Today, we look at the short-lived revelation that Wolverine wasn't an actual mutant, but presumably a mutated wolverine (it did not go anywhere).
In every installment of “If I Pass This Way Again,” we look at comic book plot points that were rarely (sometimes NEVER!) mentioned again after they were first introduced.
Last week, I discussed how Chris Claremont and John Byrne briefly introduced an ability by Wolverine to communicate with Ka-Zar's sabretooth companion, Zabu, Doctor Doolittle-style, and then that idea was dropped as soon as it was introduced (although it appears as though Wolverine has maintained a general connection to animals, but that could just be a normal "way with animals" that exists in a number of humans, you know, like a "Horse whisperer" type deal).
At the time, I mentioned how it might have been related to Wolverine's earlier mystery origin, but then I thought I really should just go into detail about what that mystery origin really WAS. Wolverine debuted in 1974's Incredible Hulk #181 (by Len Wein, Herb Trimpe and Jack Abel, after a cameo in the previous issue. Marvel's then-Editor-in-Chief, Roy Thomas, co-created the character with Wein and costume designer John Romita Sr.) and what's interesting is that they don't really call Wolverine a mutant for most of the issue. However, at one point, the Canadian government do, in fact, refer to Weapon X (which is all Weapon X was back in the day, just a name for Wolverine) as a mutant...
And thus, obviously, when Len Wein was given the assignment for a brand-new international team of X-Men, he brought the Canadian Wolverine over to the All-New, All-Different X-Men that Wein developed alongside Dave Cockrum (Wein and Cockrum created four new mutants for the team - Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Cannon Fodder...later renamed Thunderbird). However, after launching the series in Giant-Size X-Men #1, Wein realized that he had to drop some series after having become Marvel's new Editor-in-Chief, so X-Men was the book that got the ax (Wein soon left the job, but by that point, he didn't feel right taking the assignment back from Chris Claremont, who Wein had assigned the book to upon his departure. Claremont first scripted Wein's plots for X-Men #94 and #95, which were originally going to be published as Giant-Size X-Men #2).
In X-Men #98 (by Claremont, Cockrum and Sam Grainger), we saw Wolverine without his mask for the first time and we also saw that Wolverine's claws are NOT part of his costume (as intended by Len Wein) but actually part of his actual body.
That same issue, however, also revealed that Wolverine was NOT a mutant!!
Speaking about the story to Peter Sanderson in X-Men Companion, Dave Cockrum confused a generation of fans by telling the story of how he originally intended for Wolverine to be a mutated wolverine, "Cockrum: As far as his origin goes, originally we had intended to have him be a mutated wolverine and--
Sanderson: Like one of the High Evolutionary's New Men?
Cockrum: Yeah. Yeah.
Sanderson: Might he have even been developed by the High Evolutionary?
Cockrum: Possibly, I don't know. Len and I kicked that out, but I don't think we ever developed it very far."
Note that Cockrum specifically referenced it being an idea he had with Len Wein. Years later, Cockrum discussed the idea again for Wizard Magazine's 1996 Wolverine Tribute Special, "Stan Lee himself but the kibosh on it. We were going to suggest that Wolverine was not human at all, but a mutated wolverine. There were remarks in the storyline at one point where somebody was assessing Wolverine and saying, 'I'm not even sure if he's human,' or something like that, which would have led up to it. But Stan found the concept disgusting."
Again, Cockrum uses the "we" a bit too freely here. I even wrote about it as being a Cockrum/Wein idea in my first book, Was Superman a Spy?, but Wein later corrected Cockrum to note that it was something that Cockrum had developed with Claremont, not Wein. Wein really hated being associated with the idea, as I take it he did not like the concept. Later in his life, Wein would knock the idea a lot and made sure no one associated it with him.
The idea continued to be in the background, though, as John Byrne noted to the Comics Journal after he had joined he book (in Comics Journal #57), "The first origin that was concocted, was that he was actually a mutant wolverine, boosted up to human form by the High Evolutionary. Okay, that works except that (writer) Archie (Goodwin) did a similar number in the first Spider-Woman story. And no matter how things have changed in that strip since, the idea has been done before so we dropped it."
Byrne's correct that Goodwin DID use that same concept in Marvel Spotlight #32 (by Goodwin, Sal Buscema and Jim Mooney)...
But Marvel Spotlight #32 was roughly a year after X-Men #98, so the Cockrum/Claremont idea was still novel when they did it. I imagine Cockrum's description was correct and they were just told to drop the idea (notably, the Spider-Woman idea was ALSO later retconned).
What is interesting is that it took quite a while to definitively show that Wolverine was a mutant in the comic itself, as after all, how do you prove a character is a mutant anyways? In the simplest terms, the answer really could just be a couple of issues later, in X-Men #101, when Wolverine is referred to as a mutant...
That seems a BIT too easy, though. In X-Men #113, Magneto has power inhibitors for the X-Men, but they don't specify that they block MUTANT powers. Same thing with the Hellfire Club's power inhibitors in X-Men #130.
Finally, though, in Uncanny X-Men #150, they specifically note that Magneto came up with a machine to cancel out MUTANT powers, and Wolverine loses his powers, hence he is, in fact, a mutant.
Plus, of course, the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe said he was a mutant in 1983, as well...
But that was just making it official. Obviously, as you can see from X-Men #101 above, Claremont and Cockrum dropped the idea almost as soon as they introduced it (THEM, NOT WEIN!).
If YOU have a suggestion for a future edition of I Pass This Way Again, be sure to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!