The Strange Origins of Barry Windsor-Smith's Wolverine Story, Weapon X

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover the strange way that Barry WIndsor-Smith's Weapon X storyline came about

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and fifty-eighth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.

NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!

COMIC LEGEND:

Barry Windsor-Smith just wrote and drew the first two chapters of Weapon X without telling anyone at Marvel what he was doing

STATUS:

True

One of the most famous comic book stories involving Wolverine took place in one of the more unlikely places, as while Wolverine was the lead feature in Marvel Comics Presents when the twice a month comic book anthology debuted in 1988, and had re-taken the lead spot after a 28-issue attempt to have other X-Men characters (Like Colossus, Cyclops, Excalibur and Havok) didn't work out, you'd have to go back to the original story arc by Chris Claremont and John Buscema, and perhaps a 1991 team-up with Ghost Rider (who would later co-headline the series with Wolverine in a flip book format) by Howard Mackie and Mark Texeiera that really felt like they were anything but roughly inventory story level stories (despite some EXCELLENT creators being involved, like Marv Wolfman and a second stint by Buscema).

So when suddenly, Marvel Comics Presents #72 in 1991 had a new serial by legendary comic book creator, Barry Windsor-Smith, it was a big surprise...

When this serial turned out to be a story called "Weapon X," which told Wolverine's origin (or at least how he came to have his adamantium skeleton), people were REALLY shocked!

The amazing thing about the story, though, was that it was a bit of a surprise to Marvel itself!

A GOOD surprise, but a surprise, nonetheless.

After leaving the world of comics behind temporarily in the 1970s, Windsor-Smith (he had added his mother's last name to his name to go from Barry Smith to Barry Windsor-Smith), returned to comics in 1983, and Marvel Comics proper in 1984, doing two parts of an acclaimed Uncanny X-Men story called "LifeDeath," and an iconic Wolverine spotlight story in Uncanny X-Men #205, called "Wounded Wolf."

Barry Windsor-Smith returned to X-Men to draw this Wolverine one-shot story, "Wounded Wolf"

Windsor-Smith then did a few other one off issues of X-Men over the next couple of years, roughly one a year. By the time he finished, the assistant editor on those Uncanny X-Men issues, Terry Kavanagh (Windsor-Smith recalled him being the assistant editor on "LifeDeath," which could be true, but if so, he was not listed in the comic as being the assistant editor, while he was on Windsor-Smith's later issues), had become the editor of Marvel Comics Presents, and he told Windsor-Smith that he would obviously love it if Windsor-Smith ever wanted to do a short story for the series. Cleary, this piqued Windsor-Smith's interest, even though Kavanagh didn't know that at the time.

In an interview with Will Murray in Comics Scene #18, Windsor-Smith explained the origins of the storyline, "It came about in the oddest way. Wolverine, or the character Logan, has more interest for me than Captain America or something like that. I can equate with that character better than some of the other characters in the Marvel Universe. He has these stupid spikes sticking out of his hands, but he doesn't fly. And he has a bit more character than the regular superhero type."

He continued, "It was just an idea that occurred to me. I thought about doing a short story about Wolverine, just for something to do. How the hell did this guy get these funny spikes sticking out of his hands? So, I drew a couple of stories. I didn't bother telling anybody at Marvel. I just assumed they would want to publish them. I took them down to the editor of Marvel Comics Presents, Terry Kavanagh."

Obviously, Kavanagh was very much happy about it, and told Windsor-Smith that they'd gladly publish the comic book story (I mean, duh, right?), but Windsor-Smith joked, "I think the truth is that nobody at Marvel thought I was going to finish it, so they didn't want to say anything. Terry was stunned when I called him up and said, 'Well, that's it. It's done. What next?" Amusingly, Windsor-Smith had been spending so much time just finishing the thing, his art style changed a lot as the story progressed, and since he did the story out of order (besides those first two chapters), it was a very interesting look for the story.

Of course, the interesting side effect of Windsor-Smith just doing the story on his own was that he didn't bother coordinating it with his old Uncanny X-Men collaborator, Chris Claremont, but as I pointed out in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed, he eventually worked something out with Claremont where the mysterious voice BEHIND the Weapon X project could still be whatever Claremont wanted it to be, and Claremont apparently was okay with that approach to things (Claremont at the time planned for it to be Apocalypse, but never got around to actually making that canon).

Thanks to Wlll Murray and Barry Windsor-Smith for the information!