The 10 Best Wolverine Stories

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Since his debut in the final page of 1974’s Incredible Hulk #180, Wolverine has been one of the most enigmatic and fascinating characters to ever grace the pages of a Marvel comic. Armed with a pair of razor-sharp claws and a nasty temperament towards authority, the character was embraced by a legion of comic book fans that had grown jaded towards colorful dogooders during the medium’s ‘80s renaissance. And ever since then, he has transformed from anti-social outsider into one of the most recognizable faces at the company.

While he’s often featured in team-oriented X-Men stories, Wolverine has been most interesting as a solo act over the last few decades. This week marks another example of the character’s mass appeal as writer Brian Wood makes his highly-anticipated return to Marvel with his latest miniseries, Wolverine And The X-Men: Alpha And Omega. The story sees Wolverine take on one of the young students at his new school for mutants, Quentin Quire, a.k.a. Kid Omega. To get you ready for the latest chapter in the life of Marvel’s most popular mutant, we’re taking a look back at The 10 Best Wolverine Stories.

Written by Jason Serafino (@Serafinoj1)

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Kitty Pryde And Wolverine

10. Kitty Pryde And Wolverine (Kitty Pryde And Wolverine #1-6, 1984-1985)

Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Al Milgrom

During the ‘80s, the X-Men were the hottest property at Marvel, and Wolverine was taking his first steps towards becoming the public face of the company. So it was only natural to put the character in as many books and miniseries as possible. In the middle of the decade, Chris Claremont and Al Milgrom got together to craft Kitty Pryde And Wolverine, a miniseries that took advantage of Wolverine’s skyrocketing popularity and Claremont’s attachment to Pryde.

Taking place in Japan as the duo attempts to help Kitty’s father from the Yakuza, the series delves into the big brother/little sister relationship between Kitty and Wolverine, which has evolved into one of the most authentic in all of comics. It’s not as brutal or dour as some of the other Wolverine titles to hit the shelves over the years, but Claremont has such a firm grasp on these characters and their interactions with one another that it’s hard to deny its brilliance.

Get Mystique!

9. Get Mystique! (Wolverine #62-65, 2008)

Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Ron Garney

Acting as an epilogue to Messiah Complex, Get Mystique! begins with Wolverine attempting to track down the shape-shifting mutant after her latest betrayal of the X-Men. But unlike the overblown crossover that preceded it, this story is about as streamlined and entertaining as a comic book has ever been. Get Mystique! tells a story set in the present day during Wolverine and Mystique’s latest battle, but it also flashes back to the 1920s, when the ageless mutants ran amok in Kansas on a Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque robbery spree.

The story builds upon the heated relationship between the two of them, and how, throughout the decades, they have always been driven to kill and betray each other. Filled with some great dialogue and a surprising amount of gore, Get Mystique! is about as fun and exhilarating as a comic has any right to be. Combined with the sharp script is the pitch-perfect art by Ron Garney, who draws one of the cleanest versions of Wolverine we have ever seen.

New Mutants Part 2

8. New Mutants Part 2 (Ultimate X-Men #41, 2004)

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: David Finch

It’s not often that the second part of a larger story arc makes a “best of” list, but then again Ultimate X-Men #41 isn’t your typical comic. It starts off innocently enough with a young boy waking up only to realize that he's all alone in his house. He then goes outside to find out that everyone in his neighborhood is gone, as well. As the boy gets to school, he's confronted by a girl that complains that he hasn’t called her. But before he could explain himself, the girl’s skin begins to smoke and she disintegrates right before his eyes.

Later on, as the boy sits alone in a cave, he's confronted by Wolverine, whose healing ability renders the boy’s power useless. After explaining to the boy that his newfound mutant ability kills any organic lifeform he is within eyesight of, Wolverine hands him a beer. With tears in his eyes, the boy tells Wolverine, “Just do it.” A little while later, Wolverine leaves the cave alone. Even the heart of the most jaded comic book fan will certainly crumble after seeing the lone image of a sorrowful Logan after doing this dirty deed.

Vicious Circle

7. Vicious Circle (Incredible Hulk #340, 1988)

Writer: Peter David
Artist: Todd McFarlane

Sporting one of the most vicious fight scenes in the history of Marvel Comics, not to mention one of the best covers ever, Incredible Hulk #340 features the quintessential super-powered fight between Wolverine and the Hulk. The whole battle starts off after the Hulk inadvertently clips a plane while in mid-jump, and the X-Men send Wolverine to find the Hulk in order to stop him from causing any more destruction.

The following fight is tense and brutal, as Wolverine proceeds to gut the Grey Goliath only to realize that the Hulk’s healing ability makes it nearly impossible to defeat him. Though it's best known for its stunning cover, this issue also features great interior art by the then-unknown Todd McFarlane that eventually led to one of the most lucrative careers in comic book history.

Enemy Of The State

6. Enemy Of The State (Wolverine #20-25, 2005)

Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: John Romita Jr.

Within Enemy Of The State's first issue, Wolverine is ambushed by the ninja cult known as The Hand and killed. But, as always, death is merely a temporary annoyance in the comic book world, and he soon comes back to life while being examined by the medical staff at SHIELD. But unbeknownst to Nick Fury’s army, The Hand had to kill Wolverine so they could revive him under their psychic control.

This leads to six issues of Wolverine hacking and slashing his way through the heroes of the Marvel Universe, courtesy of the deranged ninja cult. Writer Mark Millar, one of the better Wolverine talents of the last decade, crafts an explosive blockbuster here that easily trumps any X-Men movie to hit the bigscreen aside from First Class. It’s a hard-hitting epic with countless jaw dropping fight scenes, thanks to the symbiotic relationship between Millar’s scripts and John Romita, Jr.’s art.

Logan

5. Logan (Logan #1-3, 2008)

Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Eduardo Risso

After the events of the 2006 crossover storyline House Of M, Wolverine regained all of the memories that he had lost over the years, and, for the first time, remembered everything about the life he had before he got his adamantium skeleton. In Logan, Brian K. Vaughan takes this newly enlightened Wolverine back to Japan to confront some old demons. Featuring a series of flashbacks that expand upon Logan’s time in Japan during WWII, this story goes a long way towards presenting Wolverine’s life as a piece of human tragedy, rather than a colorful superhero.

This series quickly shifts between an intimate character piece and an absurd superhero tale that sees the atomic bomb at Hiroshima dropped on top of Wolverine, but Vaughan manages to balance it all out quite well. Though painfully short, Vaughan’s delicate character development and Eduardo Risso’s heavily inked art make this story stand out.

Old Man Logan

4. Old Man Logan (Wolverine #66-72, Wolverine Giant-Size Old Man Logan, 2009)

Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Steve McNiven

No one will ever confuse it for Shakespeare, but Old Man Logan is one of the most satisfying and over-the-top reads in recent memory. Revolving around a twisted future where America has been seized and divided up amongst the world’s most powerful supervillains, this storyline is a bleak look at a war-torn dystopia that only Wolverine could hope to put an end to. Squaring off against the Red Skull, who has made himself the new President, Wolverine also comes face-to-face with a horde of inbred Hulk monsters, a T-Rex that bonded with the Venom symbiote, and his own haunted past.

With all of the subtlety of a chainsaw, Mark Millar crafts an engrossing saga of violence and cynicism that should make any action-fiend smile with satisfaction. It also doesn’t hurt that Steve McNiven’s art is stellar. With its gruesome decapitation scene, countless lost limbs, and a complete evisceration of the Hulk, Old Man Logan often leans towards the absurd, but therein lies the brilliance.

Origin

3. Origin (Origin #1-6 2001,2002)

Writers: Paul Jenkins, Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada
Artist: Andy Kubert

After decades of fan speculation, Marvel gave readers all of the answers to Wolverine’s complete origin in this industry changing miniseries. Following Logan’s early days as a privileged child on sprawling plantation in Canada, Origin reveals that he was actually born a sickly child, named James Howelett, to a wealthy couple. Throughout the tale, Paul Jenkins chronicles the tragic events around James’ first love, how he acquired the name Logan, and his rivalry with a boy named Dog, who strikes a startling resemblance to Sabretooth.

Along the way, there are moments so saturated with emotion and rage that it propels the story into rarified comic book distinction, along with other superhero origin titles like Batman: Year One and Daredevil: The Man Without Fear. Watching the future X-Man deal with the appearance of his claws for the first time and his first brush with tragedy is both thrilling and ominous considering how his life continues to follow such a bleak trend. This isn’t just a story that sold a ton of copies—it also fundamentally changed the way people look at Wolverine forever.

Weapon X

2. Weapon X (Marvel Comics Presents #72-84, 1991)

Writer and Artist: Barry Windsor-Smith

Up until the ‘90s, very little was actually known about Wolverine. He had an adamantium skeleton, but no one knew how he got it; his assumed name was Logan, but no one knew what his birth name was; he had a life before he joined the X-Men, yet no one knew what it was.

So in 1991, the legendary Barry Windsor-Smith came along and attempted to fill in a few of the blanks in his storyline, Weapon X. Detailing how a shadowy government agency captured Wolverine and bonded his bones to adamantium, this story shows Logan at his most feral as the painful experimentation on him causes him to go berserk in a truly horrific scene.

With a gut-wrenching script and phenomenal art, Windsor-Smith depicts Wolverine’s startling transformation into a killing machine with the delicate touch of a poet, despite the grim and gory subject matter.

Wolverine

1. Wolverine (Wolverine #1-4, 1982)

Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Frank Miller

It’s hard, if not downright impossible, to call yourself a "Wolverine fan" without ever reading Chris Claremont and Frank Miller’s debut miniseries. After years of sticking the character alongside his fellow mutants in Uncanny X-Men, Marvel heard the pleas of comic fans everywhere and put Canada’s furriest mutant in a solo adventure with one of the best creative teams at the time.

Separating Wolverine from the X-Men, and the rest of the Marvel Universe for that matter, Claremont took this opportunity to add some much needed depth to the character and shine the spotlight on his personal life more than he could have in a team book. In this miniseries, Logan is a man struggling with his feral instincts and animalistic nature. The story also introduced fans to Wolverine's training as a samurai as he fends off the Hand while in Japan to reclaim his lost love, Mariko.

Not only did Wolverine prove to be popular enough to grant the character his own series, it's still hailed as one of Marvel's greatest stories. In the space of just four issues, Claremont and Miller solidified Wolverine as one of the most complex and entertaining characters in comics, and his popularity has only expanded since then.