Weapon X Is Wolverine’s Greatest Story and It Almost Ruined Him

Wolverine has become the one of the most popular superheroes of them all over the last five decades and some change, with some amazing stories building his legend. One of the best of these has always been “Weapon X”. This 12-part story ran through Marvel Comics Presents #72-84 from writer/artist Barry Windsor-Smith, one of the greatest talents in the industry’s history. This story took readers back to the days when Logan was under the not-so tender auspices of the Weapon X project, getting his adamantium skeleton. It was basically a body horror comic starring one of the most popular Marvel heroes and immediately became legendary. It tops all the lists of best Wolverine stories for good reason.

The story dropped in 1991 and was one of the biggest reveals about Logan’s past that we ever got. It was the perfect place to take the story, as it revealed just how sinister Weapon X was. While this story was wrapping up, Wolverine (Vol. 2) #48-50 took readers back to Weapon X, as Logan tried to find the place where he got his skeleton and memory implants, leading to a battle against the robot Shiva. This story was open-ended, because of course it was, and it led Marvel down a path that I’ve always felt was a mistake. “Weapon X” and its consequences gave the House of Ideas a way to get out of ever giving Logan any kind of concrete origin, allowing him to stay a man of mystery forever. However, this led to problems that almost cratered his solo book when the X-Men comics were at their most popular.

“Weapon X” Gave Marvel a Get Out of Jail Free Card They Didn’t Deserve

“Weapon X” is, every way, a perfect comic book. Barry Windsor-Smith was able to create the perfect vibe with the book and took the story in gruesome directions. We got the impression of Weapon X as butchers, who took the bodies put in front of them and used them in any way they wanted, leading to a savage revenge that was both earned and also entirely horrific. This extended to the memories of their subjects as well, as they worked hard to create completely loyal living weapons, tailoring their minds in the ways they wanted. While this definitely makes perfect sense – mind-controlled government soldiers have been a huge part of fiction for decades – it also led to some huge problems, ones that would be revealed in Wolverine (Vol. 2) #50.

Wolverine (Vol. 2) #48-50 were one hundred perfect meant to give fans more Weapon X content and the last issue of the story saw a massive reveal – that Wolverine’s girlfriend Silver Fox was still alive and was also a subject of the project’s tampering. Silver Fox was first introduced in Wolverine (Vol. 2) #10, a story that took readers back to what looked like the late 19th/early 20th century and revealed that she was his girlfriend killed by Sabretooth. This meant that everything we had seen about Logan’s origin before this point could have been changed, all thanks to Marvel trying to tie the main book into the success that was “Weapon X”.

“Weapon X” came out in 1991, the year of the bestselling X-Men reboot. It was perfect, giving new readers something of an origin for this character they were just being introduced to, and soon the story spread to Wolverine (Vol. 2), taking the center of issues #60-68, with the various Weapon X characters teaming up to find out the truth and learning nothing at all. This new version of Silver Fox was revealed to be a clone or something like that and that was the end of it. This was during the Larry Hama run on the character, which is usually ranked as the best solo run for the ol’Canucklehead, but this story went nowhere and was never meant to. It was just meant to allow Marvel to establish that they could change anything in Wolverine’s past any time they wanted.

Wolverine came to prominence as a man of mystery. This was a huge part of what fans loved about him. The House of Ideas drip fed readers parts of his past, with “Weapon X” being the biggest one of them all. However, the problem with men of mystery is that eventually, you lose the mystery and not every character can survive. Marvel decided to use “Weapon X” to give itself a get out of jail free card. Whenever they wanted, they could just write something off as a memory implant. It was perfect and maybe if issues #60-68 had hit right, it would have. However, these issues are mostly loved for Mark Texeria’s artwork; the story itself is convoluted, almost on purpose. However, soon Marvel would make another choice with Logan, one that would take the hero away completely from Weapon X.

The Bone Claw Years Saved Wolverine From a Terrible Fate

Wolverine lost his adamantium in X-Men (Vol. 2) #25, which led into the amazing bone claw years of Wolverine. Losing his adamantium took away a big part of the invincibility that had defined the character, but it also took him on a course directly away from anything Weapon X-related. It was suddenly the big story in his life, and it came to define him, first by making him go through a period of change and readjustment, then into the feral regression years (which were also a failure in the long run, unfortunately), and finally to that weird middle ground he existed in from 1997to 1999. Since then, getting more of Logan’s origin has become normal and Marvel no longer needed the button in the “in case of an emergency, break glass” box.

“Weapon X” deserves its place in the pantheon of great Marvel stories, but as so often has happened over the years at the House of Ideas, the company learned the wrong lesson from it. While its place in Wolverine’s life as the shadowy manipulator behind everything was earned, using it to hold the character in stasis, which seemed to be the plan in the early ’90s, would have been a huge mistake. There’s a reason no one remembers Wolverine (Vol. 2) #60-68; it’s a story that most fans don’t like to think about. Thank the bone claws years for the change in focus, a development took the character to new places and allowed him to grown into the legend he is today.

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