The series follows Logan's various adventures when he's not with the X-Men, which tend to be darker then than the stories presented in Uncanny X-Men, with a lot more drugs, sex, and violence. It also heavily features his adventures in the country of Madripoor in his "Patch" alias.
The first issue was released July 12, 1988. The series lasted for 189 issues, with the last issue being released April 16, 2003. The series was relaunched in 2003. see Wolverine 2003 for more info.
Wolverine (1988) provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: In issues #111-114, extradimensional expediter Zoe Culloden grants Wolverine a small cube-shaped box, asking him to protect it from the wrong hands. His dead master, the demonic Ogun, and even Lady Deathstrike want the box for some unknown reason. Storm and Jean Grey do open the box, wonder at its contents, but whatever it contained was never revealed.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Invoked by Logan in the first issue as his inner dialogue outlines his powers, long before the bone claw reveal in issue #75.Lastly, I have claws. Six of 'em, three in each hand, extending from bionic implants housed in my forearms. The blades are pure adamantium...honed so keen they'll cut through anything.
- Atop a Mountain of Corpses: The cover art for issue #1 has Logan standing on the piled-up bodies of the pirates he kills in the opening pages. However, this is just for show as the only time they're actually piled up like that is when several of them dogpile Logan, and he just picks the pile up and throws them all through the wall of the shack they were in.
- Awkward Stoplight Moment: Issue #47 revolves around a drug user who snaps and goes on a killing spree, with Logan as more of a background character for most of it. Near the climax, as Logan is on his motorcycle at a stop light, the killer pulls up beside him in his car. Already drunk and ramped up on adrenaline from his previous kills, as well as armed and with stolen money in the seat beside him, the killer starts freaking out as he looks at Logan, seeing that he's not someone to mess with and wondering if he's a cop.
- Body Horror: Wolverine's "feral" form
◊ that he devolved into in issue #100 after his body rejected a second adamantium infusion, which had elongated, barbed claws, a warped face with the nose shrunken to little more than slits, diminished height, bulging muscles, exaggeratedly hairy arms, hunched back, and Sabretooth-like clawed fingernails and fang-like canines. Picture Wolverine as somewhere between a troll and a caveman, and you have the basic idea. - Crossover: Issues #115-118 cross over with Operation: Zero Tolerance (1997).
- Cross Through: Issue #90 crosses through with Legion Quest, the prequel storyline to Age of Apocalypse: At the end of the issue, with Wolverine jabbing two claws into his face but not the middle one, Sabretooth threatens to hunt down everyone Logan's cared for and make them suffer before he kills them if Logan doesn't kill him right then. Wolverine finally pops that middle claw directly into Creed's brain, just as reality is rewritten by the M'Kraan Crystal and rebooted as the Age of Apocalypse.
- Demonic Possession: At the end of the "Zoe Culloden's mysterious box" arc, Ogun's spirit takes possession of Lady Deathstrike's body and reshapes its cybernetic flesh to someone Logan recognizes, but the reader is never shown whom.
- Haunting the Guilty: Alluded to when Jubilee has Reno and Molochai, the hitmen who'd killed her parents, at her mercy. Wolverine tells her that one "paff" note to the brain stem and they'd be dead and it would seem like a regular heart attack, aside from two fairly healthy men experiencing it at the same time. Jubilee protests.Jubilee: You've killed people. You've killed so many, and...
Wolverine: Yeah. You wanna sit up some night and help me talk to all of 'em?
Jubilee: Oh. *settles for a Groin Attack on both men* - Healing Factor: Logan, in his internal dialogue from the first issue, describes his main mutant ability as "a para-human, super-efficient healing factor that can deal with any illness, or poison, or wound. Makes me way stronger than normal, faster, tougher. Makes my senses keener than any animal's." What makes it significant for this comic's run is the "no adamantium" arc, after Magneto pulled the metal out of his body at the end of Fatal Attractions. The stress of healing this massive trauma shut the healing factor down for a few months of story timenote . When it finally came back, it essentially overclocked because it wasn't having to compensate for the adamantium. While this helped Logan recover from injuries much faster, it made the feral aspects of his mind and personality slowly take over, which gave him a lot of stress and led him to separate himself from the X-Men.
- Immune to Bullets: Wolverine lampshades this in his internal dialogue from the first issue, after taking several bullets through the gut from an AK-47:The bullets burn like fire. Would've killed anyone else. They just make me mad...which is when things get out of hand. *cue berserker rage*
- Legion of Doom: During the "Stay Alive" arc, a subplot has Sabretooth recruiting Lady Deathstrike and Omega Red to form an alliance. The trio strike together in the next arc, "The Logan Files". Each one of them, individually, is a formidable enemy to Logan.
- Life-or-Limb Decision: Played with in one issue where Logan ends up captured and with one arm in a huge manacle that he couldn't easily cut through...so he pulls his arm out of the manacle, basically skinning it in the process.
- Mourning a Dead Robot: Wolverine and Jubilee are confronting a group of Sentinels which have achieved sentience. One Sentinel, severely damaged, begins to express a sincere fear over the termination of its existence. Jubilee is moved by the robot's fear of death. Another Sentinel, dubbing itself Unit 3.14159, is puzzled by Jubilee's display of empathy, and rather than continue with its plan to spark a solar flare to roast all life on Earth, it decides that it, and its compatriots, will enter a dormant state while they consider the nature of empathy.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: After issue #90, Logan putting a claw through his frontal lobe has reduced Sabretooth to an animal- or child-like mentality, and he's being held in a special holding area in the X-Mansion. However, he heals from this rapidly but continues to maintain the facade. Logan knows he's pretending, and this puts him at odds with the rest of the X-Men. In Uncanny X-Men #328, Logan will be proven correct, as Sabretooth mocks Xavier, eviscerates Psylocke, and escapes.
- Off with His Head!: Subverted in the first issue. During the brawl with the pirates, one actually lands a neck cut with a sword, but it shatters on Wolverine's spine and he gets skewered promptly.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Bloodscream isn't technically a vampire, but a guy who was cursed by a witch to live forever with a blood thirst. The only cure, of course, is Logan's blood.
- Pet the Dog: Logan gets this from Lady Deathstrike in one issue during the "no adamantium" arc, when she learns the metal's gone.[Logan retracts his claws, letting Deathstrike see him bleed from the holes in his hands]
Deathstrike: You're...still bleeding. But your healing factor—
Logan: It's pretty much used up. As good as gone.
[Deathstrike hesitantly brushes Logan's forehead with one finger]
Logan: [internal] For the first time in years, she reaches out to touch me...and the touch is gentle. - Reckless Gun Usage: During the fight with the pirates, one opens up on him with an AK-47 in a crowded room, and Logan notes that the guy doesn't care a whit if he hits anyone else (which he does) as long as he hits Logan (which he also does, and which makes Logan go berserk).
- Rigged Spectacle Fight: The first issue opens with a fight between the leader of a pirate gang and the captain of a plane that the pirates have captured, with the other pirates and the surviving passengers watching. It's immediately obvious that the fight is meant to be bloodsport, as the pirate is wielding a machete while the captain's arms have been tied behind his back. The captain manages to put up enough of a fight to impress some of the other pirates, but he's eventually overpowered and decapitated by the pirate leader, who makes it clear to some of the female captives that this was done as an example of what could happen if they displease him.
- Sadly Mythtaken: The Shiva robots quote that they are Shiva the destroyer, and are so named after Shiva in Hindu Mythology, however, Shiva is not simply the Hindu god of destruction, as destruction refers to the aspect of clearing the way for new growth, or a new cycle.
- Serious Work, Comedic Scene: The comic is typically a very serious, and often grim story with more than a few grisly moments to it. But that's not to say that it's without humor.
- The Big Crunch story arc (#51-53) starts with Logan picking up a woman at a local bar. Jubilee follows him and finds him at a motel...and is shocked to find Jean Grey coming out of the motel room. She returns to the Westchester mansion, dejected, until she sees Jean Grey jogging around the mansion, doing her morning workout. Jubilee is ecstatic, embracing Jean, realizing that whoever Logan was with it was someone she could "punch in the nose". note
- The Savage Land story arc (#69-71) has Wolverine, Rogue, and Jubilee go to the Savage Land to investigate rumors of Magneto being there. Separated from the others, Jubilee runs afoul of some native tribes in the Savage Land, and manages to best them in combat. When Logan meets up with her again on the Blackbird, he's informed that the people of the tribe mistook her for a boy and tried to betroth her to one of their princesses.
- Shoot the Dog: Subverted in issue #47. The killer's wacked-out behaviour causes Logan to associate him with a rabid dog, which for some reason makes Logan unable to kill him, shown as flashbacks to him being unable to put down a rabid pet dog when he was young. After Logan retracts his claws, the killer is shot dead by a female police officer. In talking with her, Logan reveals at the end of the issue that Silver Fox took the gun from him and shot the dog herself.
- Smoking Is Edgy: In a 2001 storyline, writer Frank Tieri introduces Mr. X, a killer from the upper crust whose telepathic powers kicked in when he watched a woman be run over by a car — similar to how Jean Grey's powers first emerged. Mr. X tells Wolverine that, after the car accident and the sensations he felt in his young mind, nothing could compare: cars, women, travels. The accompanying comic book panel has him smoking a cigarette with a bored look on his face, while a girl clings to his side.
- Story Arc:
- Issues #93-101 develop a continuous storyline:
- In issues #93-95, Tyler Dayspring (Cable's son), also called Genesis, commands the Dark Riders to release Cyber (another of Wolverine's enemies) from a castle in Scotland. This leads to a confrontation against Cyber.
- In issues #96-98, Wolverine is assisted by mysterious expediter Zoe Culloden and goes on a trip to Madripoor, accompanied by Jean Grey. Cannonball also goes after Wolverine in Madripoor.
- In issues #99-101 (also crossing through with Uncanny X-Men #331), Genesis captures Wolverine and re-implants the adamantium on his bones. However, Wolverine's body rejects the adamantium and he regresses to a feral state. He kills Genesis, and some X-Men go after him in Akkaba (in Morocco).
- Issues #125-128 show Viper brainwashing the female members of the X-Men to drive Logan to her, so that they can marry each other.
- Issues #93-101 develop a continuous storyline:
