WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS for The Hunt For Wolverine

-

The mystery of Wolverine's return to Marvel Comic begins to be explained in this week's The Hunt for Wolverine one-shot. Marvel went to great efforts to kill Wolverine off back in 2014, first stripping Logan of his healing factor, and then entombing him in liquid hot adamantium. Even then, fans knew he would be back sooner or later.

And in last year's Marvel Legacy one-shot, Wolverine returned to life with an Infinity Stone in hand. But how did he come back from the dead? Resurrections are a dime a dozen in comics, but this one was always going to be a tricky one. After all, Logan's body had essentially been transformed into an adamantium-coated statue. It wasn't the kind of death even a superhero could get up and walk away from.

Even if somebody came up with a cure, or a way to jumpstart Wolverine's healing abilities... he was still suffocated inside of an indestructible adamantium skin (or so we assumed).

The Hunt for Wolverine is the beginning of a major arc that will explain Wolverine's resurrection. The issue opens with a group of Reavers finally locating Logan's body. They head there in search of the plunder, but swiftly discover that the adamantium statue is actually empty. It's explained in flashbacks; the X-Men were actually able to extract it from the adamantium. Kitty Pryde used her phasing powers to tug Wolverine's body out of the adamantium.

It was one of the most difficult things Kitty's ever done with her powers, given Logan's body was almost fused with the adamantium. But she pulled it off, and the X-Men then buried their old teammate. They kept up the pretense over the statue in order to confuse their enemies, knowing Logan's DNA would be a tempting acquisition for everyone from Mr. Sinister to Doctor Doom.

It's a simple solution, although a tad anticlimatic. Ironically, back in 2014, many comic book fans complained that Logan would have survived this death had Kitty Pryde been on hand. She would have been able then, they argued, to phase him out of a solid state - ensuring the molten adamantium passed straight over him. But few saw the death scene and still suspected that Kitty would use her powers to extract the body.

This was easily the greatest mystery of Wolverine's resurrection, since no matter what other solutions or treatments arose, actually getting to Logan's body seemed an insurmountable obstacle. With that now solved, The Hunt for Wolverine launches a traditional comic book plot. Heroes unite in pursuit of their old teammate, desperate to learn just how he's been raised from the dead, why he hasn't reached out to them, and what he's been doing.

The answers will be revealed across four new Wolverine miniseries, all of which spin out of this single issue.

MORE: Wolverine is Back, But Replacing X-23 is Marvel's Mistake

The Hunt for Wolverine is available now from Marvel Comics and comic book retailers.