Wolverine: Weapon X

Explore the Stories Behind the Legends

Naked, bloody, and screaming in pain - this is the Wolverine that faced readers in the story arc Weapon X. This was more than just the tale of how Wolverine got his adamantium skeleton and claws. Legendary creator Barry Windsor-Smith challenged readers’ expectations of super hero stories and created Marvel’s most brutal and beautiful comic.

In 1991, when Weapon X was first published, Wolverine was one of Marvel’s most popular super heroes. For Weapon X, creator Windsor-Smith reimagined the super hero origin story as a postmodern cyberpunk horror story. A shadowy organization abducts Wolverine in order to create “the ultimate killing machine,” and we are plunged into a story of basic, animalistic survival. As Wolverine endures more and more trauma, the lines between reality and consciousness disappear.

Illustrated with full-color art from this legendary storyline, Jim Rugg’s entry in The Marvel Age of Comics takes a deep-dive into one of Marvel’s most experimental and singular comics, and what many consider to be the definitive Wolverine story.