We’re celebrating Wolverine’s 50th anniversary by counting down YOUR choices for the greatest Wolverine comic book stories ever told! You all voted, I added up your votes, and now I’m going to count down your votes, for as long as it takes to get to issue #1!

These Wolverine The stories will come from his own solo series, as well as notable team-ups with other superheroes, as well as issues of X-Men where he was the main character of the story (this was especially common back when he didn’t have his own solo series yet, of course).

6. “To Have and Not to Have” (Uncanny X-Men #172-173)

As I noted in the previous article, Chris Claremont took an interesting approach to the early Wolverine miniseries. Rather than simply having them come out at the same time as Wolverine’s X-Men adventures (which would be the case in the 1990s and still is today), Claremont instead decided to integrate the stories into the X-Men continuity, with Wolverine taking time off for the miniseries. In other words, if Wolverine was the star of his miniseries, he WOULDN’T be in the pages of Uncanny X-Men, and then when he reappeared in Uncanny X-Men, he would discuss his absence and what led to his departure from the X-Men.

The story now better known as “To Have and Have Not” (which isn’t officially the name of the story itself, just the second of two issues. I don’t know if this story actually has a story name, honestly) picks up where the events of the Wolverine The miniseries ended with Wolverine engaged to his longtime girlfriend Mariko Yoshida (funny enough, another miniseries from this period, Hawkeye’s, ended with Hawkeye marrying Mockingbird, so I guess that was the hippest way to end a miniseries at the time). So the X-Men flew to Japan to attend Wolverine’s wedding, but there was a major change in the team’s lineup while Wolverine was in Japan.

You see, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants had a new member who had joined the team a few years earlier named Rogue. Rogue could absorb people’s powers and memories by coming into skin-to-skin contact with the other person. This made her very powerful, and she used her powers to fight the X-Men in Strange X-Men #158, where Rogue, in particular, was using the powers she had absorbed from Ms. Marvel (where she had stolen Ms. Marvel’s memories, plus her ATTACHMENT to those memories!) Since Wolverine was an old friend of Carol “Ms. Marvel” Danvers, he was particularly angry at Rogue BEFORE she used her abilities to knock Wolverine out in this issue. However, here’s the catch, it turns out that absorbing a completely different PERSON can mess with your head, and Rogue had a really hard time dealing with the memories of Carol Danvers in her head, and also the general existential drama of constantly having to worry about touching ANYONE for fear of absorbing their memories! So, a distraught Rogue turned to Professor X for help, and he agreed to help her control her power, and in the meantime, she would join the X-Men, as a sort of “I’ll clean your back by helping you with your powers, and you’ll clean my back by becoming a superhero, and using your powers to support my X-Men” deal. The other X-Men were NOT happy about this news (especially Carol Danvers, who had recently gotten replacement superpowers and was hanging out with the X-Men while trying to figure out what to do next with her life. Carol almost literally punched Rogue into space! When Xavier stood by his decision to have Rogue join the X-Men, Carol left the X-Men, choosing to travel into space with the Starjammers).

So it was hard for Wolverine to get used to Rogue being one of his teammates, but he was so busy with the wedding that he was willing to ignore it (plus, as he notes, if the X-Men took him, how could he really judge who ELSE they would take). However, the Viper and the Silver Samurai (Mariko’s half-brother) attacked the X-Men, nearly killing the team with poison. Only Wolverine, Rogue, and Storm were able to escape death by poison (Wolverine thanks to his healing powers, Rogue thanks to her Ms. Marvel powers, and Storm because Wolverine warned her about the poison). Storm, however, is knocked out of the game in a separate attack, so Wolverine figures he must face the Silver Samurai and Viper alone, but Rogue insists on accompanying him.

In the second issue (like the first, by Chris Claremont, Paul Smith and Bob Wiacek), Rogue is slowly trying to prove herself to Wolverine, and her moment finally comes when Wolverine (after defeating Silver Samurai in an AMAZING action sequence by Smith, who was nearing the end of his tenure on the series) is about to be hit by a weapon Viper has that can apparently even kill Wolverine! Rogue takes the hit instead…

She is dying, but Wolverine uses his healing powers to save her, as Rogue proved to him that she was capable of doing so. Unfortunately, Mariko was then manipulated by Mastermind (HIM AGAIN?!) into breaking up with Wolverine. They were never supposed to marry until after his death.

5. “Wolverine: Alone!” (X-Men #132-133)

As I noted a while back when discussing Wolverine’s awesome quote at the end of X-Men #132, the more you think about Wolverine, the more fascinating his evolution as a character becomes. These days, we’re sort of used to the character’s ubiquity and fame, but that obviously wasn’t the case back then. Heck, Wolverine barely made any appearances outside of the main X-Men title for his first five years (one of the few exceptions was a truly outrageous team-up with Hercules, of all people). Early on, a lot of time was spent teasing the possibility that Wolverine might let loose. We saw moments like the one where he almost stabbed Nightcrawler in X-Men #96… but, of course, he didn’t ACTUALLY stab Nightcrawler, you know?

One of the few times we’ve seen Wolverine do something completely “out of the ordinary” for a typical superhero happened by accident. X-Men #116, John Byrne drew Wolverine walking away and “taking care of” a security guard working for the villain the X-Men were fighting in that issue. There is a dispute between Byrne and Claremont over who decided to change this scene. Byrne correctly notes that it was Claremont who added a “Snikt” sound effect to the scene, however, Claremont thought that the looks Byrne was giving Nightcrawler and Storm in their reactions to what Wolverine was doing off-panel were so forceful that Claremont thought the only thing that would make sense would be for Wolverine to use his claws, hence the “snikt”. So a moment where we’re not supposed to know what exactly Wolverine did (kind of one of those “you decide – did Wolverine stab someone or just knock them out really hard?” situations) became a blatant case of “Oh yeah, he totally stabbed that guy.”

It was Byrne who felt that Wolverine wasn’t getting enough exposure on the show. Since Byrne, like Wolverine, was Canadian, Byrne felt a connection to the character, and as Byrne quickly became a co-writer on the show with Claremont, he was able to gradually establish Wolverine as a key character on the show. Byrne and Claremont also talked about their desire to explore Wolverine’s healing powers and show that they were much more powerful than we originally thought. Plus, we’d spent so much time hearing what would happen if Wolverine ever got free, why not just SHOW him for once? That’s the thinking on their minds as we headed to X-Men #132 (by Byrne, Claremont and inker Terry Austin).

The X-Men had enlisted the help of Angel and his girlfriend, Candy Southern (long before she was put on ice) to get invited to a Hellfire Club party, as the X-Men had recently run afoul of the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle, and they wanted to fight the villains directly. While the more presentable members of the team entered the party as guests, Wolverine and Nightcrawler snuck into the house through the sewers. The Inner Circle, however, were waiting for them in sadness!! Wolverine was badly beaten and seemingly killed! Things went just as badly for the rest of the X-Men as they were all easily captured, with Jean Grey having switched teams and joining the Inner Circle under the control of Jason Wynagarde, the former Brotherhood of Evil Mutants member known as the Mastermind!

However, to paraphrase Danny Ainge when he talks about Larry Bird’s iconic steal in the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals, “They forgot… they forgot Wolverine.” As they’re all whooping and hollering in celebration, we zoom out and see that Wolverine didn’t die when Leland threw him into the sewer and, well, they really should have made sure Wolverine died because, well, it’s his turn now…

What a stunning drawing by Byrne and Austin. The use of shadows is legendary. And that Claremont dialogue is awesome too, the quote is awesome.

In the next issue, Wolverine fights his way through the Hellfire Club guards as he saves his teammates. This is the first time we’ve seen Wolverine in action like this, and it was epic…

Wolverine and the guard’s facial expressions on the last page are HISTORIC. Byrne compared Wolverine to Clint Eastwood, and it was basically Wolverine’s “feeling lucky, punk?” moment. We finally got to see what Wolverine was best at, and it was actually pretty neat, in a dark way (the guards, of course, would all later survive in one way or another). Marvel’s editor-in-chief took issue with the way Byrne and Claremont showed Wolverine ignoring the gunshot here, so he asked them to add a line explaining how he had just “grazed” him when he had clearly hit him head-on.

What’s amazing is that all of this takes place in the middle of one of the most famous comic book stories of all time (“The Dark Phoenix Saga”), and yet Wolverine’s solo story here is so remarkable that it still deserves a spot on his solo list.

4. “Wounded Wolf” (Uncanny X-Men #205)

After leaving comics for several years to pursue other artistic projects, Barry Windsor-Smith made a triumphant return in the 1980s. He began a tradition of drawing at least one issue of Strange X-Men a year for a few years (sometimes more than one). Usually his numbers were one-off stories. His most famous was “Wounded Wolf,” in Strange X-Men #205 (with Chris Claremont) which introduced the modern portrayal of Lady Deathstrike. Wolverine has always been best showcased when used with young heroines and this was evident in this classic issue, where Katie Power (Energizer of the Power Pack) is separated from her class on a school trip to New York for Christmas when she encounters Wolverine, who is being hunted by Deathstrike and the Reavers. Wolverine has been abused and is little more than an animal at this point. Katie helps him escape, but furthermore, Wolverine’s instinctive need to protect Katie eventually leads Wolverine to make the conscious choice to be a human rather than an animal.

Wolverine then takes on Lady Deathstrike in one of the most incredible fight sequences you’ll ever see (buy the issue and see for yourself)!