Wolverine may be one of Marvel's toughest and most metal superheroes (literally, check his skeleton), but casual fans will be surprised to learn just how short he really is, canonically. Though he's been portrayed on the screen in X-Men films as well as the highly regarded Logan by 6'2" Hugh Jackman, Wolverine is technically only 5'3" (nearly a foot shorter than Jackman).
According to Marvel's official records, Wolverine stands at 5'3" and weighs in at 300 lbs (largely thanks to his Adamantium skeleton). For those wondering, this means that Wolverine is technically morbidly obese, based on his body mass index. Those numbers may not track, since fans know Wolverine is basically just metal and muscle. But it demonstrates just how compact and powerful he is meant to be portrayed. According to Marvel's ongoing database, Logan still weighed in at 195 lbs prior to his skeletal transformation. So it isn't the metal that makes him ferocious. Still, fans have to ask themselves: why was Wolverine created to be so short, anyway?
One assumption as to Wolverine's tiny stature is that it was meant to make him resemble the animal from which he takes his namesake. Wolverines are noted to resemble bears more than their own mustelidae family of weasels, badgers, ferrets, and so forth. Specifically, Wikipedia describes wolverines as possessing "a reputation for ferocity and strength out of proportion to its size, with the documented ability to kill prey many times larger than itself." This is a perfect match for the attitude of Marvel's Wolverine, who has been known to fight Hulk to the death on more than one occasion. Not to mention how he recently killed an elder god with help from Venom and Conan.
Another factor for shortness might reside in Wolverine's age (he's beyond old, and we're not referring to his Old Man Logan comic series). In Wolverine: Origin #1, readers first learned Wolverine was born in Canada in the 1880s. Between 1914 and 2014 alone, the average height of a Canadian man rose from 5'7" to 5'10". Which means Wolverine would only have been a few inches shorter than the average when he reached adulthood. Still shorter, sure. But all that muscle would have to weigh him down, right?
Wolverine's 5'3" stature might not seem obvious to comic book readers, and they're not to blame for the confusions. The uncertainty over Logan's height is largely due to artists drawing him taller than he is meant to be on multiple occasions. For example, Sabretooth is officially listed at around 6'6", but the two characters are not typically drawn to be overtly mismatched on the occasion a Wolverine vs. Sabretooth fight is called for. Additionally, Wolverine is consistently drawn taller than fellow X-Men member Jubilee, who is still 5'5" according to Marvel's official stats.
Though his height is often a hot topic when it comes to cinematic castings or how the character is drawn in relation to his fellow X-Men, Wolverine is just as compact and ferocious as he was intended to be when he was first created.