie universes, multiple animated series, countless toys, video games, and a truly crazy number of T-shirts. There are many levels to his appeal, but the root of it is that he’s a small guy that just won’t be pushed around. It’s little wonder that comic fans gravitated to him. As the character so often reminds us, he’s the best there is at what he does. And that includes 50 years of, yes, marvelous entertainment.