Logan's Memory & his history with Sabretooth.

[Slimybug]

I've been wondering about this, and I'm sure it's a complicated subject. When was it first referenced that Logan only had part of his memory? I don't believe it was in Giant-Size X-Men #1? When it was first referenced, how much could he remember?


I just read Wolverine Vol. 2 #10 on Marvel Unlimited because it was the first appearance of Silver Fox, but I was so confused. I'm not sure how much of a history with Sabretooth he's supposed to have at that point. It appears, though, that even at this point Logan has memories of the late 1800s or early 1900s.


So...Anyone want to start?

[Kuwagaton]

Hama gets into that later on, explaining how those particular memories fit with his interactions with those characters. Basically, being a couple of years before Weapon X was really a story means that whole thing was up in the air. At one point Victor begins addressing Logan as "son 'o mine" and although it's not likely what they were really considering as the running background, they don't seem to have a confident alternative.

[Slimybug]

Okay, so I reposted this thread from the Marvel section because I didn't realize there was a specific X books section. I don't see any function on here to lock threads, so that one's still active, although I mentioned I was moving it. So I'll go ahead and repost this great piece of help that Cthuludrew just posted there.

That's actually a really good question. His past was always pretty mysterious, going back to his Claremont/Byrne X-Men days, but I don't think there was ever any indication that he had memory losses until his first ongoing series (1988 run). Even, then, I don't think it showed up until after Claremont had left the title. (See below)



So, to this point and in reference to my above note, Wolverine #10, by Claremont ('88 series) was where Silver Fox was first introduced. At this point, Claremont had already worked Sabretooth into Wolverine's backstory in X-Men, so this story was really just fleshing that out. That said, there is absolutely no indication in this storyline that Wolverine is suffering from any kind of memory loss. Instead, he appears to just be flashing back to a time when he lived in the Canadian woods with his native american lover and his (already old) rival Sabretooth killed her on his birthday. This was Claremont fleshing out the ongoing "annual birthday fight" that he had already established as part of the Sabes/Logan history (ie, Creed always shows up and nearly kills Logan on his birthday. Logan's healing factor wasn't yet out of control and Creed was the one foe that Logan truly feared because he was more deadly even than the man who is "the best he is at what he does.")

Side note: This story does seem to hint that Wolverine and Creed are both much older than they seemed to be. Claremont also hinted at this in his early Wolverine ('88) stories by having a picture of Logan with a very young Chang (an employee of Landau, Luckman, and Lake) in Madripoor.

There were hints at possible memory gaps before this: some of the retellings of the Wolverine/Heather and Mac Hudson stories showed him as very feral after his escape from Weapon X, and Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X series seemed to show that Logan had a gap in his memory about the experimentation done on him, but nothing quite as extensive- and nothing indicating memories being rewritten that I know of.

I think it was probably Larry Hama who took all of this backstory to its (possibly inevitable?) conclusion of memory tampering. Hama likes to base a lot of his stories on real world military and military intelligence themes (such as CIA mind control experiments and the like). He either introduced the memory rewrites or just fleshed them out more than anyone else; I'd guess the former, but I'm not sure. I know that Claremont also was writing Logan memory loss stories at or around the same time on X-Men, and both men used some of the same (or similar) sequences, such as Logan/Creed in Team X.

In any event, even when the memory tampering storyline was going full bore, it was always only small chunks and pieces here and there, mostly centered around his Team X time that may or may not have been real. Not that it didn't have Logan questioning everything (as one would), but pretty much anything before his Weapon X/Team X days and after his original Hulk appearance can be pretty well relied upon to be real memories.

[Cthulhudrew]

Hama gets into that later on, explaining how those particular memories fit with his interactions with those characters. Basically, being a couple of years before Weapon X was really a story means that whole thing was up in the air. At one point Victor begins addressing Logan as "son 'o mine" and although it's not likely what they were really considering as the running background, they don't seem to have a confident alternative.

That's a good point, and one I'd forgotten. IIRC, it was Claremont that was going to have Creed actually be Logan's father, but Hama took that unofficial material and used it to make the brief mindf*** story where Logan starts to question if it was true. It turned out not to be (Nick Fury confirmed it for Logan), but that memory was one of Creed's own implanted memories.

I want to say that there was an article about this that I read several years ago online, but I don't recall offhand where. Some brief google searches don't turn up any definitive delvings into the Wolverine/Team X memory implant histories, and now that Slimybug has brought it up, I am starting to wonder why no one has written it up before. Certainly people have made blog posts about far less interesting and documented stories out there, and this one has a definite history. Worthy of a Cronin CBR article at least.

[berserkerclaw]

Hama gets into that later on, explaining how those particular memories fit with his interactions with those characters. Basically, being a couple of years before Weapon X was really a story means that whole thing was up in the air. At one point Victor begins addressing Logan as "son 'o mine" and although it's not likely what they were really considering as the running background, they don't seem to have a confident alternative.

As others have said Claremont intended that Sabretooth was Logan's father. But he never addressed that story. Hama Changed it. And yes i believe Claremont made it out that the only thing Logan didnt remember was who put the Adamantium in him. Logan was always just close guarded and has a Mysterious Back ground. Larry Hama introduced Memory implants as a way for writers to do what every they wanted lol. And someone can go in a say nope thats an implant lol. Thats my guess anyway i don't know what Hamas ideas were.

[Slimybug]

So once it was established that Logan had memory loss, was it always stated that he didn't remember anything before waking up after the Weapon X program with metal claws? When was that firmly established, if so, as his furthest memory?

Did he ever gain his memory back? I take it he did, since people now call him James.

[Jackraow21]

A few things here…

1) Initially Logan’s memory loss was entirely attributed to Weapon X wiping his mind as they attempted to make him the ultimate sleeper agent, however, once they did Origin they established that it’s actually his healing factor which causes him to forget major trauma. Essentially his mind heals him by making him forget really awful things. So I think it’s some combination of that plus what Weapon X did to him that causes the gaps in his memory. Plus perhaps just longevity. I mean, he’s got 130 years or so worth of memories after all.

2) He did gain his memory back, in its entirety, during House of M when Wanda rewrote reality to make mutants the dominant species on the planet and gave everyone their heart’s desire (e.g., Spider-man was married to Gwen Stacy, Scott and Emma were married, Logan was basically the top agent for SHIELD along with Mystique, etc.). And when they fixed reality, with Wanda uttering those fateful words (“no more mutants”), he did retain those memories. In fact, Daniel Way wrote an entire series about him going after those who wronged him over the decades and apparently the conspiracy ran pretty deep with Romulus behind it all. Most writers have thankfully ignored this, as it was a pretty dark chapter in Logan’s life and added a lot of awful things to his past that he did under Romulus’ control. It was even implied that Logan was the architect of the Weapon X program himself (in the story that brought Sabretooth back after he killed him with the Muramasa blade by cutting his head off; this story then established that that version of Creed was just a clone and the real one survived). Essentially showing how Logan, along with Sabretooth, Romulus and his twin sister, Remus, attacked a Dept H facility that was creating super soldiers in Canada and co-opted it for their darker Weapon X experiments, including the experimentation on Logan himself. It was utterly stupid, but it’s still out there and a part of canon that should probably be addressed at some point (and retconned somehow).

3) It’s unclear how many of those memories Logan retains now, as he lost his healing factor and died and then was brought back to life by Persephone (who also seems to have been forgotten). And it certainly seems like that death and rebirth cycle restored him to his previous status quo of having significant gaps in his memory. He also returned with the infamous “hot claws”, which was mercifully short-lived as a concept because it was pretty dumb. It essentially involved his claws heating up the longer he used them (Perhaps due to exposure to oxygen? Unclear honestly, but my own head canon explanation was that something changed with his adamantium when he was brought back and now the longer his claws are extended and exposed to the air the more they heat up), and when they did so they ended up becoming more lethal (if adamantium can in fact become sharper/more lethal) but also drained his strength and healing factor the longer he uses them. It was kind of a McGuffin which was added I think to dampen his invincibility a bit, as they’ve done several times before (e.g., when he lost his adamantium during Fatal Attractions, when he lost his healing powers just before dying, the Old Man Logan variant whose healing factor is at reduced levels, etc.). Some of the most interesting Logan stories are when his back is against the wall and his healing powers are diminished, so I get why. But ultimately the hot claws were clearly deemed a dumb way to achieve this and thus were quickly written out of existence and forgotten.

4) While Sabretooth was confirmed to not be Logan’s father and clearly believed that due to memory implants, the whole saga with Romulus did imply there’s some connection there. Ultimately however that story is such a mess that we don’t know what that connection is anymore, as the whole Lupine Sapiens offshoot branch was retconned as a lie from Romulus by his sister, Remus, in the follow up story to that initial Loeb/Bianchi arc. Personally I loved the explanation in X-men Origins Wolverine that they’re half-brothers, and thought that was the way to go. However, with Dog Logan clearly being a separate character from Victor Creed in the comics and the subsequent exploration of the Creed family in Origin II we now know that’s not a possibility.

5) My final thought on this is that someone should come in with the explicit goal of cleaning this mess up and establishing Logan’s true history and lineage, or at least glossing over all the inconsistencies so that the tapestry makes more sense. I’d love to see someone do something like this…

- Establish that Romulus is not an immortal mutant, rather he and his sister Remus are like Mr. Sinister in that they were human initially (baseline Homo sapiens) who were genetically altered by Apocalypse at some point. Perhaps they were orphans and he took pity on them because he saw some strength in them, so he enhanced them to make them his ultimate assassins. As such they’re both older than Logan and Creed, perhaps even hundreds of years old. They ran a deadly offshoot of Clan Akkaba for centuries that spawned many of the modern day assassin organizations we know in the Marvel Universe, including the Hand and the Assassins Guild. Some Assassin’s Creed type **** right there, but I can see it working.

- At some point they broke from Apocalypse and branched out on their own, and did encounter Logan and Creed both pre-Weapon X (in their Team X days) trying to recruit them. But everything else Romulus told Logan about his past was a lie. While Logan (and Creed as well) did some very dark stuff prior to the Weapon X Program, it was not orchestrated by Romulus. While he did have his fingers in the intelligence game with the various world governments due to his particular skills and being an off book assassin for many clandestine agencies around the world over the decades (particularly in the 20th Century), he was never the mastermind he claimed he was. Rather he was always jealous of Apocalypse and resented him, so he made these claims to overstate his importance and take credit for his former master’s work.

- Reveal that Apocalypse was indeed behind behind Weapon X (and was the voice on the phone with the Professor in the original Barry Windsor Smith ‘Weapon X’ series as was intended), as he attempted to create super-mutants capable of killing super-humans as more and more of the latter popped up in the 20th Century as part of the super soldier arms race that was going on. And, of course, the former Allied governments coming out of WWII were all too eager to experiment on mutants in an attempt to create even more powerful super soldiers, not knowing that an immortal mutant Darwinist was manipulating them into doing so to serve his own ends.

- Bring back Persephone (along with Romulus and Remus) for this arc, showing how she became obsessed with Apocalypse’s work over the centuries and is the one who pieced this all together. She has also traced Logan’s lineage and can show how he is related to both Sabretooth and Wild Child on his mother’s side, which is the Hudson side. Perhaps Creed and Logan are cousins, and Kyle Gibney his second or third cousin somehow? Something like that, but IMO there ought to be some connection between the three as they’re all mutants with similar powers whose origins are tied to Canada.

I’m sure some will say all this stuff is best left forgotten, but personally there’s just too many loose ends and too much inconsistency for me. So I’d love to see someone talented just come in and clean it up.

Sorry for the long post, but this really got me thinking about this stuff this morning after two cups of coffee.