Wolverine’s origins sifted in “Wolverine” #50 in November 1991

Much like he is now, Wolverine was a key component in the Marvel Comics of 21 years ago.  His ongoing series, written by Larry Hama and drawn by Marc Silvestri, was reaching a milestone 50th issue.  Since it was the 1990s, this was celebrated with a cover enhancement: A die-cut cover cut as if Wolverine’s claws were slicing through the outer cover, designed like a manilla folder.  Like many comics since (and some before), “Wolverine” #50 promised major revelations about Wolverine’s history.  In this third part of the 3-part story, Logan finds a warehouse in Windsor, Ontario where he finds sets that were apparently used by Experiment X to create and alter his memories, along with the memories of Sabretooth and Wolverine’s girlfriend Silver Fox.  The Hama-Silvestri run helped define the Wolverine character for this generation.

This is the latest in my continuing series looking back at the comic books of 1991.  In this post, I’ll look at the comics I bought in November 1991, and at some of the other comic books that were available.  I’m using the newsstand option at Mike’s Amazing World of Comics as my reference guide for this.  When I remember, I’ll share details about how and where I bought comics at the time.  In the case of Valiant Comics, I’m using a shipping list from Valiantfan.com.

The much-hyped “Wolverine” #50 also featured the first appearance of Shiva, a computer program that took on an android body, and was assigned to kill the survivors of the Weapon X program.   Other X-related books bought this month were Uncanny X-Men #284, X-Factor #74, X-Force #6 and X-Men #4.