One of the things that make Wolverine such a fan favorite is his mutant power to recuperate from any kind of injury, also known as his healing factor. It is due to the fact that his cells grow at such a pace that any cut or would is completed healed in seconds or minutes. Although there are other superheroes and supervillains in the Marvel comics who have healing powers, but, nobody has it like Wolverine.
Last year’s Logan was based in the future where Wolverine has become old, and his healing factor is losing its power, making him highly vulnerable without it. Although you might be aware that due to his power, he can endure a lot of torture, you might still not be aware of all the things that this healing factor can do for him. Therefore, we decided to create a list of things which you don’t know about the healing factor of Wolverine.
10. INSIDE FACTOR
Whenever Wolverine gets stabbed or shot, his healing factor rapidly seals the wound, and at times the healing happens a bit too fast. As seen in “X-Men” films and his solo trilogy, we have seen Wolverine get shot, and how the bullets are repelled from his body. Things are different in comic books, where at numerous occasions, outside objects got confined in his body, and it doesn’t look good.
If he gets stabbed with a knife or a spear or any bladed weapon, his body heals around the blade at such speed that the blade remains stuck inside him. He then needs to forcibly rip the blade out of himself. Wolverine himself said once that it is even worse in the case of bullets. If the wound is fresh, he has to reach out internally through the hole and pull the bullet out. If it’s healed then he is compelled to slice the bullets out of his body, and that too at a quick pace because his flesh might just heal around his fingers. Quite ghastly that!
9. IT SLOWS AGING
“Healing” has quite an ambiguous meaning and in the case of Wolverine it implies a lot of things. For one, his healing factor is not friendly with the human aging process. The reality of aging is a time-bound breakdown of cells, and his healing factor regrows cells very quickly, thus, Wolverine ages very slowly.
As displayed by “Origins,” Logan was born towards the late 18th century. Thus, he is more than 200 years old, however, he looks like someone who is at the peak of his time. It is not yet clear as to how long the healing factor will keep rejuvenated and alive or when will he start looking as old as he is. X-23 is younger than him and doesn’t have an adamantium skeleton, but, she claims that she heals faster than him. In the 2009’s Wolverine: Old Man Logan (Mark Millar, Steven McNiven), a faraway future was depicted where Wolverine had become old and grey, and Old Man Logan was introduced to the core universe, but, that’s an alternate reality.
8. IT CAUSED AMNESIA
Wolverine’s healing factor also impacts his memory, rather the lack of it. Wolverine has lived a tough life, as a child, he saw his father get murdered, and once he was even sent to hell by a group of unhappy relatives of his victims known as the Red Right Hand in the 2010 comic Wolverine #1 (Jason Aaron, Renato Guedes). During his life’s journey, all the women he loved either died or got killed, and he has been subject to scores of experiments and tortures.
Right up to the crossover event “House of M” Wolverine had no memory of most things, also partly due to the fact that the Weapon X organization wiped out his memory. It was disclosed in the 2002 comic “Wolverine #175 (Frank Tieri, Sean Chen) that his healing factor felt that his traumatic memories were a sort of injury and created amnesia to cure him of them. It’s quite weird to imagine how his own body looked at his life and decided, “Yeah, that was a great deal of unwanted usage. Better off without it.”
7. IT PREVENTS POISONING
That’s right. Wolverine is safe from all poisons due to his healing factor. It protects him from the kind of poisons which would be fatal to normal humans. This was depicted in the 1982 mini-series “Wolverine” (Frank Miller, Chris Claremont) which saw Logan visit Japan to try and win over his lost love Mariko Yashida. Mariko’s father asked him to a duel using practice swords so as to insult him and make Mariko reject his love. Just to make things sure, prior to the fight, Shingen struck Wolverine with a poisoned shuriken which would have instantly killed any average person. The poison could only weaken Wolverine to the extent that his reflexes slowed down and he lost the fight.
His healing factor also keeps him immune to any drugs or even alcohol, since alcohol is a kind of poison, but, nothing stops Wolverine. He drinks an enormous amount of liquor which would again kill a normal person, but, it only gives a slight fuzziness to him.
6. PSYCHIC DEFENSE
Wolverine’s healing factor repels any psychic attacks. It considers psychic powers akin to a physical risk, therefore, Wolverine has discovered what he calls “mental scar tissue” from the various horrors he has endured throughout his life. That and some powerful mental shields created in his mind by Professor Xavier, ensure that nobody can control or read his mind.
The joint power of his healing factor and shields guard Wolverine’s mind against telepathic attack or spying. In the 2009 comic Wolverine #46 (Marc Guggenheim, Humberto Ramos), even the mighty psychic Emma Frost couldn’t breach his mental defenses. That’s quite useful because the X-Men regularly come across telepathic supervillains. Although the brains of other X-Men get scrambled, Wolverine keeps going. His brain is not any weaker than his bones.
5. STAMINA
Another of his healing factor’s advantages is that it protects him from getting tired. Whenever Wolverine starts fighting, killing people, he doesn’t take a breather or experiences fatigue. That’s due to the fact that his healing factor breaks down lactic acid building in his muscles. It is not as if he can never get tired because he also needs to rest. However, it implies that once Wolverine gets into a crazy fight, he is stronger, faster and can endure much longer than any normal person.
This was highlighted in X-Men #5 (Jim Lee, John Byrne) which pitted Wolverine against the Soviet Super-soldier Omega Red. Omega Red’s carbonadium tentacles pierced into Wolvie and made him battle this villain like never before. They kept fighting non-stop for 24 hours, and none of them was exhausted.
4. ADAMANTIUM POISONING
It must be mentioned here that Wolverine can be at risk to a particular poisoning and that’s adamantium poisoning. During Weapon X’s experiments on him to fuse the metal to his skeleton, they probably chose him only due to the fact that his healing factor let him endure the procedure and its impact. The metal is highly toxic, and the amount of Adamantium inside Wolverine would have killed anybody else long back.
The truth is, Wolverine’s healing factor would have been more powerful without the adamantium. In 1993’s X-Men #25 (Fabian Nicieza, Andy Kubert), Magneto tore the metal out of his body, but, his healing power improved greatly. When Wolverine’s healing factor was weakened, Beast had to create an agent for him to prevent the metal’s poison from killing Wolverine. It appears that the inexplicable disease which was killing him in Logan was nothing else but adamantium poisoning, implying that his healing factor finally failed to protect him from the mighty metal.
3. DROWNING
We have discussed various things which his healing factor can cure, now let’s talk about what it can’t: drowning. Although the list of things from which Wolverine can be protected is lengthy, but, being submerged is not his strength. Contrary to lack of food, Wolverine is not protected from lack of air. If he remains drowned for long enough, he would die.
Wolverine had hinted at such a scenario in the initial stories because his metal skeleton makes him heavier and it was highlighted in the 2013’s Wolverine #6 (Paul Cornell, Mirco Pierfederici) in a two-segment story called “Drowning Logan.” In this story, Wolverine got trapped in a helicarrier in deep seas when it got flooded, compelling him to swim for nearly 15 minutes. Although his healing factor kept him protected from water’s weight, but, his lungs failed, and he nearly died. There is also the fact that Wolverine managed to kill his evil son Daken, who also had a healing factor, by keeping him submerged face-down in a puddle until he died.
2. ANGEL OF DEATH
Many people say Wolverine’s healing factor and an adamantium skeleton made him invincible. While the healing factor was powerful, it is not the real reason for his longevity or the thing that has kept him going for so many years. As stated above, Wolverine beat death repeatedly, including even death by a nuke. It was revealed that it wasn’t his healing factor which revived him, but, a deal with the so-called Angel of Death.
2007’s Wolverine #57 (Marc Guggenheim, Howard Chaykin) saw Doctor Strange realize that Wolverine’s soul had been fractured. It was revealed that during the WWI when Logan was on the battlefield, he nearly died and came across a mysterious stranger with whom he had fought and won. The stranger was none other than Lazaer, the Angel of Death. That moment onward, when Logan was hurt to the extent that his healing factor couldn’t work, he took on Lazaer in Purgatory to return to life. To repair his soul, Wolverine traded for his death, and that eventually lead to Wolverine’s eventual death.
1. HEALING COPIED
Back when Wolverine was abducted by the Weapon X program, they conducted terrible experiments on him to fuse his bones with adamantium and also tortured as well as brainwashed him. He ran away from the program, but, he became the supreme warrior, and they kept trying to emulate their success with him. Apart from copying his adamantium, Weapon X also managed to save a little bit of his DNA and have been making efforts to insert his healing factor into others.
Throughout the decades, they utilized his DNA and merged it into various superheroes such as Deadpool and supervillains such as Garrison Kane (also famous as Weapon X). Sadly, most of those experiments either failed or caused side effects, such as Deadpool’s disfigurement. There was a time when the Weapon X branch called Facility tried to create a Wolverine clone, as seen in the 2005’s X-23: Innocence Lost created by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, Billy Tan). The female clone called X-23 had his healing power and replaced him as Wolverine after his death.
