In this feature, I spotlight five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Here is an archive of all the patterns we've spotlighted so far.

Like Daredevil, Wolverine's loves tend not to have long lifespans. In this piece, I'll spotlight five loves of Wolverine that have met untimely fates. To narrow the field a bit, we're only talking violent deaths and women Wolverine cared for deeply (I could do a whole other column, and I probably will eventually, on murdered women who Wolverine just casually hooked up with before they were killed). NOTE: The above crying Wolverine is not from the death of one of his girlfriends, but it is just an awesome shot of him crying, so I figured I'd still use it.

Jean Grey

You might be familiar with this one time where Jean Grey died in X-Men #137, by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin.

Many moons later, Jean was also killed by Wolverine in New X-Men #148 (by Grant Morrison, Phil Jimenez and Andy Lanning), as she and Wolverine were on an asteroid headed for the sun. They have tried everything, but it does not look like they will make it out of there alive. Wolverine does what he feels is the honorable thing and kills Jean before they are vaporized...











This, of course, just kick starts the Phoenix force and it resurrects them both next issue.

This is just in time for Jean to die in New X-Men #150 at the hands (literally) of Magneto...



Later, the Phoenix force brings Jean Grey back in Phoenix: Endsong. In issue #3 (by Gregs Pak and Land), Wolverine tries to save Jean from the Phoenix force by repeatedly stabbing her to death as the Phoenix force continues to resurrect her.









Silver Fox

What a way to make a first appearance! Silver Fox, Wolverine's lover for a time in Canada, was first introduced in Wolverine #10 (by Chris Claremont and John Buscema), with her already being dead, murdered by Sabretooth!





It later turned out that she didn't actually die, so Larry Hama, Mark Pacella and Dan Panosian took care of that by having some twisted bad guy force Sabretooth to kill her again and made Wolverine watch it happen...





Go to the next page for the final three, two of which were killed by Wolverine himself!

Mariko Yashida

Probably Wolverine's most notable love interest, I'll admit that in this case, at least, I can understand why you might want to kill off Mariko, as there never seemed to be a good reason why she and Wolverine were apart, so writers would constantly have to come up with contrivances as to why they had to be separated, so you really couldn't do much with her. So killing her off in a dramatic way really does make some sense.

She was poisoned by a bad guy in Wolverine #57 (by Larry Hama, Marc Silvestri and Dan Green) and Wolverine has to finish the job (and yes, that is the resurrected Silver Fox watching it all go down before she got killed again)...









Rose O'Hara

Young James Howlett's step-sister, the two eventually grew to care more for each other, but, as these things happen to go, he accidentally kills her with his mutant claws (in Origin #6, by Paul Jenkins and Andy Kubert)...





Itsu

Wolverine actually MARRIED Itsu, but she was murdered by the Winter Solder, as revealed in Wolverine (Volume 3) #39-40 (by Daniel Way, Javier Saltares and Mark Texeira)...









The baby, by the way, ended up surviving and becoming Daken.

That's it for this installment! Feel free to suggest other comic book patterns/cliches to me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com!