BIOGRAPHY - Page 14
After his ordeal with the Gorgon, Wolverine pulled back a bit in his responsibilities, working only with Cyclop's team of X-Men. Despite this, Logan soon became involved in an entirely different team situation. He received a phone call from Steven Jamal Hudak, a former super-villain named Scorcher who was trying to keep his nose clean. After being approached with a "business opportunity" to break Karl Lykos aka Sauron, out of the Raft prison, Hudak declined and instead decided to rat on his potential employers. After Electro caused a breakout at the Raft a few days later, Logan realized it must have been the same deal that Scorcher had been approached with. Reasoning that Lykos would head to the Savage Land, Wolverine took a Blackbird down to Antarctica. Crashing upon his arrival, he was hunted through the jungle by the Savage Land Mutates until running into a new team of Avengers, assembled that very day by Captain America and Iron Man to investigate the breakout at the Raft. The whole crew was temporarily captured by Lykos and the Mutates, but Iron Man managed to break them free. After Sauron was disabled, Wolverine and his allies took their hostage and began heading for energy readings Iron Man was picking up on. They found what appeared to be a massive SHIELD mining operation, illegally retrieving Vibranium from the Savage Land in opposition to international law. Before they could investigate further, extinction level energy blasts were released on the area by an arriving SHIELD Helicarrier, killing everyone present and wiping out all traces of the mining operation. The heroes only survived thanks to Iron Man's protective repulsor field. After being brought aboard the Helicarrier, Director Maria Hill assured them that this a rogue operation and that she had no idea the Avengers were present before unleashing her artillery. Still, there was clearly something rotten inside SHIELD, a fact made even clearer when Iron Man's computers uncovered several discrepancies among the Raft's prisoner list which included many prisoners who were believed to have been killed years earlier. With all this in mind, Iron Man decided to offer Wolverine a permanent place in the new Avengers. He justified it to Cap by saying Logan could and would go places and do things the rest of them would not. [New Avengers (1st series) #4-6]
Wolverine began splitting his time between the Xavier Institute and his new room at Stark Tower with the Avengers. His relationship with both teams proved instrumental weeks later when the Avengers and the X-Men gathered together at Stark Tower to discuss Wanda Maximoff. After losing her mind and control of her powers, Wanda had caused the deaths of nearly a half-dozen Avengers earlier that year. Since then, she had retreated into a near-comatose state and had been in the care of Xavier and Magneto on the island of Genosha. She was not, however, getting better. Both Professor Xavier's telepathy and Doctor Strange's magic proved ineffective in treating Wanda's growing psychosis and diminishing the threat that her reality-altering powers posed to the world. The summit at Stark Tower was to decide just what was to be done. Wolverine and Emma Frost suggested killing her outright, but many of Wanda's fellow Avengers were horrified at the idea. Eventually, the assembled heroes decided they needed to travel to Genosha and see Wanda for themselves. Upon arriving on the island, Wanda was nowhere to be found and neither was Magneto. As they were tracking her down, a flash of white light was released and everything changed. [House of M (1st series) #1]
In this new reality, the tensions between humans and mutants ended decades ago, thanks to the leadership and vision of Wanda's father, Magneto. In the present he and his children, the House of M, ruled the world benevolently in the name of all mutantkind. "Sapiens" were now the dead end on the genetic ladder, slowly moving towards extinction, while more mutants existed in the world than ever before. Logan had his own place in this world, acting as leader of SHIELD's elite Red Guard unit, in the name of Magneto. While everyone else's memories were reorganized by Wanda's power, however, Wolverine's were not. Just the opposite, Logan's mind was now free -- he could fully remember his entire past, without any memory implants distorting his own history. Waking up suddenly on board the Helicarrier with no idea how he got there or what had happened since arriving in Genosha, Logan panicked and took a swan dive off the airship to the waiting streets below. Unable to find Xavier at the mansion, he went looking for Iron Man and the Avengers at Stark Tower, only to be assaulted by his former associates from the Red Guard. In the resulting firefight, he was swept up suddenly by Cloak of the Sapien resistance and arrived at Luke Cage's doorstep. Somehow, a young girl named Layla Miller had also survived the reality warp with her memories intact, and also had the power to restore the memories of others. She had found Cage on the street shortly before they rescued Logan, and together she and Wolverine convinced Cage and his associates to help them restore the proper way of things. After Layla reverted Emma Frost, they also found Cyclops, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and several more former heroes, gathering a small army to take the fight directly to the House of M. During the battle at the Genoshan capitol of the world, Wanda's brother Quicksilver was severely beaten by their father, Magneto, who had been mind-freed by Layla Miller. Enraged, Wanda healed her brother and then reverted reality back to normal along with three words... "No more mutants." [House of M (1st series) #2-7]
Instantly, the world returned to what it had been before, but with the mutant population reduced to only a few hundred, with the rest left completely powerless. On a personal note, Logan awoke on the mansion grounds with his memories completely intact, able to recall his entire sordid past from the beginning. [House of M (1st series) #8] Mutantkind was in a state of massive upheaval after the so-called "M-Day," which prevented Wolverine from exploring all the new details about his past. Over the following weeks, Logan helped the mansion staff deal with the decimated students, the arrival of new "watchdogs" from O*N*E and the Sentinel Squad, and the threat of the renegade X-Man, Vulcan. He also fought the mutant energy Collective, the Super-Adaptoid and the newly gathered Four Horsemen of Apocalypse alongside the Avengers. Logan also reached out to X-23 again, begging her to return to the mansion in the aftermath of M-Day so that he could help watch over her. She eventually relented and joined the remaining students in a training squad of X-Men at the Institute. [New X-Men (2nd series) #20-21]
Eventually, however, Logan found time to deal with what he remembered about his past. It seemed that knowing everything only raised more questions for Logan, including hints of a shadow organization which had been manipulating him decades longer than even the Weapon X Program. He dropped off the grid, severing ties with X-Men, Avengers and SHIELD, before popping back up in Tokyo, Japan with a bang, 
intercepting the prime minister's caravan in order to gain an "audience" with the head of security, the Silver Samurai. Among the things Logan had remembered was the death of his wife, Itsu, and the Muramasa blade he had created because of it. The Silver Samurai, as head of the Yashida Clan, was keeper of the secrets of the old world of Japan, and therefore potentially privy to any new facts or information about Muramasa and his blades that may have arisen in the time since Logan forgot about them. Wolverine wanted whatever information Harada could provide, but the Samurai was honor bound to remain silent. As their duel continued without an end in sight, however, the Samurai chose instead to offer up some info he wasn't bound to withhold -- that of the Winter Soldier's involvement in his first escape from the Weapon X Program. This revelation caught Wolverine off-guard long enough for Silver Samurai to thrust his blade through Logan's gut. Wolverine was forced to cut off Harada's hand, but left the Samurai alive in gratitude for the information.
As he made his escape, Logan traveled back up to Canada to check on the Samurai's information firsthand at the site of the original Weapon X Program. Knowing what to look for now, Logan indeed confirmed the presence of someone else at the facility when he tore through it, and so he sent out feelers in the intelligence community that he was looking for the Winter Soldier. They met in Siberia and, after a fierce battle, Logan was disabled long enough for the two of them to talk. Barnes explained his role in Itsu's death and the events leading to the forging of Logan's Muramasa blade. From Barnes' narration, Wolverine determined that Muramasa and the power of his blade had remained a secret from his "handlers," an edge he could use against the organization. Returning to Jasmine Falls, Logan called out Muramasa and claimed the blade he had forged decades ago out of his own soul and rage, a sword strong enough to cut through adamantium or anything else in its path. [Wolverine (3rd series) #36-40]
Continuing his quest, Wolverine determined the US Secretary of State was working for his old handlers, and confronted her in a daring raid on the White House itself. Any answers he could have wrestled from her were cut short, however, when a Shiva android crashed the party and incinerated the Secretary before his eyes. The Muramasa blade easily dispatched the robot, splicing it in two at the molecular level, but now the hunt for Logan was gearing up considerably. To draw him out, agents within the United States government unleashed Nuke, a living weapon Logan had helped create in his time with the shadow organization. This fight became even more complicated when both Captain America and the X-Men became involved as well. The situation changed considerably, though, when Emma Frost dropped a bomb on Logan -- his son with Itsu lived. The organization had ripped him from his dying mother's womb and trained him from birth to be a conscienceless killer and operative for them. Logan realized he could no longer fight the organization purely out of vengeance, for he had to save his son if at all possible. Knowing this weakness might lead to him being taken back in and brainwashed, Wolverine gave the Muramasa blade to Cyclops, with instructions to use it against him if that ever happened. [Wolverine: Origins #1-5]
Next, Logan conceived a plan to take his son down without killing him, by using the effects of carbonadium to retard the boy's inherited healing factor. In order to do that, though, Logan needed to find Maverick and the carbonadium synthesizer he had left in North's care. Tracking him to Queens, New York, Wolverine caught up with Maverick at a hostel for decimated mutants being run by Jubilee, just before Omega Red stormed the building, still looking for the C-synth himself. The fight went poorly – after temporarily disposing of Wolverine, Red obtained the information about the C-synth out of Maverick and took Jubilee hostage as insurance. Logan got to the injured Maverick and learned he had given the C-synth to the Black Widow for safe keeping. Catching up to Natasha in Berlin, she told him the C-synth was hidden in a safe deposit box in Brussels. Logan would have retrieved it then, if SHIELD hadn't assaulted Omega Red's safehouse looking for Logan, risking Jubilee's life in the process. Wolverine tried to use a replica of the C-synth device to pit Omega Red and SHIELD against each other but, after finding Jubilee mortally wounded in Red's hideout, he surrendered himself to SHIELD custody in order to ensure she received the proper medical attention. [Wolverine: Origins #6-10]
While restrained at SHIELD’s base of operations, Logan came face-to-face with his son Daken for the first time. Raised to be a sadistic killer and blame Logan for the death of Itsu, Daken hated Logan more than anyone in his life. Daken sadistically cut on his father, but also arranged for his release so that he could face Wolverine in real combat when the time was right. Logan went for the C-synth in Brussels, but found himself in a three-way fight set up by the newly resurrected Cyber. Failing miserably to reach out to Daken emotionally, Logan fled the bank with the C-synth and an injured Cyber. Learning that Cyber restored his adamantium skin with the help of the Tinkerer, Logan used Cyber to contact the Tinkerer and used his skills in exotic metallurgy to construct a set of carbonadium bullets as a failsafe against Daken. He sent the bullets to James Barnes with a note telling him to wait until the time was right. [Wolverine: Origins #11-15]
Wolverine's personal affairs were cut short, however, by the devastation in Stamford, Connecticut. After the mass destruction caused by the New Warriors' battle with Nitro the Exploding Man, Logan returned and pitched in on the rescue and disaster relief efforts. As events unfolded, though, most of the heroes became distracted by the passing of the Superhuman Registration Act through Congress. Because of this, the search for Nitro stopped being a priority...to everyone but Logan. Wolverine took it upon himself to hunt down Nitro and either bring him to justice or stop him permanently. He tracked the killer to Big Sur, California, but was interrupted by several Atlantean sleeper agents and Prince Namor, who wanted Nitro for their own vengeance after the death of the New Warrior and Princess of Atlantis, Namorita. After much posturing on both sides, Logan eventually allowed the Atlanteans to keep Nitro as their prisoner, but not before uncovering a greater evil behind the Exploding Man. Nitro had a freelance agreement with Damage Control, Inc, a construction firm specializing in repair work after superhuman conflict, to act as a "rainmaker": Damage Control provided Nitro with power boosting Mutant Growth Hormone and the occasional hideout and funding to keep him at large, and in exchange he would cause massive property damage in his exploits in order to rack up employment opportunities for Damage Control. Wolverine took the fight straight to Damage Control's new CEO, Walter Declun, in direct violation of the law, and so put himself at odds with SHIELD, Iron Man, and the new Cape-Killers enforcing the SHRA. Still, he managed to disrupt Declun's business dealings, put the company back into more reputable hands, and finally killed Declun himself after the businessman jacked himself up on MGH. [Wolverine (3rd series) #42-47] One of the Atlantean sleeper cell agents, a woman named Amir, caught Logan’s eye during the hunt for Nitro. She reciprocated his feelings, and the two of them began a casual sexual relationship. [Wolverine (3rd series) #48]
After the end of the Civil War and Captain America’s death, Wolverine remained an ally of Luke Cage and his crew of unregistered vigilante Avengers. As a mutant post-Decimation, Wolverine was de facto registered with the United States government and so had greater freedom of mobility than the other underground Avengers. [New Avengers (1st series) #27] In addition to avoiding detection by Iron Man and his Cape-Killer squads, the outlaw Avengers were at the forefront of the Skrull infiltration. Their fight with the Hand in Japan first revealed signs of the alien menace when the Hand’s genin Elektra was killed in battle, and revealed as a Skrull after death. [New Avengers (1st series) #31-32]
With all his world travels on personal business and Avengers business, it took some time before Logan was able to confront a threat much closer to home. Sabretooth had once again come to the X-Mansion seeking sanctuary, and Rogue inexplicably made him a member of her squad. Although Sabretooth was leashed by nano-chains and generally caged between missions, Wolverine knew it was only a matter of time before Creed turned on them all. He confronted Sabretooth at the Institute, and the two men fought across several continents, traveling from New York to Wakanda and finally back to Canada at the abandoned Weapon X facility. During the conflict, Logan began experiencing visions, racial memories dating back to the dawn of time relating to the shadowy figure known only as Romulus. He consciously learned Romulus’s name for the first time in their long history together, and began to realize that the “organization” he had been hunting ever since regaining his memories was actually only one man. After battling a suped-up Wild Child, another of Romulus’s enforcers, Logan prepared to end things with Creed once and for all. He recovered the Muramasa blade from Cyclops and went to Silver Fox’s cabin in the Yukon. Sabretooth confronted him there and, with a climactic blow, Wolverine finally killed Sabretooth and decapitated him with the blade. [Wolverine (3rd series) #50-55]
