All 10 From The Comics & Movies, Explained

Summary

• Wolverine’s superhuman senses make him an exceptional tracker, with a sense of smell even stronger than Daredevil’s.
• Despite his size and metal skeleton, Wolverine is incredibly fast, capable of matching Spider-Man in combat.
• Wolverine’s healing factor grants him immunity to disease and poison, slowing down his aging process significantly.

Wolverine is one of the most popular characters that Marvel can claim, having been around for decades and been prominently featured in both comic books and movies. And over all that time, he’s gotten a whole host of abilities that he wasn’t originally created with.

While Wolverine started out as someone with just super sharp claws, he eventually became one of the most powerful mutants Marvel has. Due to his healing factor, Wolverine has been alive for hundreds of years and doesn’t even know his own age. With a character who’s existed for that long, he’s bound to have picked up some new abilities and tricks from his original creation. From across movies and comics, these are the top 10 abilities Wolverine has shown.

10 Superhuman Senses Makes Wolverine An Excellent Tracker

Wolverine: Weapon X Files by Jeff Christiansen and Ronald Byrd

One of the major things that Wolverine is known for is being a skilled tracker. When symbiotes first ended up on Earth, Nick Fury brought in Wolverine to help track them in Vietnam, which was seen in Web of Venom: Ve’Nam. Daredevil, a character with incredibly enhanced senses, has also gone on record to say that Wolverine’s sense of smell is just a bit more powerful than his own, as stated in Infinity War #2.

Considering Daredevil can famously smell perfume from several blocks away, claiming that Wolverine’s sense of smell is even greater is one of the highest bits of praise Logan’s nose could be given. This sense of smell is one of the main reasons Logan is so valuable to the many different teams he’s been on. The fact he can track down anyone, no matter how far they’ve run, is one skill that simply no one else has.

9 Wolverine Is Incredibly Fast

X-Men: Schism #4 by Jason Aaron, Alan Davis, Mark Farmer, Jason Keith, and Jared K. Fletcher

Wolverine is pretty short and burly, he also weighs several hundred pounds thanks to his metal skeleton. Despite these obvious drawbacks, he’s still remarkably fast. There have been a few feats over the years of Wolverine’s surprising agility, such as when he was capable of avoiding Cyclop’s optic blasts during the events of X-Men: Schism. He’s also been shown capable of keeping up with Spider-Man each time they’ve fought over the years.

He’s also infamous for being able to attack people before they’re able to pull the trigger on their guns. He’s shown similar speed in the movies, where during the assault on Xavier’s school for gifted children in X2, Wolverine was capable of taking down several of Stryker’s soldiers before they even knew he was attacking. Other characters have also commented on just how quick Wolverine is, remarking that he practically moves like a ninja.

8 Wolverine Has Low-Level Super Strength

Wolverine: Weapon X Files by Jeff Christiansen and Ronald Byrd

One of the benefits of having an adamantium-laced skeleton is the fact it makes Wolverine very durable. Thanks to his skeleton, Wolverine can withstand huge amounts of pressure. Combining this with his enhanced strength means Wolverine is capable of lifting up to 800 pounds. This makes him significantly stronger than the average person, and while he may not be as strong as some major heavy hitters like Thor or Juggernaut, he’s still pretty strong.

Considering he walks around all day with a skeleton laced with adamantium, he’d have to be pretty strong to even do things like lift his legs or arms. While Wolverine’s super-strength doesn’t come into play too often in his adventures, it’s something he can always fall back on when he needs it.

7 Even Telepaths Have Trouble With Wolverine

Wolverine #46 by Marc Guggenheim, Humberto Ramos, Carlos Cuevas, Edgar Delgado, and Randy Gentile

One of the most dangerous powers in Marvel has always been telepathy. It allows someone to manipulate another person’s mind, including doing things like controlling them or wiping their memories, or just reading their thoughts. Considering just how incredibly deadly Wolverine is, plenty of people would love to get to mind control him. Thankfully, Wolverine’s mind isn’t so easily broken.

Not only does his healing factor make his brain hard to manipulate, as it’s in a constant state of flux, but Wolverine also has level 9 psi shields around his mind, installed by Charles Xavier. This makes Wolverine’s mind practically impossible for a telepath. Wolverine was so confident in these shields that he even challenged the powerful telepath Emma Frost to try and break through them.

6 Wolverine Has Total Immunity To Disease And Poison

Wolverine: Weapon X Files by Jeff Christiansen and Ronald Byrd

Wolverine’s healing factor is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it’s great that he can not get sick or poisoned by any means. Thanks to his healing factor, any disease is almost immediately eradicated from his body. Wolverine’s healing factor was capable of fighting off both vampirism and lycanthropy, as seen in X-Men #5 and Wolverine: First Class #11, respectively.

The downside is that other things that Wolverine absolutely loves have very little effect on him, such as alcohol. Logan has to consume huge amounts of alcohol to get anywhere close to being drunk, and even then, the feeling of being drunk only lasts a few minutes before his body completely outheals it again. This quirk of his healing factor is often why Logan is seen consuming comically large amounts of alcohol.

5 Wolverine Can Even Hunt The Supernatural

Ghost Rider/Wolverine: Weapons of Vengeance Omega by Benjamin Percy, Geoff Shaw, Rain Beredo, and Travis Lanham.

One of the stranger periods in Wolverine’s life was when he took on the powers of the demon Bagra-Ghul. This version of Wolverine was known as the Hellverine and had all the powers of Wolverine combined with this fiery demon. This seemed to also grant Wolverine a level of Supernatural awareness, as he was able to sense when Johnny Blaze, Ghost Rider, was coming after him.

Combine this with Wolverine’s already absurd sense of smell, and it’s likely he was the best tracker in the Marvel Universe. Being able to hunt down demons or humans meant there was truly nothing in the Marvel Universe that could escape Logan. Wolverine didn’t get to keep these powers for long, as Bagra-Ghul was pulled from his body back to its original host, but for a time there, not even demons could escape Logan’s notice.

4 Wolverine Is Practically Ageless

Wolverine: The Origin #1 by Paul Jenkins, Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada, Andy Kubert, Richard Isanove, John Roshell, and Saida Temofonte

Another benefit of Wolverine’s healing factor is the fact it actually slows down the effects of aging on his body. While Wolverine only looks like a man in his mid-30s, he’s actually well over a hundred years old. His healing factor significantly slows down his aging and will let him live for hundreds of years.

It’s not clear exactly just how long Wolverine will live, but even in stories such as Old Man Logan, which takes place quite a few decades in the future, he looks no older than his mid-50s, at worst, despite likely pushing nearly 200 years old by that point. In the live-action movie Logan, Wolverine was shown to be one of the last X-Men alive, having outlived just about everyone else.

3 Wolverine Is An Officially Trained Samurai

The Wolverine

One of the strange things about Wolverine’s character is that he’s usually defined by feral berserker rage. It’s not uncommon in comics for Wolverine to lose himself in a blind fury and simply tear everyone apart. This is nearly the direct opposite of how people expect Samurai to act, who are usually calm and collected. Surprisingly, Logan has a full history with Japan and the samurai, as he even trained to be one.

While Wolverine is remarkably deadly with his claws, he’s also shockingly talented with a katana, with his preferred one being the dangerous Muramasa Blade. Wolverine’s samurai history was the central focus of The Wolverine movie, which revolved around Logan finding his way in Japan and learning to control the fury that was inside of him.

2 Adamantium Aren’t The Only Claws Wolverine Has

Wolverine: The Origin #2 by Paul Jenkins, Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada, Andy Kubert, Richard Isanove, Wes Abbott, and Oscar Gongorra

While most people know Wolverine for his iconic adamantium-laced claws, they weren’t always like that. Originally, Wolverine’s claws were just made out of bone. They had the exact same functionality but obviously weren’t anywhere near as sharp or durable. These bone claws have been seen in both the movies and comics, with them prominently being featured way back in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Eventually, after Wolverine was captured by the Weapon X program, they laced his entire skeleton with Adamantium. This included his bone claws, which gave readers the iconic claws he now has today. While they’ve rarely made appearances these days, anytime Wolverine loses his Adamantium, which has happened a few times, his classic bone claws make a return. They’re also most associated with his feral form, as whenever Wolverine loses his Adamantium, it almost always devolves into a feral monster.

1 Wolverine’s Healing Factor Is His Most Iconic Ability

Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #12 by Mark Gruenwald, Eliot R. Brown, Peter Sanderson, Mark Lerer, Josef Rubinstein, and Andy Yanchus.

The Wolverine ability that has been shown the most in both comics and movies has always been his iconic healing factor. Wolverine has one of the strongest healing factors in Marvel and is nearly impossible to kill because of it. He can regenerate from any wound he’s given, though the time it takes him to regenerate depends on how major the wound is.

This regeneration happens completely automatically, allowing Wolverine to passively heal while sleeping or doing something else. The downside is that Wolverine isn’t immune to pain. Making it so he can feel every wound and every time he regenerates, which likely contributes to his infamous bad temper. Another strange quirk of Wolverine’s healing factor is the fact his Adamantium actually suppresses it, as seen in Wolverine #92. When Wolverine is without his Adamantium, his healing factor becomes far more powerful.