How he died: Chris Claremont has always had it in for Wolverine. The writer penned the majority of the character's most iconic storylines - including that eighties miniseries illustrated by Frank Miller, and various X-Men arcs including The Dark Phoenix Saga and another we'll mention later - and yet he had originally intended to kill Logan off just sixteen issues after his introduction, only for the "Powers That Be" to veto the idea. Still, when Claremont finally got the chance to tell an out-of-continuity story years later with the X-Men Forever series, he hinted at his original plans for Wolverine. Namely, that he would get killed off by the team's resident weather goddess Storm. It turns out that this isn't the actual Storm but - deep breath, prepare for some ludicrous amounts of superhero comic book logic - is a clone designed to infiltrate and destroy the X-Men from the inside, however she was driven insane when she accidentally absorbed part of the twisted psyche of the villainous Shadow King. And that's why she decided to shoot lighting bolts into Wolverine's chest until his heart stopped beating. Way harsh. How he came back: Once more, with feeling! He didn't. This was an alternate reality, after all, created especially so Claremont could wrap up all the storylines he'd planned but never got to finish when he quite the main X-Men title in the early nineties. Which, amongst other things, involves Wolverine and Jean Grey engaging in a secret psychic affair, unbeknownst to her husband Cyclops, which means that when Logan gets killed it's Jean who's the most affected by it. She falls into a temporary coma, only to awaken and seek revenge on Storm. Which makes it all a bit awkward because then Jean's feelings towards Wolverine are made pretty clear. Poor old Cyclops, that dude just can't catch a break. In the end the Storm-is-an-evil-clone situation gets ironed out, the X-Men come across the real Storm running around Cyclops (whom Wolverine apparently freed from imprisonment before he got deaded), and Sabertooth reveals that Logan was his son. So that's pretty weird. Maybe for the best Wolverine died, with the way his supposed dad treated him over the years...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
