SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains a MAJOR SPOILER for Jason aaron and Esad Ribic's Marvel Legacy one-shot, in stores Wednesday, Sept. 27.


When the long anticipated Marvel Legacy one-shot arrives in stores this week, it will bring with it a familiar face: Wolverine is back, and the publisher promises, it's not a trick.

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The company's most popular mutant is not only back among the living, he's bringing a pretty powerful Marvel relic with him in the form of an Infinity Stone. As for which Infinity Stone he has in his possession, that remains a mystery for now, though with the Guardians of the Galaxy currently hunting for the Stones, Logan's return will surely be explored in the greater Marvel Universe rather than being contained to the X-Men titles.

"Yes, Logan is back from the dead," Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Axel Alonso told ComicBook.com of the big reveal. "After three years of a Logan-free Marvel Universe, Logan is back, claws popped and ready for action. How he came back, why he came back, and just how he came into possession of that Infinity Stone are part of a fascinating story that's going to unveil soon, and in some unusual places."

Wolverine famously died in 2014, in the final act of Charles Soule and Steve McNiven's "Death of Wolverine" storyline. Over the course of the story, Wolverine had lost his healing factor. Thus, when he was encased in a sheath of molten adamantium (the hardest metal in the Marvel Universe), it was treated by Logan's friends and enemies alike as a pretty final death. Marvel, for its part, insisted that the death was real, and over the past several years have not only passed the Mantle of Wolverine on to Laura Kinney, aka X-23, who happens to be Logan's cloned "daughter," the publisher also pulled in an older version of Logan from another reality. Not only have both been treated as major players in Marvel's events, they both star in solo titles and factor heavily into the X-Men family of titles.

This being comics, of course, fans have been more focused on when he would return, rather than believing he was gone forever. Now that he's back, the new question will be how he survived (if he did), and what happens now that there are three Wolverines operating in the Marvel Universe -- not only from an in-story viewpoint, but from a practical one. After all, is there room for three ongoing Wolverine series, and will the return of the original Logan make Old Man Logan redundant?

The Marvel Legacy initiative kicks off September 27 with Marvel Legacy #1, a 50-page one-shot from writer Jason Aaron and artist Esad Ribic that promises to tell the “startling origin of the Marvel Universe” and underscore how “it’s all connected.”