Comic Book Questions Answered is a column where I answer any questions you might have about comic books (feel free to email me your questions at brianc@cbr.com). Today I’m going to figure out if WolverineThe claws could withstand exposure to antimatter.

Long-time reader Hunter S. wrote to ask:

Did Adamantium Survive an Encounter with Antimatter? I watched the Deadpool and Wolverine movie twice and spoilers if you haven’t seen it, there is a scene where Wolverine and Deadpool channel a device that uses matter and antimatter to destroy the timeline. Long story short, they and especially Wolverine’s Adamantium survived the encounter. I saw Mjolnir survive an antimatter shield used by Kang the Conqueror and Captain America’s shield survive in the Negative Zone, a universe made of antimatter, in Marvel Two-in-One #75. I wonder if Adamantium survived something similar in the comics?

Great question, Hunter, and really, it’s weirdly complicated, and that’s mostly because comics (and comic book movies, I guess) really don’t make any sense, so trying to figure out how things in a fictional universe would interact with real-life things like antimatter is very hard to quantify. But hey, that’s what Comic Book Questions Answered is about, right? So, let’s dive in!

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Why is antimatter so destructive?

For an example of why antimatter coming into contact with ANYONE is so important, let’s take Read this article by London professor Lidunka Vočadlo:

Matter and antimatter are sets of particles that form pairs of particles with the same mass but opposite electrical charge. For example, an electron (negative charge) and a positron (positive charge), or a proton (positive charge) and an antiproton (negative charge).

When matter and antimatter collide, the particles destroy each other, resulting in a huge release of energy. Depending on which particles are colliding, not only is there a large release of energy, but different new particles can also be produced (such as neutrinos and various kinds of quarks – see figure below). These new particles will have a lower mass than those in the initial collision, due to the law of conservation of energy and Einstein’s very famous equation E=mc2 – some of the energy is transformed into heat and light, some into the formation of new particles.

Antimatter is present all around us. Bananas, for example, emit antimatter. This is because they contain a particular type of potassium (called potassium-40) which undergoes radioactive decay, releasing a positron every 75 minutes. But this positron is very quickly annihilated by the passage of an electron.

In fact, trying to artificially make antimatter and store it is a difficult and expensive business. Particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, combine particles to create antimatter. But it costs billions of pounds to make tiny quantities, which are very difficult to store for long because they are quickly destroyed when they collide with their material counterparts.

This sounds really bad, but hey, we’re talking about comics here, right? So maybe things are different in the Marvel Universe…

But what about antimatter in the Marvel Universe?

One of the most famous sources of antimatter in the Marvel Universe is the Negative Zone, where everything in it is antimatter. So when the Fantastic Four visited the Negative Zone in Fantastic Four Annual #6 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott), they wore special harnesses to… protect themselves from antimatter?

But, like, Johnny doesn’t need to wear a harness because apparently antimatter particles pass through Johnny’s fire form? Huh? Why would THAT work? But even with that in mind, he’s not IN his fire form while they’re IN THE NEGATIVE ZONE!

As they go further, further into the number, they LOSE ALL THEIR HARNESSES, and they are fine!

Aren’t they ALL constantly exposed to antimatter without their harnesses? And just… nothing.

Reed then explains that the REAL problem is the barrier between the two dimensions, where matter turns into antimatter, and vice versa. EVERYTHING is destroyed when you go through there…

But… again… WHY? Aren’t they all positive beings ALREADY interacting with antimatter?

Reed complicates matters further by noting that if a “positive” being were to come into contact with its “negative” counterpart, they would both explode…

BUT DUDE, YOU SPENT THE WHOLE ISSUE INTERACTING WITH “NEGATIVE BEINGS”!!! This makes no sense!

Years later, in the Marvel Two-in-One #75 (by Tom DeFalco, Alan Kupperberg and Chic Stone) Hunter mentioned, yes, the Thing gave the Avengers all the special harnesses to deal with the antimatter particles, but the Wasp drops his almost immediately with no ill effects, and, as Hunter notes, Cap throws his shield away and the shield is fine…

Years later, the X-Men travel to the Negative Zone for a storyline called The Negative Zone War in X-Men Goldand while they do wear special costumes, it’s never explained if the costumes are FOR the Negative Zone, plus they take their costumes off for a good portion of their time there, and Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler were taken to the Negative Zone BEFORE they got costumes. Old Logan Wolverine was part of that X-Men team, and he had no ill effects in the Negative Zone…

So I think it’s pretty clear now that the negative zone is just another dimension. So it has nothing to do with antimatter.

So… what about antimatter in the Marvel Universe? I mean, we know that antimatter CAN be pretty destructive, because the Illuminati used an antimatter bomb to destroy another world before Secret Wars (well, the Illuminati BUILT the antimatter bomb, and Namor actually USED it) in New Avengers #22 (by Jonathan Hickman, Kev Walker and Frank Martin)…

So I guess antimatter is destructive in the Marvel universe? What about Wolverine?

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So what about Wolverine and antimatter?

The problem, of course, is that we can’t really test how Wolverine’s claws react to antimatter, because if it were to destroy him, how would it work? He’d be dead, and we’d have no more Wolverine comics.

So we have to look to alternative realities, and the closest we have is What if…? #25 (by Jim Valentino, Rik Levins, and Ralph Cabrera), where the superheroes lost the crossover Atlantis Attacks, and the Women of Set (a group of powerful female superheroes) tear apart the remaining superheroes, with Scarlet Witch turning Wolverine’s molecules into antimatter, and when he collides with Wundarr’s force field, they both explode…

Now, that’s determinative, since his claws themselves were antimatter in this case, but, well, that still suggests that Wolverine’s claws can’t survive a matter/antimatter collision, right?

But of course, as Hunter notes, in The Avengers #8 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Dick Ayers), Kang’s antimatter shield can’t disintegrate Thor’s hammer…

We’ve established that Thor’s hammer IS stronger than Wolverine’s adamantium claws, but how much stronger? It seems hard to believe, but I don’t think I’ve seen enough to suggest otherwise, so I’m going to go with antimatter destroying adamantium anyway. Of course, that doesn’t explain Deadpool and Wolverine’s ending, but, hey, remember what I said, sometimes this stuff just doesn’t make sense.

Thanks for the question, Hunter! If anyone else has a comic book question they’d like answered, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!