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Editor's Note: First of all, this is currently written up to the Shadow King battle on Muir Island. I will expand eventually, but this is up to the point where I like to remember the character best. I'd love feedback on this. I was once told by a MUX that I show no grasp of the character at all. Please let me know if you agree with this assessment after looking it over. Thanks.
He is wearing a sleeveless yellow body suit that hugs his muscular torso and legs with a swath of blue under a red belt bearing a black X on the buckle. His arms are noticeably hairy. His muscle tone is like chisled stone and moves with his near perfect physique. The costume is detailed by blue tiger-like stripes on the shoulders and sides of the torso and arching blue pads above the arms. His blue gloves have three metallic housings spaced between the knuckles. The boots are blue with black trim, coming over the calf and ending in sharp points almost at knee height.
Logan is a man largely ruled by his emotions. His actions are often dictated by his emotions and his instincts where logic takes a back seat. He has an inner savagery akin to his namesake that he must always keep in check.
He is the definitive anti-hero. He sleeps with Madripoor's premier crime lord whom he helped put into power and defend, yet chases illegal drug shipments across the globe. His brand of justice is swift and harsh, yet he works well within a team that does not condone killing unless there are no options left. He posseses the cold attitude of a predator, yet builds strong emotional attachments to those he cares for. He is no stranger to killing, and will do so in a heartbeat if necessary, but years of fighting for Xavier's dream have trempered the beast inside him. His first instinct in every tense situation is to fight and ask questions later.
The mental barriers erected by Project X are beginning to weaken, and with the proper jolt might crumble. But for now he is still the same ol canucklehead. The initial signs of his reversion back to his more savage side are only beginning to show, but with the proper discipline he can still keep it in check.
Logan spent a great deal of his life in the far east and shows an affinity to their cultures and philosophies. He follows the Asian ideas of honor to the letter, which have gotten him in questionable circumstances many times.
He's been burned bad in the romance department. First he had strong images of Silver Fox burned into his mind. His feelings for Jean have never been requieted because of Scott. Mariko was practically taken from him. And Tiger Tyger is a criminal. He's been pushed to the point where he subconsciencely pushes back against any hint of a relationship. Tiger Tyger is an on again off again lover, but it is unlikely to ever become more than that, especially considering that Mariko is still alive.
Everything he has been through in his long life has admittedly added to his bitter outlook, but he won't angst about it. He's too much of a scrapper to let anything bring him down. He keeps his feelings to himself, bottling everything up inside him quietly or simply coping and shrugging it off. There's no room in his life for whining and talking about how the world should be a better place. He'd much rather fight back. He understands his role in the team, and won't hamper that by showing weakness.
Logan's history is nebulous at best. He has memories of his past, but many of them are unreliable, altered, or suppressed. He knows he travelled to the far east sometime in the mid 1930's and found a new home away from the place of his birth, the wilds of the Canadian Rockies. He lived primarly in Japan and on the tiny island country of Madripoor south of Singapore. He knows that he's been a scrapper who's crossed paths with the underworld for as long as he can remember.
What he does not know is that he worked for the CIA, primarily with Sabretooth and Maverick, for an unknown number of years at the height of the cold war. He has rather vivid memories of Creed killing a woman he loved, Silver Fox, on a cold day in Canada, nearly getting killed himself, and being found half-dead presumeably by Project X. These are a sample of many altered memories. In reality, he was kidnapped by the Weapon X project because they knew of his incredible stamina, though they did not know of his powers, and his reputation in the espionage community made him a perfect candidate. The doctors in the Project put him through torture, infusing his body with adamantium that laced his skeleton, and adding adamantium claws to his forearms. The only reason he survived is because of his incredible healing factor. Logan destroyed the compound that was his prison, maimed the chief professor responsible, and escaped from his captors after the process was complete with his brain so scrambled that he was more beast than man. He was found in the wilderness by James and Heather MacDonald Hudson, nursed back to health, and recruited into Department K.
Logan took the code name Wolverine and served as Canada's top agent. They had so much faith in him that they sent him solo after the Hulk to stop the rampaging beast on his path of destruction into Canada. This caught the attention of Professor Charles Xavier, who was in desperate need of mutants to save his X-Men from Krakoa. Logan accepted, and left Dept. K to become one of Xavier's second generation of X-Men.
The feisty berzerker's presence in the mansion was a source of great tension right off the bat, and quickly lead to Angel quitting the team. He took a liking to Jean Gray. But who dind't? This and the fact that he was traditionally a loner in the past made his relationship with Cyclops tenuous for the period before he left his role of leader soon after the "death" of Phoenix. He meshed with the rest of the team well actually, and proved to be a valued member for years, working both as a team player and saving their bacon from time to time acting on his own.
Professor X worked wonders for tempering Wolverine's beastial nature, though not taming it completely. Another thing that helped was his close relationship with Kitty Pryde and the adventures they shared for a brief time. He did eventually track down the doctor responsible for perfecting the adamantium infusion process, but due to the memory suppression program, at the time he did not know that the Professor who actually ran the experiment in reality only stole his work. Nonetheless he killed the designer of the process and found an arch enemy...the doctor's daughter became Lady Deathstrike.
Logan was still a loner at heart, and as such was prone to sudden fits of wanderlust. On one such excursion he learned that the woman he loved and caretaker of his foster daughter was forced to marry a monster as payment for an unholy alliance between her clan and the Yakuza. Mariko Yashida and Logan had fallen in love the moment they met, but the daughter of Shingen Yashida was honor bound by the code of her clan to serve.
Logan saved Mariko, slaying not only her husband of the arranged marriage, but a Yakuza assassin who tried to kill her, and Shingen himself, who had been driven mad with greed in an attempt to single handedly take over the Japanese underworld and rule the country. With the help of an assassin named Yukio, the clan was saved. Logan rightfully earned the honor sword of Clan Yashida and the hand of Markio in marriage in return. However, the blessed event was not to be, unfortunately. Mastermind and Silver Samurai had other plans. Between their plotting, Mariko was forced into a situation that nearly destroyed her clan's honor and left Logan jilted at the alter. Despite the defeat of Mastermind, Mariko still denied his love, focusing her efforts on restoring Clan Yashida's honor. Logan's most prized possession is still the honor sword.
For several years following, Wolverine found a family in the X-Men. Even after a mortally wounded Xavier disappeared into space, he stayed with them. The months that followed were dark for the X-Men, requiring more of Wolverine's killer instinct to harden the team to harsh reality without their mentor. The Mutant Massacre marked the beginning of the downward spiral for the team and the lengthening of Logan's leash on his dark side.
At Storm's behest, he took the offical position of team leader, but ended up leading the team to their "deaths" on his first mission with the title. After the X-Men's trip through the Seige Perilous a la Roma, he made frequent trips back to Madripoor for the first time in years. As an X-Man, he ran a guerrilla war against enemies of mutants in battles that reflected the darkening future of the dream, including the return of the Brood, an assault on Genosha, and Inferno. In his off time from being a Dead X-Man, he entrenched himself again in the politics and crimeworld of Lowtown, assigning himself the task of being Tiger Tyger's conscience and helping his favorite stomping ground run smoothly.
One day he returned through Gateway's portal to find the Australian base they had taken for their home empty, the X-Men missing, and Reavers waiting for him. He did not know that his companions had taken yet another trip through the Siege Perilous to save themselves, but even that thought would not have helped him as he hung on a cross in the outback for who know's how long. He was saved by Jubilation Lee, a young mutant girl who had stumbled into his world by happenstance. Lady Deathstrike let them get away actually, preferring Logan to die in an honerable way and letting him live to fight again. Jubilee then earned the rank of sidekick and good luck charm for Wolvie, and proved useful in a pinch (similiarities to Robin notwithstanding).
He was soon reunited with Psylocke after battling the Mandarin to rescue her and restore her mind. In time he was with the reassembled X-Men thanks to the efforts of Forge and Banshee, fought Cameron Hodge and the mutant hating army of Genosha, saved Professor X from near death in Shi'ar space, and helped in the defeat of the Shadow King.
Logan is well versed in military tactics and operations and has all the skills you could imagine on espionage. He started this training and experience in the 1930's against the Hand, then with Canadian Intelligence, then with the CIA, then Dept K, and finally the X-Men. His personality prevents him from being the master strategist, but he has a good head for tactics seen in any seasoned commando or espionage agent.
In the wild, Logan is an expert survivalist and tracker. He has been known to disappear into the Canadian Rockies for weeks with only a backpack. In addition to his sense of smell, he can follow and identify tracks like a hunter. His savage nature has given him an affinity for animals, making him able to stare down or befriend an attacker from a dog to the Wendigo.
Logan is a decent auto mechanic. He has a penchant for motorcycles and classic cars as a hobby. He can't even dream of the things Forge can do, but he can take apart and reassemble a standard engine in record time.
Logan has been many places in the world. He knows the customs and culture of China, Japan, and surrounding Pacific islands. Missions for different governments have taught him the language of the enemy in other parts of the globe. From his many world travels he has leared Japanese, Chinese, Russian, German, and Spanish.
His entire physiology is boosted as a result of his healing factor, giving him heightened endurance and lightening fast reflexes. His strength is not massive by Marvel standards, but he once lifted a Sumo and tossed him out a window. His optimal bench must hover around 1000 lbs.
Wolverine has all the accute senses of his namesake. He can track any target once he has their scent a week after they've left. He trusts this sense implicitly and listens to it before the others or even what his brain thinks it sees. His hearing is approximately 5 times that of a normal man. His eyesight is equally keen
His entire skeletal structure is laced with Adamantium. Punching him is like punching steel, and vice versa. His bones are unbreakable by any known Earthly force. In addition he has three claws made of the same metal the length of each forearm inside his arms that pop out through his hands and cut through steel like rice paper.
If wounded sufficiently or pushed far enough in the heat of combat, Wolverine reverts to his uncontrollable, savage side and cuts loose. In this state he is virutally unstoppable in hand to hand combat and is completely oblivious to pain. When deep into this stage, it's not a pretty sight. One of his worst fears is that he will kill a friend if he gives this side of him too long a leash.
He has a very strong will, but is still fully affected by psionics. He is not invulnerable despite his boasting and can be killed. Drowning will work nicely and will actually be quite painful. It has been theorized that snapping his neck will work, but that of course has never been tested. When he is hit, he'll feel it. He has been beaten to the point where his healing factor needs a good day or more (or even a week) to work its magic, but that takes a /serious/ beating.