When it comes to superheroes, few characters are more dissimilar than Spider-Man and Wolverine. Peter Parker is a nerdy, insecure young man who fights crime with jokes and webs. Logan is a grizzled professional who slices through his opponents with adamantium claws. While the two have worked together on many superhero teams and even switched bodies at one point, no one would ever mistaken one for the other.
Which is why it may come as a shock to learn that when Wolverine first appeared, his co-creator Len Wein thought he should be a superpowered teenager similar to Spider-Man!
While this sounds ridiculous, readers need to realize that when Wolverine first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #180, he was still very much a blank slate. Aside from his name, costume, and claws, there really wasn’t much readers knew about the superhero – meaning his character could evolve in multiple different directions. Notably, since Wolverine never took his mask off in his first appearance, people didn’t even know what he really looked like or how old he was. Wein stated he originally felt Wolverine should be a smart-mouthed teenager with superhuman strength, speed, and agility, much like a certain web slinging hero.
Moreover, Wolverine’s claws were originally intended to come out of his gloves and not his hands – just as Spider-Man’s webbing wasn’t produced from Peter Parker’s body (at least not originally) but came from artificial web shooters. Wolverine’s mutant identity or adamantium skeleton also weren’t established when he first appeared, leaving his identity very open to interpretation.
Bit by bit, however, writers and artists began fleshing out the character into someone very different from Spider-Man. When Wolverine appeared again in the X-Men comics, artist David Cockrun drew Wolverine’s unmasked face as a man in his early forties, suggesting someone with more experience and maturity. Cockrun also designed Wolverine’s unique “devil’s horns” hairstyle which helped influence Wolverine’s sly, dangerous personality.
Once it was established that Wolverine’s claws were part of his body and not artificial tools in his gloves, however, the character really took off. The adamantium on his claws was later extended to include Logan’s entire skeleton, which in turn inspired a backstory full of pain and trauma. No longer could Wolverine be considered to be remotely like Spider-Man. Instead the quirks different comic creators introduced influenced writers and artists like Chris Claremont and John Bryne to make Wolverine’s past and personality even darker and edgier.
Today, it seems inconceivable that Wolverine could have ended up as anything except the gruff, dangerous loner fans know him as. Like any good comic book character, however, Wolverine’s appearance, personality, powers, and backstory went through multiple evolutions and retcons before arriving at a version that readers now accept as the “true” Wolverine. Even so, it’s strange to think what would have happened if some of Len Wein’s original Wolverine ideas worked their way into Marvel canon.
Would readers be so receptive to Wolverine if he ended up being a wisecracking teenager who could lose his most dangerous weapons simply by misplacing his gloves?