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Writer's pictureAaron Fonseca

50 Years Ago Today, Wolverine Made His Triumphant Debut

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In every Look Back, we examine a comic book issue from 10/25/50/75 years ago (plus a wild card every month with a fifth week in it). This time around, we head to July 30th, 1974 for the debut of a certain Canadian mutant you might have heard of.

Obviously, specific dates for comic book releases back in 1974 are essentially impossible (and if they're impossible for 1974 dates, can you even IMAGINE 1939 dates?), as comic book distribution was pretty willy-nilly, you essentially put the comic books out whenever they came into your drug store or newsstand, and that could be any number of days. However, we can ROUGHLY pick out dates for stuff, even if it sort of just, "Let's just pick A date and stick with it" sort of thing, and with that in mind, July 30th is the accepted date for the release of Incredible Hulk #181 by Len Wein, Herb Trimpe, and Jack Abel, a comic book whose title might give you a hint as to what it is about, as it was titled..."And now...The Wolverine!"


Yep, we're talking about FIFTY YEARS of Wolverine appearing in comic books. Hot damn. Of course, there is the whole "Well, technically Wolverine debuted in the final panel of Incredible Hulk #180," and, well, that's obviously true (Herb Trimpe essentially copied John Romita's original Wolverine design right into the panel), but as we have discussed a number of times over the years, whether cameo appearances SHOULD count as first appearances or not, they DON'T (and don't EVEN come at me with that "Comic book ads are first appearances!" nonsense). And Gambit's first appearance is Uncanny X-Men Annual #14, not Uncanny X-Men #266.

What mess did Wolverine find himself leaping into?

A year or so before this issue, during Steve Englehart's run on the series (Herb Trimpe was the artist then, as well), Englehart had introduced an interesting new character known as the Wendigo, based on the mythic creature of the same name, only with a Marvel twist. The Wendigo is a curse that inflicts a person who eats human flesh. A young man in Canada was trapped in a cave with an injured friend, and after the friend died, he was forced to eat his flesh to survive. Well, the Wendigo curse got him at that point, and he transformed into this Sasquatch-looking thing. The Hulk fought him, and then went off on to some other misadventure.


Well, the sister of the man trapped as the Wendigo figured out that she could TRANSFER the curse to someone through magic, and she figured since the Hulk's life ALREADY sucked, why not give him a Wendigo curse, as well? She was about to pull the spell off when the Hulk woke up from a knockout potion she had given him. He saw the Wendigo, and a fight started happening. Earlier in the issue, when the Canadian government heard that the Hulk was in their country again (his fight with the Wendigo caused a lot of damage), they decided to send "Weapon X" after him.

Well, at the end of the issue, with Hulk and Wendigo brawling, in jumped, well, you know who...



What was Wolverine like when he debuted?

Here's the interesting thing about the Len Wein and Herb Trimpe version of Wolverine. He was both A. really interesting, and B. Not really like the Wolverine we'd all get to know and love.

The way Wein saw Wolverine, his superpower was essentially that he was a badass. Wein's Wolverine was a ferocious hunter with animal senses and gloves that had claws on them. Wein actually was the first one to suggest any sort of healing power for Wolverine in the sense that Wein viewed Wolverine's resiliency as one of his key attributes. You know, a dude who will scrap with the Hulk, get his ass kicked and then get back up and scrap some more. But that, of course, was not a reference to an ACTUAL healing power - just that Wolverine was a tough S.O.B.


See how MANIC he was? He was this little bundle of energy, just throwing himself into a fight with these two behemoths, not caring, feeling that he could scrap with anyone and win.

Wolverine then betrays the Hulk after they defeat the Wendigo together, and that leads to a whole long fight scene throughout the issue.



Wolverine just LOVED to brawl. It's such an interesting approach, and so NOT what we're used to with Wolverine in later stories (oh, Wolverine could still brawl with the best of them, but he wasn't so manic about it). Wein only got to write Wolverine a couple more times when he brought him over to the X-Men a year later, and then when he started writing the next X-Men story. He then dropped the X-Men as a title, and Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, and John Byrne slowly took Wolverine in a WHOLE other direction, but this original version of Wolverine is a really cool character in his own right.




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