Even though Wolverine is well known for being more than proficient when it comes to killing people, there was one instance where Wolverine may have taken things a bit too far by making a classic X-Men hero suffer a fate worse than death.
James “Logan” Howlett aka Wolverine is a mutant with the powers of heightened animalistic senses, a healing factor, and claws that protrude from his knuckles. Essentially, Wolverine was born to be the perfect weapon–which is exactly what one particular organization thought, one that is known as Weapon X. Weapon X is a division of the Weapon Plus Program that was designed to hire (or capture) mutants and empower them to kill assigned targets on command before erasing/replacing their memories in an effort to keep them under the program’s control forever. With Wolverine, however, Weapon X went one step further and made the already deadly mutant vastly deadlier by grafting adamantium to his entire skeleton. Now, not only is Wolverine unkillable, but he can also kill practically anyone he wants dead–something that one particular mutant may have found preferable.
In Weapon X #1 by Larry Hama, Adam Kubert, Karl Kesel, Dan Green, and Chris Warner, Wolverine is living in the alternate reality of the Age of Apocalypse, and he and Jean Grey are working alongside the human resistance to stop Apocalypse’s reign of terror once and for all. In that effort, the two heroes ride a Sentinel right into the heart of one of the villain’s bases–one that was heavily populated with Apocalypse’s henchmen along with the mutant captives they were holding prisoner. When Wolverine and Jean Grey prove to be too much for the forces of that base to handle alone, the villains call in a mutant who was one of Apocalypse’s top enforcers to travel there via teleporter and take care of business–someone who was trained by Mr. Sinister himself: Havok.
Wolverine Made Havok Suffer a Fate Worse than Death
While Alex Summers aka Havok may not have been one of the founding members, he certainly became an iconic member of the X-Men as well as the X-Factor. However, that was on Earth-616, and this issue takes place in the timeline of the Age of Apocalypse where things are much darker for Alex (in more ways than one). Rather than growing up separated from his brother, both Scott and Alex were raised by Mr. Sinister who brought them with him to work for Apocalypse when the mutant tyrant was taking over the world. Now, during the events of this issue, Havok is one of Apocalypse’s top men–and that’s exactly why he went toe-to-toe with Wolverine. After Wolverine and Jean Grey essentially obliterated this base of operations, they attempt to fly away on their Sentinel–that is, until Havok shows up and begins destroying their robotic weapon with his destructive powers. Before he can finish them off, however, Wolverine directs the Sentinel to fire its hands at Havok, and one of the hands manages to trap Havok in its palm and send them both flying right into the teleporter–at which point, the teleporter activates and merges Havok’s molecules with that of the Sentinel.
Havok having his molecules mixed up with a Sentinel turns him into a mess of flesh and mechanics, rendering him unable to speak beyond gurgling whimpers of unparalleled agony and barely comprehensible ravings about a ‘one-handed mutant’ (aka Wolverine). While readers don’t get to see Havok in this state, it is described in some detail by Dark Beast who is unsure whether even he can fix the damage that was caused. Based on the incomprehensible horror and unquestionable suffering Havok must have been going through after undergoing this unnatural transformation, it is safe to say that this classic X-Men member suffered a fate far worse than death–and it was all because of Wolverine.