Skill Trainers

Unable to continue his previous existance, Angelus fled to the new world. There he lived an isolated life avoiding humanity, and the temptation to feed, living in a dark apartment. In New York during the 1970s, Angel came upon a robbery at a doughnut shop. After the robber killed the employee and fled, Angel stayed with the man as he died. Unable to resist the urge to feed from a warm human, Angel fed on the man and then grew disgusted with himself. He exiled himself to a life of homelessness, living in alleyways and feeding off of stray rats.

After countless years passed, the never-ending battles began to weigh down my soul. Every morning I would spring out of sleep in a cold sweat, my hands covered in blood that only I could see. I could scrub and scrub, but it wouldn't go away. It was then, only after killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, by my own hands that I realized there was something wrong with the whole picture. As a member of the forces of Light, I was supposedly fighting for those things considered good to the other creatures of the universe. However, we were using the same tactics as the Dark: death, pure and simple. After this realization, I put down my sword and resigned.

Dog's growing obsession with Rose finally prompted him to attack her -- forcing James' father to fire Thomas, and evict him and Dog from their home on the Howlett estate. The groundskeeper and his son stole into the mansion the next night and attempted to convince Mrs. Howlett to leave with them. Apparently, Thomas and Elizabeth Howlett had been engaged in an ongoing affair. When John Howlett interrupted their discussion, Thomas shot and killed his former employer. At the shock of seeing his father murdered, James manifested his latent mutant abilities, and bone claws jutted from the back of each hand. The beast within the boy unleashed at last, James attacked and killed Thomas, and slashed Dog's face. Completely unhinged by the violence, Elizabeth took her own life.

James suffered a severe breakdown; his mutant abilities "healed" his mind as well as his body, blocking all memories of his last months at the Howlett estate. Because Rose and James were blamed for the deaths at the mansion, she spirited him away to a British Columbia mining colony. Rose gave James the name "Logan," so that his real identity would remain unknown.

The frail "Logan" grew into a strapping young man at the mine and became known for his strength and ferocity. He spent a great deal of time among the wolves in the nearby wilderness, discovering he had more in common with the wild beasts than his fellow man. Bullied incessantly, Logan acquired the nickname "Wolverine" thanks to his tenacity and refusal to back down from a challenge.

Logan's happiness at the camp came to an end when Dog tracked him down. Finally remembering the night of his father's death, Logan fought Dog savagely. During the struggle, Logan accidentally impaled Rose on his claws, killing her. Wracked by grief over the death of the woman he truly loved, he fled into the woods. Logan was not seen again for many years, but the legend of the man called Wolverine had begun.

The rest of Logan's life is shrouded in mystery, peppered with half-truths and anecdotal reports of unconfirmed sightings. His healing factor seems to act against the effects of aging -- which would explain why, as a man of more than 120 years, he appears to be in his mid-30s.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the Canadian government subjected Logan to a bizarre battery of experiments intended to forge the ultimate killing machine. Weapon X scientists grafted the indestructible metal adamantium to Logan's skeleton and bone claws, and introduced memory implants that shaped his past to suit their ends. Combined with the earlier effects of his healing factor, these false memories have made it impossible for Logan to discern fact from fiction when recalling his former life. He now knows little of his past, save that it was fraught with pain and loss.

Wolverine was working as an operative for the Canadian government when he accepted Professor X's offer to join the X-Men. Logan chose to stay on partly due to his belief in Xavier's vision for the co-existence of humans and mutants, and partly because of his attraction to Jean Grey. During his time with the X-Men, Logan has worked to regain his lost memories, but virtually every answer leads him to even more new questions.