Wolverine is the best at what he does, and what he does is talk about his past, apparently. Marvel has announced Wolverine: Origin III – The Dark Age, an upcoming miniseries written by Paul Jenkins and illustrated by CAFU, which will explore Logan’s actions in the 1950s, leading to his recruitment into the Weapon X program that gave him his famous adamantium skeleton. Marvel’s pitching the series as a look into an unexamined part of Wolverine’s history, which is true enough. But when they also present Origin III as a 25th anniversary celebration of the original miniseries Origin, by Jenkins and Andy Kubert, and that’s where things fall apart.
As its name suggests, the 2001 Origin miniseries laid bare the full history of Wolverine, most famously that his was born the sickly James Howlett III and took the name Logan after the brutal groundskeeper who may be his biological father. So successful was Origin that it spawned a 2005 ongoing series Wolverine: Origins, which ran for 25 issues, as well as 2014 sequel by Kieron Gillen and Adam Kubert. In short, we know basically everything there is to know about Wolverine. And a third Origins miniseries can’t help but remind us of what we’ve lost.
Wolverine has always been defined by mystery. Even before he first appeared, in a cameo in the very last panel of Incredible Hulk #180 (1974), military folks in that same issue talked in ominous tones about the secretive Weapon X. We didn’t see him without a mask for another two years, in 1976’s X-Men #98, it took another five issues for readers to learn that his name was Logan (information revealed by a leprechaun, as a matter of fact). Over the next decade, more and more hints about Logan’s past dropped: his connection to the Canadian team Alpha Flight, his relationship with Sabretooth, his knowledge of Japanese culture, and, of course, what happened with Weapon X.
Each bit of information promised to tell the story, but instead just raised questions. So landmark stories, such as the gorgeous “Weapon X” storyline that Barry Windsor-Smith told in 1991’s Marvel Comics Presents #72–84, or 1992’s Wolverine #50, by Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri, served to only deepen the mystery. Canonically, Wolverine suffered from “memory implants” that made his past hazy, allowing writers to contradict previous stories and making his backstory all the more opaque.