10 Most Hated Retcon Changes In Marvel Comics

5. Wolverine Origin Retcon #181 - Romulus

As an almost immortal member of the Marvel family, James “Logan” Howlett has gone through his fair share of retcons, but we’ve picked out the peach among the picks.

It relates to Wolverine’s origin and how he came to be the best he is at what he does—it’s knitting, for those of you who care.

For the longest time, we were led to believe Wolverine was a mutant, born with with ability to extend claws from his knuckles, and over time that story has changed from having an adamantium skeleton to having said adamantium fused to his skeleton as a result of the Weapon X programme to having his healing factor zip up and down the power scale—it’s all very hard to keep track of.

In 2007, we were introduced to a new Logan enemy in Romulus, who rather greedily took responsibility for just about every seminal moment in Wolverine’s pained existence. Starting in issue 50 of the X-Man’s self-titles series, he claimed to have been responsible for the Weapon X programme, killing off several of his biggest romances and even stealing Howlett’s son, Daken, straight from ward. Talk about obsessed.

Ah! And Romulus also informed Wolverine he wasn’t a mutant at all, but rather a descendant of an ancient race called lupines, who evolved from wolves instead of primates, meaning he was more closely related to Sabretooth than any of his X-Friends.