Out of all the characters in the Age of Apocalypse timeline, few changed as radically from their Marvel Universe counterpart as Weapon X, this world's version of Wolverine. In a world conquered by Apocalypse after the early death of Charles Xavier, Logan was one of the first members of Magneto's X-Men, and he played a heroic role throughout the original crossover.

However, subsequent stories saw Logan evolved from a reluctant X-Man and heroic rebel into the second coming of Apocalypse. Now, we're taking a closer look at how and why this Wolverine took over the Age of Apocalypse.

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Weapon X was introduced early on to the rest of the X-Men as their new teammate but has to be restrained by Magneto almost immediately when he goes into a berserker rage. The only way he could function as a member of the team is when Jean Grey used her telepathic and empathic abilities to calm him down. Once Jean proved capable of this, Magneto began preparing for their first and ultimately unsuccessful attack on Apocalypse.

Several years later, Weapon X appeared again as the now battle-hardened X-Men fought against Apocalypse in Howard Mackie and Ian Churchill's X-Men Chronicles #2. Although Jean and Logan had a budding romance, that was cut short when she was left behind on a raid and captured by Prelate Summers -- that world's Cyclops -- and Mister Sinister. Although the other X-Men considered her effectively dead, Weapon X went after her, letting himself be captured and branded. Eventually, he managed to find Jean and break them both out, but not before one last encounter with Prelate Summers that destroyed one of his hands. Weapon X was furious that the X-Men had abandoned Jean and the two mutants struck out on their own, even getting married at one point.

Weapon X and Jean began working with the Human Resistance League and helped set up the League's planned nuclear strike against Apocalypse. Though still deeply in love the couple eventually in went separate ways in Larry Hama and Adam Kubert's Weapon X #1, so Jean could try and evacuate America before the strike, while Weapon X concentrated on setting it up. In the process, he ran into his old friends Carol Danvers and the teleporting mutant Gateway.

Logan traveled with the nukes just in time to see Jean's apparent death at the hands of Havok; her near-death experience let her tap into the Phoenix Force and helped her stop the nukes from destroying the continent. Apocalypse was defeated soon after and the survivors began picking up the pieces of the world.

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Years of minor adventures and rebuilding went by until a Celestial ship landed and Weapon X went to investigate. The Celestials told him that the planet had failed their evolutionary standards and would be destroyed. To prevent this Weapon X sacrificed his humanity and let the Celestials augment him with a Death Seed; he was now Weapon Omega, who possessed incredible power and only cared about Earth's evolutionary destiny, much as Apocalypse originally did.

As Rick Remender and Mark Brooks revealed in Uncanny X-Force #12, Logan laid low and began gathering supporters, claiming the title of Apocalypse's heir before plunging the world into a state far worse than it had been under Apocalypse's control. The Marvel Universe's X-Force's arrival in his reality forced Weapon Omega to finally reveal himself to the X-Men, which led to the death of his daughter Kirika in the process. He confronted his horrified wife and explained that he needed her Phoenix Force to complete the world's evolutionary do-over and tried to infect her with a Death Seed so she could finally stand by his side again. Even though he was effectively a new Apocalypse, there was still some of the old Logan left in him, as his clear love for Jean attests.

The X-Men escaped and found new allies among humans, but Weapon Omega destroyed much of the world's remaining population in search of Jean. He eventually captured her in David Lapham and Renato Arlem's Age of Apocalypse #12 and prepared to infect her with the Death Seed, only stopping to grant her wish for one last kiss. However, Jean used the kiss to slip him a cure for the Death Seed infection, and Weapon X is finally restored. I

In atonement for all the deaths and atrocities that he'd caused, he banished himself from society to track and kill Weapon Omega's former allies and gently refused to reconcile with Jean, who was still deeply in love with him. Although Logan didn't appear again, Jean took the power of Apocalypse herself and used it to seal off her universe from the rest of the Marvel multiverse.

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