Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Wolverine by Chris Claremont #1!Wolverinehas a reputation inX-Mencanon as someone who cannot be killed. This is primarily due to his healing factor, which immediately begins to regenerate any injury he sustains. However, one X-Men hero has found a way around Logan’s healing factor and has the power tofinally kill Wolverine.
InWolverine by Chris Claremont#1 (with art by Tom Reilly), Wolverine is going toe-to-toe with his arch enemy, Sabretooth. Sabretooth traveled to Japan to kill the woman Logan loves, Mariko Yashida, but Wolverine isn’t going to let that happen. Unfortunately, Sabretooth quickly proves he’s too much for Wolverine to handle alone. Thankfully, the X-Men had Logan’s back.
While Sabretooth made quick work of most of the X-Men, he wasn’t so lucky against one of the mutant heroes: Storm. In fact, if Wolverine hadn’t stopped her, Storm would have killed Sabretooth despite the villain’s healing factor (which is identical to Wolverine’s).Storm revealed that she knew how to sidestep Sabretooth’s healing factor, which means she can do the same thing to Wolverine himself.
Storm Can Kill Wolverine, and She Explains Exactly How
Storm beats Sabretooth by using lightning to sever his achilles tendons and blow out his eardrums. With Sabretooth immobilized, Storm explains how she was planning to finish him off, “My blades cut you apart, monster. My fire burns you to dust. My winds scatter your remains so far apart across the face of the world that you will never be able to return”.
What Storm is talking about is utter and complete obliteration. Using her mastery of the elements, it is well within Storm’s power to achieve everything she is threatening (and then some). Again, the only reason Sabretooth isn’t a literal pile of ash blowing in the wind is that Wolverine stopped Storm before she could finish him off, which is something that wouldn’t be enough to save himself.
If Storm ever set her sights on Wolverine, she could do to him what he stopped her from doing to Sabretooth. Storm could immobilize, obliterate, and then scatter the remains of Wolverine faster than his healing factor could save him. Before he’d have time to unsheath his retractable claws, Wolverine would be reduced to nothing more than an adamantium skeleton.
This issue confirms that Storm has the power to kill Wolverine, though she is far from the only Marvel Comics character to figure out how to beat his healing factor. In fact, Storm isn’t even the first member of the X-Men to come up with a way to kill Wolverine once and for all.
Laura Kinney Found the Simplest Way to Beat Wolverine’s Healing Factor
Storm revealed that she has the power to utterly obliterate Wolverine with her mutant abilities, thereby effectively eliminating Wolverine’s healing factor by killing him before it had time to kick in. But another member of the X-Men (who joined the team a bit later) came up with a much simpler solution; one that requires no mutant powers at all.
InX-23: Target X#6, Laura Kinney hadn’t yet joined the X-Men and was something of a villain who was obsessed with killing her father, Wolverine. During their fight, neither Laura nor Logan was any closer to defeating the other because of their shared healing factor. That is, untilX-23 unleashed her secret weapon: dirt.
Laura realized that if she could keep Wolverine’s wounds from healing, he would bleed out before the wounds closed, and she achieved this by rubbing dirt into every cut she made in his skin. This tactic worked so well that Wolverine only survived the encounter by pleading with Laura to give up her poisonous murder-mission, as she would only be hurting herself in the long run.
Wolverine was able to get through to X-23, and that would eventually lead to Laura Kinney joining the X-Men as the new Wolverine some years later. However, if X-23 chose not to listen to Wolverine and was indeed hellbent on killing him, then this desceptively simple method of side-stepping his healing factor may have finished him off.
Cyclops Uncovered the Ultimate Way to Kill Wolverine Forever
Being the leader of the X-Men, Cyclops had to consider any number of contingency plans to keep the team he was responsible for safe, and that includes the possibility of Wolverine needing to be put down. Cyclops knew that Wolverine’s healing factor, adamantium claws, and natural ferocity made him hard to kill, so Scott found a weapon that could do the job instantly: the Muramasa Blade.
InWolverine: Origins#5, Wolverine actually gave Cyclops the Muramasa Blade upon coming to the same conclusion about himself. During this point in Wolverine’s life, the X-Man was afraid of going feral and losing control, accidentally killing his teammates. Knowing that Cyclops would do anything to keep the X-Men safe, even from Wolverine, Logan gave the blade to him.
With the Muramasa Blade in Cyclops' possession, he held the power to kill Wolverine whenever he wanted, as any wound inflicted with the mystical Muramasa Blade could never heal, even for someone with a healing factor. Of course, Cyclops never had to use the Muramasa Blade on Wolverine, but he still had the means to kill him with it nonetheless.
Even Doctor Doom Knows How to Kill Wolverine
So far, most of the people who know how to kill Wolverine are his allies, meaning he’s relatively safe from harm. That much cannot be said for the next Marvel character who knows how to kill Wolverine: Doctor Doom.
InA+X#17, Doctor Doom and Wolverine go toe-to-toe, and the fight lasts about as long as fans would expect. Using his mastery of technology and mysticism,Doctor Doom stops Wolverine in his tracks while Logan was charging him by severing the X-Man’s vertebraebetween his adamantium-coated spine.
If Doctor Doom wanted to, he could have severed Wolverine’s brainstem and killed him instantly. In this issue, Doom settled for immobilizing Wolverine with a wound he knew he’d heal back from. However, the potential for a fatal blow was made evident, and it was a message that Wolverine and Marvel Comics fans alike heard loud and clear.
The other Marvel Comics characters with the knowledge and power to kill Wolverine are certainly noteworthy, but many fans have known their capabilities for some time now (indeed, most of these comics are many years old). However,Wolverine by Chris Claremont#1 just came out, and thatX-Mencomic added a new name to the list of people who can killWolverine: Storm.
