With Marvel’s Spider-Man, Insomniac delivered a video game with an excellent story and solid open-world gameplay, as well as a rich variety of costumes for fans to pick from, and the developer’s upcoming Wolverine game has the chance to outdo Spider-Man with a wider range of outfit choices. Wolverine is a character who has changed costume designs repeatedly over the years. He has been a member of several superhero teams, often sporting unique uniforms. Wolverine also has no traditional secret identity to protect, allowing for street clothes as battle uniforms, and his world travels to places as varied as Canada, Japan, and Madripoor, each offers unique costume options.
Spider-Man followed the format of the popular Batman: Arkham series with its original continuity that enabled more dramatic storytelling, unexpected twists, and greater stakes. It also followed the trend of including a selection of costumes for the lead character which included various comic-book costumes, as well as those from animated adaptations like Batman Beyond. Marvel’s Wolverine will likely deliver a similarly fresh take on the character and world, and hopefully, an even more varied costume wardrobe, tapping into Wolverine's comic book legacy as well as prior film and animated versions.
Like Spider-Man, Wolverine is among the most recognizable and popular Marvel superheroes. They have both operated as solo characters, as well as part of the roster of numerous super teams, as highlighted in some of the Spider-Man video game's costume choices. Wolverine is best known as a signature member of the X-Men, but the character has also been a member of Alpha Flight, X-Force, the Avengers, the Secret Defenders, and even the New Fantastic Four. Many of these team swaps have been accompanied by new costumes, such as the black and blue costume featuring an “X” symbol on his chest in the New Fantastic Four comics. There have been variations on the classic Wolverine costume as well, such as the original yellow, black, and blue costume’s transition to a yellow, black, and brown version during the classic Chris Claremont/John Byrne era of X-Men comics.
Wolverine's Lack Of A Secret Identity Makes Every Outfit A Possible Costume
Spider-Man is primarily a New York-based hero, when not called abroad to take part in large-scale “event comics.” When not fighting alongside the X-Men, Wolverine’s solo adventures have featured a great deal of globetrotting, and often new costumes alongside those travels. Wolverine’s history as a part of Canadian special forces often prompted returns to Canada to resolve unfinished business, and the origins of his adamantium skeleton provide the Weapon X costume option. Other pivotal arcs showed Wolverine wearing Shinto wedding attire when he was engaged to Mariko Yashida following his adventures in Japan in an early solo series, later adapted to the film The Wolverine. A later Wolverine series sent the character to the fictional nation of Madripoor, where he took on a new identity (and look) as “Patch.”
A key difference between Wolverine and Spider-Man is the way the concept of identity comes into play. Peter Parker is the original Spider-Man's secret identity, and Ultimate Marvel comics later featured Miles Morales donning the costume. Maintaining a secret identity is one of the character’s ongoing struggles in most Spider-Man media. Wolverine’s identity was an unknown, wrapped in mysteries even the character was unaware of, for many years, due to gaps in memory and mental conditioning performed by the Weapon X program.
More recent comics revealed that Wolverine was born as James Howlett, and later adopted the name Logan. As a character who is over 100 years old, and whose past is mostly relegated to state secrets, Wolverine does not have a traditional secret identity to protect. Wolverine is always Wolverine, in and out of costume. The character often goes into battle in street clothes, and engages in barroom brawls, as featured in the trailer for Marvel’s Wolverine. This opens the door for numerous costumes based on civilian attire, including the cowboy hat and flannel shirt outfit from the trailer.
There are certainly opportunities for deeper cuts for the clawed mutant’s costumes. Wolverine briefly wore the outfit of a Shi’ar Imperial Guardsman, Fang, during the X-Men’s first Phoenix arc. The Marvel Anime series from Madhouse studios featured a unique design with a Wolverine who was tall and slim and sported a red jacket. The Old Man Logan comics showcase an older, gray-haired Wolverine, who traded his costume for a brown trench coat. With the wealth of history to draw from, fans can most likely look forward to a diverse costume selection in Marvel’s Wolverine.