BIOGRAPHY - Page 20
Looking to wrap up his affairs in San Francisco, Logan was unsure how to leave his relationship with Melita. Before they could reach a decision, Yuen Yee arrived to inform him that a drug war had begun in Chinatown because Logan had been neglectful in his duties as Black Dragon. Logan met with Master Po in Chinatown to fulfill his responsibilities. Alongside Gorilla Man of Atlas and the Immortal Weapon called Fat Cobra, Wolverine and his allies found an underground poppy field controlled by the Jade Claw and her dragons. The drug dealers were driven off, and Logan named Fat Cobra as the new Black Dragon before recovering the vast amount of money he had squirreled away in Chinatown, to help fund his new school. Incidentally, Melita was there to meet him in New York when he arrived, thanks to her new job as a reporter for the Daily Bugle in Manhattan. Melita’s reputation as a writer had increased substantially due to her publications from the front line during the Serpent War… but it was Logan secretly sending her resume to the Daily Bugle in the hope she would follow him that finalized the deal. [Wolverine (4th series) #17-19]
Working nonstop with Bobby, Hank and Kitty, Logan rapidly reconstructed the old mansion into a new, futuristic campus that incorporated Shi’ar technology with many other innovations to create the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. With Charles Xavier’s blessing, Logan and Kitty became headmaster and headmistress of the school, with Beast acting as vice-principal and the other X-Men who followed Logan from Utopia filling out the staff positions.
While most of the students were there willingly, Wolverine had taken personal responsibility for Quentin Quire after the United Nations incident. Although Quire was now technically an international fugitive, Logan convinced Captain America to allow him to make one last effort to redeem the troubled mutant. Idie and Quentin weren’t the only problem children under Logan’s care, though – the school also welcomed the unruly son of one of their patrons, Kid Gladiator of the Shi’ar Empire, and a recently discovered Broodling who was allegedly not nearly as a homicidal and malicious as his forebearers.
In the interests of full disclosure, the Jean Grey School presented itself to the New York State Department of Education for review and certification as an official school. Despite the X-Men’s… eccentric charm, the campus inspection was already going as poorly as possible without anyone actually dying when the new Hellfire Club arrived to amend that last point. Young Kade Kilgore introduced himself to Wolverine at the front gate as the new Black King of the Hellfire Club, 
and openly took responsibility for the Sentinel attack on Utopia. Hoping to finish what he started, Kilgore had the Hellfire Club unleash flamethrower-wielding Frankensteins, mutate the DoE representatives into a Sauron and a Wendigo, and even infected the grounds themselves with a derivative Krakoa. Despite this chaos, the X-Men’s staff and students came together to fend off their attackers. Quentin Quire even secretly stepped up and tamed Krakoa, who joined the school as their newest mutant student. A second Education Department review went much better than the last, and the school remained open. Logan decided to play Kilgore’s game as well, and sent his attorney Matt Murdock to sue Kilgore Industries for the damages… to the tune of 879 million dollars. [Wolverine and the X-Men (1st series) #1-3]
Once the school was up and running, Wolverine went to work establishing allies and a support network for his institute. Because of his now limited spare time, Logan stepped down from one of his Avenger teams, leaving himself available only to Luke Cage’s band of heroes. [Avengers (4th series) #19, New Avengers (2nd series) #17] Logan arranged for Havok and Polaris (recently returned from space) to reunite with their old friends in X-Factor Investigations. He also put the detective agency on retainer to investigate potential problems or “weird stuff” that the school’s staff could not. [X-Factor (1st series) #230] Finally, Wolverine recruited Doop to secretly act as the school’s one-man last line of defense, coordinating intelligence reports and eliminating possible threats. [Wolverine and the X-Men (1st series) #17]
X-Force also prepared to adopt a new role. With Genesis and the tabula rasa-like Angel in need of care and instruction, Wolverine revealed the existence of X-Force to Beast and Shadowcat. They reluctantly agreed to take the two wild cards into the school, while Logan adjusted X-Force’s mission to also act as “campus police,” eliminating threats before they managed to threaten the school’s safety. Logan made the decision to actively keep “Evan” unaware of his true nature, allowing him to continue believing he was raised on a farm in Kansas rather than artificially grown inside a virtual reality experiment. Wolverine and Fantomex hoped Evan could overcome Apocalypse’s nature if he was nurtured to become a true hero.
With Warren gone, X-Force added Nightcrawler from the Age of Apocalypse to their roster. Kurt Darkholme wanted to hunt down his world’s fugitives hiding in Wolverine’s, such as Blob, Dark Beast and the Sinister Iceman, and needed allies to do it. Darkholme was a much harder man than Earth-616’s Kurt Wagner, preferring to be called “Devil” rather than “Elf,” but Logan’s melancholy over his friend’s death prevented him from seeing the differences between the two men at first. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #19, Wolverine and the X-Men (1st series) #4]
Logan had been counting on further funding for the school coming from Worthington Industries, but some behind-the-scenes prodding by Kade Kilgore led the board of directors to declare the new Angel mentally incompetent and remove the X-Men’s access to Warren’s fortune. Faced with the possible closing of the school, Logan went to Quentin Quire for help. He enlisted the young psychic to hit an outer space casino, telepathically and telekinetically manipulating the games in order to win big. Unfortunately, they were noticed by security and had to fight their way back to their starship. On their way out, a matter transmutation ray turned Wolverine’s legs to putty, warping even the adamantium in his bones hopelessly out of place. He was confined to a wheelchair for days while Beast searched for the cure. Ultimately, it was a band of students led by Angel and Quentin Quire who stole a ship and stormed the casino to recover the matter transmutation ray and heal Logan’s broken legs. [Wolverine and the X-Men (1st series) #5-8]
Wolverine’s new school garnered some unlikely attention from his wayward son, Daken. His healing factor abandoning him, Daken was already on the verge of death when he heard about the school. The idea of Logan acting as a father figure to young mutants reawakened Daken’s antipathy towards his father, causing him to act out in jealous and spiteful ways. He attacked Logan at the school and led him on a chase through Manhattan, where he threatened innocent people with bombs, allegedly to show that super-heroes were a flawed concept. Daken’s mad plea for attention ended in a fiery explosion, leaving Logan unclear whether his son was alive or dead. [Daken: Dark Wolverine #21-23]
Wolverine also had to deal with the unwelcome return of Sabretooth and Romulus. The Sabretooth that Logan decapitated with the Muramasa Blade had only been a clone. The real Victor Creed had been recuperating in secret the last few months, bettering himself mentally and physically. When the time came, he kidnapped Dagger to force Cloak to open the Darkforce Dimension and let Romulus out of captivity. Wolverine learned of his nemeses’ return from Cloak and confronted them, first at Silver Fox’s cabin and later at the Weapon X facility. Romulus retrieved tech from Weapon X to make himself Adamantium-enhanced like Wolverine. Logan was aided by a woman who claimed to be from his past: Remus, Romulus’ immortal twin sister. At Romulus’ private villa in Italy, Wolverine and his allies confronted Romulus and Sabretooth. The new and improved Sabretooth was more of a plotter than in the past, and he set off a series of explosives to cover his retreat. Creed escaped, but Romulus was captured and finally imprisoned on the Raft. [Wolverine (2nd series) #310-313]
Sabretooth did not remain off the grid for long. Wolverine soon found himself in the midst of a Japanese gang war between the Hand and the Yakuza, initiated when Creed threw the Yakuza godfather Takenaka out of an airplane. On a trip to Japan to visit Yukio and Amiko, Logan learned his foster daughter was dating the heir to the Silver Samurai, who in turn was targeted by the criminal factions who wanted Clan Yashida on their side. Amiko was kidnapped to force young Shin Harada to side with Azuma Goda’s Hand. Logan intervened and saved Amiko from Goda and Sabretooth, but they made off with Shin.
Wolverine and Yukio tracked them to the cave of the Mind Ninjas. Their mental assault left Logan in a precarious position, and so he unleashed his berserker side to fight back without conscious thought. In the aftermath, however, Logan gave in to his animal side and made love to Yukio atop the bodies of their enemies. His betrayal of Melita was used against him, as “Yukio” was actually Mystique, resurrected by the Hand and dedicated to destroying the man who killed her. Mystique sent video of their tryst to Melita, effectively ending Logan’s relationship with her. Meanwhile, Azuma Goda consolidated his position, using the gang war and Wolverine to eliminate all the deadwood in the Hand and the Yakuza, bringing their remaining resources and those of Clan Yashida all under his banner. Unfortunately for Goda, he underestimated Sabretooth, who ratted Goda out to Wolverine and let Logan kill the ninja. Although he didn’t realize it at the time, by killing Goda, Wolverine set Sabretooth and Mystique up as the king and queen of the entire Asian underworld. [Wolverine (4th series) #20, Wolverine (2nd series) #300-303]
Logan’s troubles continued as the unstable Doctor Rot returned, using triggers he implanted in Logan’s mind to make him dance to Rot’s tune. The brainwashed Wolverine committed several murders on Rot’s behalf before he realized what was going on and attempted to track down his tormentor. By subverting the Weapon X behavioral controls for his own purposes, though, Rot managed to completely replace Logan’s personality with one of his implantable henchmen’s mind. Wolverine eventually succeeded in building a mental detour around Rot’s control phrases, but at a cost. Logan’s mind was damaged again, with many people and events in his memory completely lost, including his recent relationship with Melita Garner. [Wolverine (2nd series) #305-308]
