WOLVERINE: Page 3 of 3

By the year 2509, Logan and Banner Junior were counted among Earth’s greatest heroes. Leaving his identity as Wolverine behind, Logan now called himself the Hooded Man. Industrial and population growth eventually brought their Earth to the brink of collapse, as the planet simply could not support 12 billion people. Humanity’s defenders concocted a desperate plan to lay claim to the Earth of the 21st century as their own, and captured Galactus himself to serve as the engine for their planetary-level time-jump. The Hooded Man and a small band of heroes called the New Defenders made the initial jump back in time to prepare the planet for the coming of their people, along with their leader the now elderly Susan Storm Richards. Faced with the Fantastic Four of the modern era, the New Defenders found an alternate to claiming the past Earth when Alyssa Moy offered them Nu-Earth, a duplicate world created by a consortium of the planet’s rich and powerful.

Now calling themselves the Fantastic Force, the Hooded Man and his allies became the heroes of Nu-Earth as they helped the displaced future populace adjust to their new environment. Unfortunately, the group hadn’t counted on the effect their temporal migration would have on Gaea. The long-suffering spirit of 26th century Earth was pushed into outright dementia when billions of her “children” suddenly abandoned her. The crazed Gaea traveled back to Nu-Earth in a desperate attempt to reclaim her people. Eventually, a solution was reached when the Hooded Man agreed to remain behind in the future to help nurture Gaea back to health. As they conceived a child together, his healing factor transferred into Gaea’s “cells” and began to sympathetically rebuild the future Earth as well.

In the reality depicted in X-Men Forever, Wolverine and Jean Grey accepted a special assignment from Nick Fury shortly after the Muir Island Saga that required them to act like vacationing honeymooners. Having to play these roles weakened the last remaining barrier between them, and they submitted to their mutual lust for each other, sparking a passionate love affair. They kept their romance secret from the rest of the X-Men—especially Jean's boyfriend, Cyclops—and tried to return to business as usual when they returned home. Unfortunately, their affair didn't last long.

Following a mission to detain the renegade Acolyte Fabian Cortez, Wolverine left the X-Men and started following a suspicious trail of clues that implicated someone he knew quite well. When he confronted the culprit— seemingly his teammate, Storm — he found himself on the receiving end of her deadly lightning bolts and finally met his end. Also in this reality, Wolverine was implied to be Sabretooth's son.

In the Age of X reality warp, the X-Men never formed and mutantkind was largely scattered. Individual mutants had to fight for their own right to survive. Wolverine invaded the Fordyce Clinic where doctors Richard Palance and Kavita Rao developed an x-gene suppressor compound that would permanently “cure” mutants of their abilities. Rao leaked intelligence over the wire for Logan once she learned Palance planned to release the cure into the water supply without the knowledge or approval of the population. Unable to properly dispose of the cure in the time they had before security arrived, Wolverine agreed to be subjected to a massive overdose of the cure. Rao believed his healing factor would metabolize the cure to the point that it could not be retrieved, but she couldn’t guarantee he’d survive the process. Logan agreed, and Rao injected the cure into his body over and over again.

In the present, Logan acted as a non-combatant bartender at the Fortress, ministering to Magneto’s mutant defenders after each day of siege. In private, Logan occasionally cut on himself to test the long term effects of the cure on his healing factor. His powers were effectively gone, and with the adamantium poisoning his body from within, any stress or exertion could potentially shut his system down permanently. After Legacy started calling into question X’s reality, Logan and Basilisk forged an alliance to seek the truth about the situation. When X unleashed her final wave of Exonims and humans soldiers, Logan decided to go down fighting. He popped his claws and waded into the attackers alongside Basilisk until reality was restored by Legion.

James Howlett was former governor-general of the dominion of Canada and viceroy to her majesty’s expedition to Shangri-La in his home reality. A roughneck adventurer at his core, Governor Howlett led a different, but equally colorful life compared to his 616 counterpart. Howlett had his skeleton and claws molecularly bonded with Adamantine, the metal of the Olympian Gods, allowing him to magically cut through even pure energy and shielding his mind from psychic assault. On his adventures, Howlett found romance with the Olympian demi-god known as Hercules, but their relationship was condemned by man and god alike on his homeworld. In a moment of celebration after vanquishing the latest monster threatening his lands, Howlett and Hercules revealed their love in a passionate embrace. The queen revoked Howlett’s governor-ship of Canada, and the Olympian gods punished Hercules for daring to love a mortal by casting them both into Tartarus for years.

Under unknown circumstances, Governor Howlett was kidnapped extra-dimensionally by the Savior and his people and used as part of a living battery of mutants culled from across the multiverse to preserve the integrity of that Earth. He escaped with several others thanks to the arrival of Earth-616’s Cyclops. They instead used the Savior’s multiversal technology and collection of still-living psychic Xavier heads to locate a virgin Earth and transport the dying world’s entire population and architecture to that universe.

Unfortunately, a surviving Xavier head informed Howlett and his allies that Ten Evil Xaviers now threatened the multiverse, and the fabric of reality was at stake. Teamed with Earth-616’s Dazzler, young Kurt Waggoner and eventually his own reality’s Hercules among others, Howlett and this team of X-Men travelled from reality to reality eliminating the threat posed by these Xaviers. Despite their efforts, the fabric of reality was torn asunder, and the dimension-hopping X-Men joined forces with the X-Men of Dazzler’s homeworld and heroes from the Age of Apocalypse to face Celestial exterminators. These beings were caged between dimensions by the Celestials eons ago, but broke free when the walls between realities became too thin to contain them. In the massacre that followed, an entire reality was sacrificed to cage the exterminators again, and Hercules was among the heroes who fell in battle. Howlett was last seen preparing to mount an expedition into the underworld to reclaim his lover’s soul.

One day, Ultron came. Stronger and more powerful than ever before. He conquered the world, and a few super-heroes managed to survive more on luck than skill. This marked the dawn of the Age of Ultron. Wolverine was among these heroes when they learned Ultron was not only controlling the legion of drones that policed New York, he was doing so from the future. With Nick Fury's help, they located Doctor Doom's time machine and planned to take the fight to the future. Logan stayed behind, however, with a different plan. In order to prevent Ultron from ever rising, and western civilization from falling, Wolverine and the Invisible Woman travelled backwards in time to kill Hank Pym before he ever invented the killer robot. Logan was there to witness the moment when Pym first figured out how to create Artificial Intelligence. To save billions, Wolverine killed the hero Goliath in the past.

Back in the present, Logan and Sue found Manhattan free from Ultron's influence, but a new conflict had risen in his place. The new reality was home to war between science and technology, as Defenders led by Iron Man struggled for control against the mystical forces of Morgana le Fey. The Age of Morgana ended in front of their eyes as the Starkguard Helicarriers were destroyed over Manhattan and the united Defenders (including Logan's own counterpart) apparently died with them.

Wolverine voyaged into the timestream again to go back in time and stop himself from killing Hank Pym. Instead, the two Logans, Sue, and Pym worked out a plan to create a time-delayed virus that would lie in wait inside Ultron's programming, allowing history to unfold exactly as it did up until Ultron's last big attack. In a vain effort to avoid upsetting the timeline even further, the slightly older Wolverine volunteered to be killed by his slightly younger counterpart, his body left hidden in a cave in the Savage Land as Wolverine and the Invisible Woman returned to the present. Although the timeline was essentially restored, these antics ultimately broke the timestream, causing an untold number of ripple effects throughout the Marvel Universe.

Decades in the future, Headmaster Logan was retired from super-heroics and acting as a full-time teacher at the expanded Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. His teaching led to the careers of some of the most respected heroes of the day like Shark Woman, Eye Man, and Quentin Quire. When Logan considered he may have become obsolete and planned to close the school doors, Quire forced him to keep it open with a few million "transfer students" from the Negative Zone. In at least one version of this future, however, Logan's students Quentin and Evan eventually became the next Phoenix and Apocalypse, and Logan was killed in the crossfire of their war.