Fun fact: This is somehow the first post I’ve ever made about Wolverine.
At the end of 2021, Wolverine is a character that doesn’t really need an introduction; He’s been a pop culture mainstay for decades. Even if you don’t read X-Men comics, you’ve seen this guy. And while he’s best known for wearing yellow and blue with black pointy stripes, that color scheme never really fit with the character’s personality to me.
But when John Byrne took over drawing the X-Men in the late 1970s, he came up with a new costume for Wolvie that makes a lot more sense for a character who sneaks around in nature by himself a lot. And I’m not sure there’s an image of that look more iconic than this poster by Art Adams:
Toy Biz certainly made a toy of that outfit, in the very first X-Men line. But it was… well, it was outdated as a toy within a year, when the second one came out. The sculpting, the addition of elbow joints, the face that actually looked somewhat human… everything about the second Wolverine figure was objectively better, except for maybe your personal taste in his clothes.
And I had ended up with a couple of those 2nd Edition Wolverines over the years, so I figured, hey, why not do something fun with the extra one? So I grabbed some Testors acrylic paint, and went to town:
I want to say I did this in 1998 or 1999? So it’s well over 20 years old at this point. One one hand, I definitely want to clean him up a lot. On the other hand, if ANY character should have his costume perpetually a little fucked up, it’s Wolverine. I mean, have you even looked at the Sam Kieth covers of Marvel Comics Presents?
Wolverine, X-Men, Marvel Comics Presents, and all related characters are owned by Marvel Comics, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation.