Weapon X is the secret programme that turned Wolverine into a weapon. It took a mutant with bone claws and a healing factor, coated his entire skeleton in adamantium, a near-unbreakable metal, and scrambled his memory to make him obey. The healing factor is what let him survive it: his body repairs almost any wound, fights off poison and disease, and has slowed his ageing so much that he is well over a century old.
The comics and the films tell the story with different details, and this says which is which. Wolverine and his old enemies are on the X-Men shelf, and the programme's other famous graduate is on the Deadpool shelf.
The Weapon X programme
In the comics, Wolverine was born James Howlett in Canada in the late 1800s and lives most of his long life under the name Logan. Before the programme found him he had already been a soldier, a spy and a drifter. Weapon X, a covert project with roots in the Canadian government, captures him, sinks him in a tank and bonds adamantium to his bones. To keep him under control, its scientists strip and rewrite his memories, which is why Logan spends decades not knowing who he really is.
The procedure works too well. Logan wakes in the middle of it, more animal than man, and kills his way out of the facility. The 1991 comic serial Weapon X tells the escape in detail, and the films borrow it: X2 (2003) takes Logan back to the lab where it was done, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) stages the procedure and the escape, and X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) has the young X-Men free him from Stryker's base as the feral Weapon X.
Later comics add a twist to the name. Readers had always taken the X for a letter; it turns out to be a Roman numeral. Weapon X is the tenth of the Weapon Plus programmes, a line of experiments that runs back to the super-soldier project that made Captain America, which was Weapon I. Weapon X takes its name from the programme.
Adamantium explained
Adamantium is a man-made alloy in Marvel's comics, close to indestructible once it sets. In the story it was discovered by a metallurgist trying, and failing, to recreate the metal of Captain America's shield. It is made as a liquid and has to be shaped while molten; once it cools, nothing ordinary can cut, bend or reshape it. It is not the same as vibranium, the rarer metal from Wakanda.
On Wolverine it covers every bone. His skeleton cannot break, his punches land far harder, and his claws cut through almost anything. Without the healing factor the bonding would have killed him. The film Logan (2017) builds its plot on that: as the ageing Logan's healing slows, the metal in his body is slowly poisoning him.
It can also be taken away. In 1993 Magneto rips the adamantium out of Logan's body, and he nearly dies; years later it is restored. The comics have even killed him with it. In Death of Wolverine (2014), with his healing factor gone, he is coated in molten adamantium and dies as it hardens. He comes back in 2018.
The healing factor
Wolverine's healing factor is his mutant power to repair his own body at speed. Cuts close in seconds, bullets are pushed out and broken bones mend. It makes him nearly immune to disease and poison, which is why drugs and sedatives wear off fast.
It slows his ageing too. He looks about forty and fought in the Second World War, which is why so many stories have him meeting people from a past he only half remembers. Its strength depends on the era and the medium: some comics and films make him close to unkillable, others slow him down, and carbonadium, a weaker cousin of adamantium, can slow it down. His senses come with the package: he can track a target by scent alone.
The claws and the berserker rage
Wolverine has three claws in each forearm that slide out between his knuckles with the sound effect every reader knows: snikt. For nearly twenty years readers took them for part of the Weapon X hardware. When Magneto pulled the adamantium out, the truth showed: the claws are his own bone, part of his mutation, and the programme only coated them.
The berserker rage is the other part of the package. Hurt badly or pushed too far, Logan loses himself to an animal fury and fights without fear or restraint. His first full appearance, in 1974, throws him straight into a fight with the Hulk and the Wendigo, and Berserker Bout puts the two of them together again.
On the shelf
Sabretooth
Sabretooth is Victor Creed, a mutant killer with claws, fangs, animal senses and a healing factor of his own, which makes him one of the few who can take what Wolverine gives and come back. In the comics their history runs back long before the X-Men, much of it scrambled along with Logan's memory, and Victor enjoys knowing more of it than Logan does. He makes a ritual of the feud, turning up to attack Logan on his birthday.
The films change the relationship. In X-Men (2000) Sabretooth is a hulking enforcer for Magneto. X-Men Origins: Wolverine makes Victor Logan's half-brother, fighting beside him through a century of wars before they split. In the comics they are not related.
Deadpool, the other Weapon X
Weapon X did not stop with Logan. In the comics, Wade Wilson, a mercenary dying of cancer, volunteers for a later round of the programme, which gives him a healing factor copied from Wolverine's. It holds the cancer back without curing it, and the two together leave his skin scarred all over and his mind loose. He becomes Deadpool, the Merc with a Mouth.
The shared healing factor makes the two natural rivals, and the film Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) builds a whole story on the pairing. His side of it is in Deadpool explained: Weapon X, the healing factor and the fourth wall.
On the back of a tee
Logan and the rest of the team are on the X-Men shelf, and Wade is on the Deadpool shelf, all drawn from canon reference art. Check the size guide before you pick a size.
Why it works on the back: the classic yellow and blue suit, a mask with swept-back points and six claws make a silhouette nobody needs explained, even from across a room.
On the shelf
Read next: The Phoenix Force, Magneto and the Sentinels explained (the man who pulled the metal out) and Hulk's forms explained: Savage, Grey, Professor, World Breaker.
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