By Daniel Dean

(Alternative Title: SECOND-BEST AT WHAT HE DOES)

What can we say about Wolverine that hasn’t been poorly spelled in all-caps before? He’s Marvel’s most bankable mutant and currently appears in about every third comic Marvel publishes. They have even taken to specifically labeling comics which don’t have Wolverine on them. Yes, seriously.

Use these to recognize the increasingly-rare Wolverine-free Marvel titles!

In the comics Wolverine seems aware of his best-selling status, missing no opportunity to talk down to his teammates and trash-talk his enemies, generally glowering at everything and wishing he could fuck a dead woman. This would all-be par for the course in comics but, dammit, he’s just so cocky about it, as are his fans. Well I say we take Wolverine at his word and see whether he really is the best there is at what he does.

What exactly is it that Wolverine does, you ask? Let’s check his stats:

KILLING

Want context? Purchase "The Dark Phoenix Saga" trade paperback and hold on to your balls.

One thing that always drew fans to Wolverine was how lethal he was. Banshee would yell at you, Cyclops would look at you, Professor X would make you think bad thoughts, but Wolverine… he will stab you. As time went on this aspect of Wolverine’s character was played up more heavily as fans couldn’t seem to get enough of Wolverine losing his shit and killing a room full of dudes. One of the things that catapulted Wolverine to fan-favorite status was him cutting up an entire building of dudes after getting left for dead in the sewers.

GRADE: B-

Apart from cannon-fodder henchmen, Wolverine really hasn’t killed as many people as you would think. Of those he has killed many of them really had it a long time coming, so the whole “loose cannon” angle just doesn’t work. He probably would have scored higher if not for the fact that he has failed to kill so many of his arch enemies when killing people is his whole deal (see below.)

HEAD OF THE CLASS: TOMMY MONAGHAN

I could have said “The Punisher” because both of them have pretty impressive body counts but A) the Punisher didn’t really start killing a lot of guys for a long time (since he was a Spider-Man character and mostly hung around threateningly) and B) Tommy Monaghan killed a shitload of guys in way fewer issues than the Punisher ever did. Still, both characters held mainstream titles and killed way more people than Wolverine ever did. For those unfamiliar with him, Tommy Monaghan starred in DC comics’ Hitman by future Punisher scribe Garth Ennis and his book was pretty righteously funny in its own right, which earns him some extra credit.

ADAMANTIUM

HRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNGH

Wolverine’s bones are coated with an alloy called adamantium, an ultra-dense material that is virtually indestructible once it solidifies. This means two things: he can withstand an astounding amount of punishment and his claws can cut through damn near anything. This does make for some cool moments and lets him go toe to toe with people like the Hulk or giant robots. (If you’ve ever seen the X-Men fight Sentinels you know that the whole team is over in one panel attacking one’s foot while Wolverine cuts off like four of their heads in the rest of the page.) For years the exact process and origin behind Wolverine’s adamantium was unknown since its creation was a state-protected secret.

GRADE: C

Wolverine’s adamantium is great and all, but he could withstand massive punishment without it (see below,) so it’s not strictly necessary. It’s also a bad idea to have a metal skeleton when the supervillain you fight every goddamn Tuesday has magnetic powers. Magneto finally wised up after 20 years of Wolverine’s bullshit and extracted the adamantium from his skeleton in the form of little sperms.

"Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I didn't really think this AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH"

It was at that point that it was revealed that Wolverine didn’t even need adamantium claws since he’d had big bone claws the whole time which could still cut through the side of a bus. (Kids! This is not how science works; no matter how sharp I carve a stick of butter it is not going to slice through a piece of construction paper.)

Moreover, the mystery and uniqueness of adamantium was a bit dulled by the fact that over time everybody got themselves some adamantium, even Wolverine’s old enemy Sabretooth. Bullseye has an adamantium spine. Doctor Octopus had some adamantium arms. Doctor Doom made some adamantium armor. Marvel’s mafia families have adamanium robot bodyguards. Wolverine’s vengeful ex and even his bastard son got their hands on some adamantium. I think even Gambit had an adamantium stick now. Gambit. Jesus.

HEAD OF THE CLASS: ULTRON

The very first Ultron resembled the Fruit Fucker from Penny Arcade but it wouldn’t be long before he upgraded and the Avengers had to deal with an entire killer robot made of adamantium who also shot face lasers and had an army of lesser robots. It bears repeating that he shoots death lasers out of his face. The height of Ultron’s being-awesomeness was when he built a metric shitload of copies of himself out of adamantium and basically marched across the entire fakey country of Slorenia and burned it to the ground. Oh, he also sort of took over space a little. Eat a dick, Wolverine.

SUPER POWERS

"Hey guys, I found some bullets."

Wolverine’s super powers include a super-fast healing ability and heightened senses. That means that writers can have him do all the bad-ass action hero stuff in the world and have an excuse for it. How did he know that ninja was right behind him? Oh, right, super-smelling. Did he just jump out of a plane without a parachute? Oh, right, regeneration. If you watched the X-Men cartoon in the 90’s you know that the infected Wolverine with the Legacy Virus (a flimsy analogue for AIDS,) and cured it with his hyper-immune system’s antibodies. They never tried that in the comics though because none of your damn business, that’s why!

GRADE: C-

Wolverine’s regeneration isn’t as common in comics as, say, super-strength or wearing nothing but panties and calling it a battle suit but he’s neither unique or the first in making regeneration his whole deal. The whole point of the Spider-Man villain the Lizard was that his origin had him regenerating a whole god-damned arm before he even got turned into Crocodile Dundee’s arch nemesis. Not only that but Wolverine’s first opponents — the Hulk and Wendigo — also have healing factors, as does his arch-enemy Sabretooth. And Wolverine’s other enemies, Bloodscream and Cyber and Omega Red. Deadpool has a synthetic healing factor based off of Wolverine’s. The fucking Green Goblin has a healing factor, as does Doomsday (the guy who killed Superman a little,) and a random ass cop in the pages of Flash. Oh, and the cheerleader. Even Hawkman has a healing factor these days. You’re as cool as Hawkman, Wolverine.

As for the super-duper senses: A) that’s Daredevil’s whole deal, B) half the people listed above also have that, C) Superman owns them all.

HEAD OF THE CLASS: LOBO

Lobo (the version of Lobo that caught on, at least,) was an indictment of the over-the-top gruffness and violence that defined characters like Wolverine and the Punisher. He was so over-the-top, in fact, that people fell unironically in love with him and supported him in a whole series. Lobo has super-senses as well, not that he needs them. His healing abilities are so powerful that he can re-grow a body after his head has been severed. If completely disintegrated, a new Lobo will still regenerate out of a drop of blood. Add to that the fact that he’s effectively immortal since both Heaven and Hell have literally kicked him out, and Wolverine looks like a pussy boy in comparison (though to be fair, Clint Eastwood riding a grizzly bear looks pretty sissy next to Lobo.)

BEING A DANGEROUS LONER

If there’s one thing that fans associate with Wolverine above all else it’s the attitude of the dangerous loner. Why does Jean fall for the pint-sized furball? Girls love a troubled bad-boy. If there’s something to be done Wolverine is ready to do it himself and the hell with all your regulations, Lieutenant! When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross, Bub! SNIKT!

GRADE: F

Wolverine’s big break was as the irascibly surly guy on the All-New, All-Different X-Men, where it was revealed that he had previously been a part of Alpha Flight, prior to which he was a member of the Weapon X program and part of Canadian Special Forces (they’re the branch of the Canadian military who’re allowed to use the one tank, provided they pay for gas out of their own pockets.) Since then he’s been a member of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Secret Defenders, X-Force… there’s really no group of idiots that Wolverine won’t hang around while complaining about being a grizzled loner. This is without even mentioning the fact that he apparently collects mutant jailbait sidekicks: first Sprite, then Jubilee, and now he’s got characters named Pixie and Armor under his hairy, surly wing. Yes, the names are getting slightly less terrible as time passes, but the bottom line is still that Wolverine is more or less the world’s angriest babysitter.

The funny thing is, he’s not even the best at being bad at being a grizzled loner, an honor which we all know belongs to Batman; never minding the Justice League, the Outsiders (his own super-team), and a seemingly never ending parade of Gotham vigilantes who operate under his watch… at this point there have been five different Robins.

"Can we make this fight quick? Robin 8 gets colicky if I don't read to him before beddy-byes."

HEAD OF THE CLASS: DEADPOOL

Wade Wilson’s affiliation with the Weapon X program was the last time he was a part of anything except for a passing camaraderie with professional super-villains and a shape-shifting ex-girlfriend. Sure, he tried to bang some jailbait member of X-Force and was occasionally pressed into service by an even badder villain here and there but always for a lark, always as a gag. The only people Deadpool regularly associated with were hostages. The closest thing he has to a friend is the murderous psychopath Bullseye, and even that relationship involves them trying to kill one another half the time. The only real way you can get Deadpool to hang out with you is to pay him lots of money, and even then he’ll probably spend the whole time insulting you and might set fire to the dog.

LOVE

Wolverine has banged a lot of chicks. Most of these chicks have been Asian, redheaded, super-heroes, super-villains, or some combination of the two. He’s been married a couple of times and even fathered a couple of children (one of them with a cave-woman. Yes, that’s true.) He even has a sort of “just friends” relationship with Daredevil’s main squeeze, Elektra, which may in fact be “friends with benefits.” Most famously, Wolverine has repeatedly acted as the third side of a romantic triangle with teammates Cyclops and Jean Grey. Even after the two were married Wolverine still kept at it and teases of the two kissing or having a relationship were constant. If you’ve read any straight X-Men fanfiction online it probably involved Jean and Logan fucking.

What? Don’t look at me like that, you bastards.

GRADE: D

First off, in Marvel’s Ultimate X-Men title Wolverine did finally nail Jean Grey… when she was jailbait. Neat, huh?

The other thing you have to realize is that a lot of the women Wolverine has been with over the years have sort of died or tried to kill him or both. This is because they usually get abused, thrown over, abandoned, killed, sent to hell… bad times, basically. One joined a terrorist group. One shoved giant metal spikes into her fingers and led an army of cyborgs. It takes a hell of a lot of scorn to drive a woman to that. If you think dealing with the hair he leaves on the soap is the worst thing about knocking boots with Wolverine, think again. Wolverine doesn’t protect his girlfriends for shit.

One of them even died from blowfish toxin poisoning, like Homer Simpson almost did that one time.

HEAD OF THE CLASS: TOM STRONG

Created by Alan Moore as a sort of Doc Savage-Captain Marvel pastiche, Tom Strong doesn’t look a day over 38 even at 108 years old, which means he got some seventy solid years of crazy sex with his wife, who kind of was a princess. Together they stopped robot people and alien invasions and total craziness and managed to raise a teenage daughter for sixty years. So, like a lot of Alan Moore comics, it runs on its own little put-put logic engine. If you buy that, though, Tom isn’t exactly a player or a cooze-hound but he does run a loving home in spite of absolute craziness and keeps his loved ones safe, at least. Plus he was raped by a Nazi superwoman in his sleep. I think we’ve all had dreams like that after watching Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

Then again, if we’re rating on a strict cooze-hound scale then Wolverine still loses out to a lot of characters, especially Jack Horner from DC’s Fables. Yes, the same Jack Horner who sat in a corner, jumped over candlesticks, and fought giants. In this comic he gets more pussy than some sort of Hugh Hefner-Wilt Chamberlain cyborg which makes up for nursery rhymes being the second lamest form of expression… right below Hallmark cards and right above Uwe Boll movies.

STYLE

Wolverine’s blue and yellow spandex isn’t entirely intimidating, and is hardly the best superhero costume out there. There are also more than a few people who thought it was a little gay. In fact Frank Quietly, artist of the Authority and JLA, has said almost that exact thing on more than one occasion.

GRADE: F

When Quietly got the job of redesigning the X-Men, he set out to make Wolverine look absolutely not gay at all. Not. Gay. At. All. So he designed this:

Whoa. Um. Geez.

HEAD OF THE CLASS: JUST ABOUT GODDAMNED EVERYBODY

Even the superheroes who look more than a little gay are still better designed than… this. Not to mention even his original costume has always been kind of arbitrary, like many of the X-Men. Then of course there’s his hair…

SMOKING

Anybody who grew up reading Marvel comics knows that Wolverine is rarely without a nice big stogie in his mouth. His healing powers mean that he never has to worry about cancer or, hell, probably even yellowing teeth.

GRADE: F

As per an official policy put in place by current Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada, Wolverine can’t smoke. He can never smoke. Neither can Nick Fury or the Thing or anybody else who smokes… all people whose unique physiology makes smoking not a problem. But no superheroes can smoke. Because smoking is evil. Only supervillains can smoke. This is a rule.

HEAD OF THE CLASS: HELLBOY

Hellboy’s love of cigars has crossed from comics to film to even direct-to-DVD cartoons. Before a film was even a remote possibility, Hellboy had his own cigarette lighter. These days he has like eight. Wolverine, by comparison, appears on candy cigarette packages. Only they don’t call them candy cigarettes: they call them “candy sticks.”

If you want to see Daniel talk a lot more about comics, a good place to do this is over at his blog, the Comic Book Closet.