Who's this supposed to be, again?
Wolverine unites with the group of X-Treme X-Men
to battle telepathic threats and defend their team of mutant heroes.
So the packaging may want to specify this as being from X-Treme X-Men, but there's really no reasoning behind that: X-Treme X-Men was created as a way to give Chris Claremont something to do while Grant Morrison was tearing things up in New X-Men and Chuck Austen was... certainly telling memorable stories in Uncanny. Claremont had been on the main titles, but his storylines got derailed when editorial insisted he try to write something more like the first X-Men movie, so sales slumped and new writers were brought in for those books, while he was offered a new, third title of his own. The book was... okay, considering all the major characters had already been claimed, but it never really found its footing.
Wolverine did appear in X-Treme, because he was appearing in all the books at that point (not kidding, he was really in all three monthly stories at once, plus his own title), but he never had a major
role in it. And this costume didn't even appear there first! It first showed up in Uncanny #423, and was part of Marvel's initiative to make Wolverine look the same across all continuities - remember, this was the point when 616 Logan was wearing leather pants and an X jacket, and then suddenly he, Ultimate Wolverine, and X-Men Evolution Wolverine were all wearing the same thing. The better to do early-2000s merchandising, you see.
The figure's upper body is the standard mold, but he's wearing pants with pockets. They're tight, but not "superhero spandex" tight; no visible muscles. His boots are simple, with a double-band at the top instead of just being smooth, and the soles are sculpted with a texture visible around the edges. He's wearing a utility belt with a golden buckle in the center, and silver apps for the snaps on the pouches.
The head is reused, but still good. If you want to use this as Ultimate Wolverine (which, let's be honest, it is: Hasbro just called it something else because Marvel recently started a new line of "Ultimate" comics and probably nixed using that name to avoid any potential confusion), it's way, way better than the hideous 2007 one. His mouth is open in a wild snarl, and that means there are realistic wrinkles on his cheeks.
Exxtreme Wolverine includes a pair of hands with his claws popped, a pair without any claws at all, and then a splayed right hand and a left hand that's pointing. Those all have the ports sculpted on the back of the glove, so you won't mistake them for anyone else's hands. He does not, however,
include any pieces of this series' Build-A-Figure, which is probably why he's the first figure in this series to drop below the $20 mark (which is where Marvel Legends should be anyway). The clawed hands are the ones with the removable claws, which means the plain fists are not needed (with the fact they're black making them even less-needed than usual, since you won't be able to see the slits where the claws plug in), but if the idea behind the pointing left hand was to let us do a "Wolverine #1 cover pose" gesture, then they need to realize that he was beckoning someone closer, not pointing up.
This is a cool figure, in that it can be one of any three versions you want it to be. As a bonus, if you consider that this "unified" Wolverine costume was inspired by a piece of Adam Kubert art, then this release also manages to replace an old ToyBiz mold, too!
-- 06/23/25
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