James Mangold's Logan is generally regarded as one of the best comic book movies of all time. It wasn't so much a superhero film as it was a Neo-western and overall character study that followed Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in his last days. Intriguingly enough, it didn't follow any one comic book story per se, and that relatively blank canvas was what Mangold took and turned into an emotional roller coaster.
Apart from the dynamic with Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and X-23 (Dafne Keen), what really made the film tick was the introduction of the villain, X-24, Transigen's younger, faster clone of Logan. The monstrosity proved to be the hero's most formidable challenge ever, so with that in mind, CBR is taking a look at the history of the villain who put down Jackman's Wolverine for good.
WHAT IS x-24's HISTORY?
X-24 was created for the film's dystopian world, after nearly all the world's mutants died off by the year 2029. Richard E. Grant's Zander Rice, instead of being an engineer for the Weapon X program per the comics, led another operation, Transigen, and conducted his own cloning experiments which gave rise to X-23. But when she escaped and ended up on the run with Logan and Xavier, Rice deployed X-24, another weapon in his arsenal to retrieve his asset.
It was never fully revealed how X-24 was created, but it's assumed the samples of Logan's blood taken from the post-credits of 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse by the Essex Corporation was used to create the clone. It seems like Rice was trying to perfect a Wolverine clone after Weapon X failed to turn Liev Schreiber's Sabretooth into something similar in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. X-24, however, proved to be more lethal than any of them.
He'd eventually slaughter the Munson family who offered Logan's camp haven, and fatally wound Professor X in the process. While the patriarch of the Munson family tried to kill X-24 with a tractor, Logan and X-23 fled, which resulted in Rice reactivating him by speeding up his regenerative abilities for one last hunt. However, after fatally impaling Logan in their rematch, X-23 put an adamantium bullet through X-24's head and killed him permanently.
IS x-24 STRONGER THAN WOLVERINE?
With his adamantium claws and skeleton, X-24 was basically Logan in his prime and always locked in a berserker rage. It didn't help that Logan was already dying from a waning healing factor, but even when he and X-23 both tried to tackle X-24, the clone was stronger than both of them. He was literally the Wolverine that Weapon X wanted: a mindless killer who enjoyed murdering for pleasure, all at Rice's commands.
X-24 held a huge advantage as he was far stronger than Logan with a healing factor that worked much faster, patching up wounds nearly immediately in battle. His vitality was also superior, which saw him withstand way more bullets and stab wounds than Logan ever could.
However, X-24 was still susceptible to adamantium weaponry, as opposed to Logan who was just barely strong enough to survive adamantium bullets in his prime. Overall, X-24 was still a walking, grunting weapon of mass destruction, which effectively made the genetic replica the better Wolverine.
IS X-24 IN WOLVERINE COMICS?
X-24 doesn't really have a true counterpart in the comic book Marvel Universe. Although the way he was engineered to be a Wolverine that could be controlled is very similar to Weapon X's creation of X-23 in the comics. Before she became a superhero, X-23 was a mindless clone who was created to be a better version of Wolverine.
The closest comic book equivalent to X-24 comes via an android of Wolverine called Albert. He was created by Donald Pierce in a secret Reavers lab from various parts and boasted several of Wolverine's strengths, including claws. Albert was all part of a plan Pierce cooked up using an android bomb in the form of a young girl, Elsie Dee, who was designed to lure and blow up Logan. Both Albert and Elsie found their humanity, though, and later on, Wolverine let his grudge against him to since he felt sorry for them.
Ultimately, it's a much different arc than what we on screen for X-24, but Mangold did hint at a similar Frankenstein process. In a scene where Wolverine was shown Rice's work on a cell phone, the images teased body parts being used to make some soft of abomination, alluding to X-24 being made using different body parts as opposed to being grown from scratch. The finale also saw X-24 unleashed by Pierce when Rice died, which vaguely pays homage to Albert's genesis in the comics. As it stands though, X-24 is one of the most prominent original creations in Fox's cinematic universe of X-Men movies.