How Wolverine Has Changed The Marvel Universe
Wolverine is a comic book character who has garnered immense popularity since his debut in the Incredible Hulk issue #181. He went on to steal the spotlight back during the ’80s when he had his own solo books which outsold Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man at that time– whose solo books at the same time were more popular than Wolverine. Nowadays, people are still talking about Wolverine because he managed to change the Marvel Universe significantly. These are some of the ways how he did it –
The Introduction Of Madripoor
While most Marvel comics take place in the real world, some exceptions create their own geography. One of these places is the fictional island of Madripoor. This nation full of criminals is located in the southern Pacific Ocean, south of mainland China and Hainan Island, just east of Vietnam. It’s a safe haven for villains currently wanted in other countries, allowing them to hide out from justice!
With that said, the island of Madripoor has been utilized by Marvel in all manner of ways, and specifically when it comes to the adventures that Logan has taken part in over the years. Since its debut as a fictional island, it’s become an integral part of many different kinds of story arcs. It’s currently being utilized in the MCU on their series, Iron Fist, for example.
Wolverine Helped The Avengers In The 2000s
The Avengers have been beleaguered recently. The team’s popularity took a serious dip during the 2000s and it wasn’t until Brian Michael Bendis’s New Avengers came about that things started to look up again. This book featured big names like Wolverine and Spider-Man, who helped bring the Avengers back into public consciousness in a big way. Wolverine did more than help make this particular incarnation of the team popular — he helped usher in an era of success for Marvel’s premiere superhero team!
Wolverine Brought X-Force Back
X-Force was another X-Men team that enjoyed some years of success from the late 80s until the late 90s. But after 2000, its popularity went down, and it eventually stopped being published for several years. However, X-Force’s legacy was not lost with all of its fans. During the San Fransisco era of the X-Men when the team was at its lowest point in sales, Wolverine and Cyclops brought back their namesake group by casting them as a special black ops unit made up of mutants who weren’t afraid to kill to end threats to mutant-kind before they even reach mutants themselves. People loved this fresh take on X-Force and were eager to see where these stories would go next.
Wolverine’s Popularity Cemented X-Men’s
While Wolverine wasn’t the sole reason for the X-Men‘s success, it would be a tough task to find someone who could say he wasn’t one of their biggest reasons. He is possibly the most popular character in Marvel Comics and without his presence on the team; there wouldn’t have been a library full of stories for fans to read about him over the years. Wolverine was and always will be one of the company’s mega-stars and because his story revolving around him and his past helped establish such an interesting character, no one can really dispute that he isn’t crucial to how well X-Men has done since its inception with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby way back in 1963.
