{"id":44793,"date":"2025-06-23T00:00:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T04:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/?p=44793"},"modified":"2025-10-13T02:30:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T06:30:17","slug":"wolverine-addendum-the-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-pants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/2025\/06\/wolverine-addendum-the-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-pants\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolverine addendum: the Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today's review<\/a> said Wolverine's costume was changed to be the same in all continuities. Let's take a look.<\/p>\n

Here, via HalloweenCostumes.com. is what all three Wolverines were wearing at the time: 616, Ultimate, and Animated.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Okay, good, three distinct looks.<\/p>\n

What Marvel calls his \"combat\" suit first appeared in Uncanny X-Men<\/i> #423, released May 5, 2003. Because that issue's cover is not great, here he is as seen on the cover of Exiles<\/i> #28 (June 4, 2003):<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Here's the cover of Ultimate X-Men<\/i> #33, released July 9, 2003 (although he wouldn't start wearing this new look until issue #39, four months later):<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Those both appear to be based on Wolverine's Season 3 redesign in X-Men Evolution<\/i>. The first episode with it aired September 21, 2002, but given how long animation takes to produce, it would have been designed and approved at least a year earlier.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That means the design, shared between all three Wolverines, was clearly based on the Adam Kubert art used for the variant cover of 2000's Uncanny X-Men<\/i> #381<\/a>, which was itself an attempt to adapt the movie costume:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Black suit, yellow lines on the shoulders... it's not the same thing, but it's undeniable what they were going for.<\/p>\n

The idea behind making them identical was one of expediency: if every version looks the same, then any cool piece of art can be used to promote anything you want. You can put Ultimate Wolverine on a lunchbox or shirt with the Evolution<\/i> logo, and it will still look correct. Wolverine even wore the same basic suit in Secret War<\/i>, the event comic whose entire premise was \"everybody gets new costumes<\/a>,\" that's how badly they wanted to stick with it!<\/p>\n

Animated Wolverine stuck to that costume until the end of the show (October 2003). Ultimate Wolverine wore it until the Ultimatum<\/i> event (July 2009). Regular Wolverine switched clothes in Astonishing X-Men<\/i> #1 (May 2004). So honestly, the idea of a \"unified\" look for the character never happened: the cartoon ended before Ultimate put it on. If you want to count the cover appearance, then there was a span of about 110 days where all three Wolverines were in the same suit before splitting off again.<\/p>\n

<i>And now, some more OAFEry:<\/i><\/H5>