Details Only Huge Fans Know About Marvel's Powerful Scientist

Since his introduction in "The Incredible Hulk" #181 in 1974, Wolverine has been the most popular X-Men character, and arguably the most beloved Marvel hero of them all. But Wolverine's origin was for decades shrouded in mystery, with very little known about his past prior to his entry into the Weapon X super-soldier program. It wasn't until the mid 2000s that Marvel would reveal his story, but the tale of how a little boy named James Howlett became the vicious clawed hero Logan wasn't always destined to be his origin. In fact, an abandoned storyline would have seen the High Evolutionary play a key part in Wolverine's past.

Long an urban legend, artist and writer John Byrne revealed to Comics Journal in 1996 the story of an abandoned origin story for everyone's favorite feral mutant (via UncannyXMen.net). Byrne explained, "The first origin that was concocted, was that he was actually a mutant wolverine, boosted up to human form by the High Evolutionary." According to Byrne, however, there became doubts about the idea because it seemed a bit too similar to the original origin story for Spider-Woman. "That works except that Archie [Goodwin, a Marvel writer] did a similar number in the first Spider-Woman story. And no matter how things have changed in that strip since, the idea has been done before so we dropped it."

Oddly enough, the concept of the High Evolutionary taking a small, feral clawed animal and evolving him into a walking, talking mercenary seems to be making a comeback in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3."