SO, Wolverine is dead. Big deal, you say, he’s not the first comic character to die, and surely he’ll be back faster than you can say “snikt!”, right?
Well, this is a significantly more important death than you think. This is not just any comic character we are talking about. This is: the (formerly) immortal and indestructible Wolverine – X-Man, Avenger, headmaster of the Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning, and one of Marvels most popular characters ever.
This was a character who over the years has paid a major part in shaping the Marvel Universe. From forming part of an all-new X-Men team back in 1975’s Giant-Sized X-Men to playing a huge part in the time-travelling shenanigans that broke the space-time continuum in last year’s Age Of Ultron event, Wolverine has been a central figure in almost ALL of Marvel’s big events since he made his debut FORTY YEARS ago in 1974’s The Incredible Hulk #181.
Sure, Marvel has already gone on record to say that Wolverine will stay dead until at least 2016 (just in time for the next X-Men movie. How uncanny!), but the fact remains that Wolverine’s death DOES matter. It leaves a distinct Wolverine-shaped hole in the Marvel Universe, and his absence WILL be keenly felt throughout Earth-616. Here are six reasons his death matters more than any other Marvel character death in recent times (sorry, Johnny Storm):
It mends the current X-Men schism
Let’s go back 2011’s X-Men: Schism event, when Cyclops and Wolverine fell out and fought one another, which eventually the X-Men family to split into two factions – one under Cyclops, who wanted to train young mutants to fight for mutant rights; the other under Wolverine, who wanted to educate them to fight for what’s right.
With Wolverine gone, there is no reason for the two factions to stay apart anymore, and indeed, in the currently ongoing AXIS event (in which several heroes and villains had their personalities “inverted”), Storm and Cyclops have joined forces to build a mutant army to battle against humans. Would Logan have made a difference if he were around? You can be sure of that, bub.
