Logan is frequently thought as one of Marvel’s most resilient heroes. With bones of adamantium and the ability to heal from most injuries, nothing ordinary is going to take Wolverine out of the picture. He’s only been dead for the last couple years because his healing factor was finally eradicated. Ironically after surviving so long thanks to adamantium, he got doused in it and lost his life as it hardened and suffocated him.
That was far from the first time Logan suffered defeat, though. Wolverine has tangled with some of the biggest names in Marvel over the years, and he’s met more than a couple people who can overcome his seeming invincibility. It’s not even like Logan is at the top of the food chain among the heroes, as quite a few of the good guys have taken him down over the years. If you think Logan is unbeatable, you’re about to learn otherwise, because here are 15 Superheroes Who Have Beaten Wolverine.
15. DEADPOOL
Who wins in a battle of the healing factors? Honestly there’s no clear winner between Logan and Wade Wilson overall since they’ve fought so often that they each have come out on top a couple times. But nonetheless, Deadpool does have some victories to his name. It honestly shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Many fans consider Deadpool to be the hero with the more powerful healing factor, so he can sustain more damage than Logan and keep on coming back.
In this particular occasion, the odds were even further stacked in Deadpool’s favor because Logan’s healing abilities were still recovering after Wolverine had his adamantium ripped out by Magneto. Usually it’s Logan who doesn’t care what happens to him because he knows he can recover and outlast his opponent. But this time, Logan got a taste of his own medicine, and Deadpool finished the encounter by skewering Logan’s lungs with a sword.
14. KITTY PRYDE
Even if you’re more into superheroes in movies than in comic books, Days of Future Past showed fans that Kitty Pryde is a pretty powerful member of the X-Men. But before the scenario we’re getting into here, most people probably wouldn’t have considered Kitty to be someone who could take down Logan. Not everyone needs indestructible bodies or Earth-shattering powers to be a threat, though.
With Wolverine under the control of HYDRA, he’s indiscriminately slaughtering his former friends. Logan is obviously powerful, so the heroes were having a hard time taking him down. Eventually Kitty Pryde was the last one who stood before him, and he was incapable of listening to reason.
In a final desperate act, Kitty phased her hand into Logan’s head, and solidified it while he simultaneously lopped off her arm. So Logan’s brain was destroyed, and because Kitty’s arm was stuck in his skull, it was incapable of regenerating, leaving him dead.
13. SPIDER-MAN
Spidey doesn’t exactly go out of his ways to have problems with heroes, so he’s not a guy who has taken down tons of big names. He does have a pretty good track record in such fights, though, and Wolverine is one of the heroes who lands on that list. In this instance, Spider-Man’s victory is even more impressive because he took on not only Logan, but all the X-Men, including the likes of Colossus and Nightcrawler.
The encounter took place during the Secret Wars story arc, and Peter had taken the liberty of listening in on what the mutant team was discussing. When Spidey heard the conversation take a nefarious-sounding turn, he was intent on warning his allies, but had to make it out past all the X-Men. You’d think any one of them would be enough to give Peter a challenge, but he was so fast that he was letting them do the damage to each other as they tried to hit him.
Even Wolverine was no match for Peter’s acrobatics, and the X-Men’s discussion would have become public knowledge if Professor X hadn’t wiped Peter’s memory as he got away. Still, it was definitely an occasion where Logan and the other X-Men got shown up.
12. HULK
These two have had a couple of encounters, and it’s hard to imagine a character who has brutalized Wolverine more than the Hulk. That’s saying something when Logan has had to endure things like Magneto ripping the adamantium out of his body. Even Logan’s death years ago wasn’t as gruesome as his battles against the Hulk. But perhaps the most one-sided fight the two had was the one that fans had to wait years to see conclude.
In Ultimate Wolverine vs Hulk, the story already starts with Logan having been ripped apart—as in the Hulk had literally ripped Wolverine in two. As Logan goes to reclaim his legs and get revenge against the Hulk, things get even worse for him and he winds up as nothing more than a severed head.
The story arc was postponed for several years, but fans did eventually get to see what happened next. It didn’t involve Logan winning, though. In the end, the fight between the two was squashed before Logan could get payback. It’s hard to imagine Logan ever would have been able to get retribution against someone who could do things like that to him, though.
11. CYCLOPS
Everyone knows that Logan and Scott have difficulty getting along. Logan has his whole lone wolf routine that he likes, so he bucks against having to serve under Scott’s leadership while on the X-Men team. Not only that, but they each have had feelings for Jean Grey, so there has definitely been a competitive streak between them for who will win her affection. Naturally, with that kind of animosity boiling under the surface, they’ve had a few clashes.
On this particular occasion, the feud between Wolverine and Cyclops came about at a very bad time, because the X-Men were in the midst of dealing with Sauron (the pterodactyl dude, not the tyrant from The Lord of the Rings). Logan wound up being mind-controlled during the affair, and started seeing his own allies as the enemy.
Scott didn’t have time to dispel the effects in a peaceful way, and instead had to rely on his optic blasts to keep Logan at bay. Whether the mind control diminished Logan’s abilities, or whether Scott really is just the superior fighter, Wolverine got thrashed pretty bad in the fight and was shot into the horizon by Scott’s blasts.
10. THOR
Here we have another example of Wolverine getting involved in a fight because he was hallucinating. Only instead of taking on someone he could actually beat given the right circumstances, like Cyclops, he wound up going against Thor. Yeah, even as invulnerable as Logan is often portrayed, he’s not winning against a literal god unless he’s extremely lucky. Suffice to say, he was not so fortunate this time.
Logan had Loki to thank for his hallucinations in this instance, and in a funny misunderstanding, Logan winds up seeing Thor as Sabretooth. They do both have long golden hair, so maybe Sabretooth could pull off wearing the helmet. Regardless, Logan couldn’t hold his own against Thor at all. Logan gets smacked down with Mjolnir, and then zapped with lightning as the icing on the cake. After Logan’s body stopped smoking, the two heroes eventually cleared up the misunderstanding and went after their common enemy.
9. BLACK PANTHER
In the aptly named Killable story arc, Wolverine deals with his own mortality as his healing factor is taken away. With Logan’s death happening shortly after this story arc, you can already deduce that he was on a downward spiral at the time. The force that got rid of Logan’s power was also having a mind-controlling effect on heroes, and the source looked to be pointing to the home of the Black Panther. Logan paid the country of Wakanda a visit, and upon meeting Black Panther, assumed the hero was under control of the virus.
This turned out to be a bad fight for Logan to take for a couple reasons. As Black Panther himself points out, Logan’s fighting style is based on being able to sustain damage, so without his healing powers, Logan couldn’t win using his usual tactics. But to make matters worse, Logan was also mistaken about Black Panther being mind-controlled, so all Logan was doing was antagonizing his own ally. With no regenerative powers, Logan got slapped around for a while until Black Panther finally convinced him to listen to reason.
8. CAPTAIN AMERICA
Captain America and Wolverine have actually fought a number of times, and Cap has come out the winner of many of those. We could run down each one individually, but we’ll focus on the instance that best fits with the theme of the other entries. Remember how in a couple of the other fights so far we’ve mentioned times where Wolverine was brainwashed and hallucinating? Well, guess who gets brainwashed yet again?
It’s funny enough that Logan gets mind-controlled so often, but the thing about this particular fight that has readers howling with laughter is that Captain America is a werewolf during this battle. The heroes had gone to investigate a sudden werewolf outbreak, but instead Cap got turned into one himself.
The downside is that he looks ridiculous and this moment would go down in comic book infamy. The plus side was the werewolf strength gave Cap the edge he needed to overpower Logan and win this rematch from an earlier fight they’d in the same story.
7. GAMBIT
Just because they’re usually on the same side doesn’t mean Wolverine and Gambit won’t find a reason to test out who could beat the other. As is usually the case between two popular characters, they’ve each actually scored a couple wins over the other, but you know Logan would prefer that record to be flawless in his favor. So it has to rankle that Gambit has not only beaten him, but also did so using some pretty sneaky maneuvers.
One such case was in Uncanny X-Men #273, where the two heroes decided to face off the Danger Room. Obviously the area is just the X-Men’s training center, so they weren’t out to end the other’s life or anything. The only thing on the line here was pride, but Logan’s was the one that got hurt.
Though they initially looked evenly matched, Gambit gained the upper hand by making the Danger Room conjure up Lady Deathstrike. Logan was so distracted that he didn’t realize it was a trick until too late. Gambit laid Wolverine out with a few staff strikes, and Logan was left on the floor, having to concede.
6. SQUIRREL GIRL
You’d think with Squirrel Girl’s reputation that Logan would have known better than to challenge her. Nobody beats Squirrel Girl. Even Thanos got taken out by her (that was later retconned, but the entity still had the same powers as Thanos, so it’s not really any less impressive). So basically Wolverine never stood a chance in the fight.
Logan only meant it as a sparring session with the current Avengers members. He wanted to test out the heroes in the team in some one on one nonlethal fights, and eventually Squirrel Girl’s turn came around. Even in hand-to-hand combat, Squirrel Girl still dominated the fight.
It looked like Logan had the upper hand when he caught Squirrel Girl as she was naively celebrating. But then she showed off the full extent of her powers and pointed out to Logan that he was currently surrounded by a swarm of angry squirrels awaiting her command. Even Doctor Doom got taken down by squirrels, so Logan knew it was time to give up.
5. BEAST
Okay, so we’ve talked a lot about fights that Wolverine lost while he was brainwashed, but it’s not like he’s the only one to ever have his mind controlled. So for a change of pace let’s get into a fight where Logan was in his right mind, but his opponent had been brainwashed. And in this case, that opponent is Beast.
Beast is no doubt strong, fast, and acrobatic, but Logan has those traits as well, so normally you’d have to give this one to Logan since his regeneration should be the deciding factor. But it turns out Beast got mind controlled by a pretty powerful entity.
In the Here Comes Tomorrow storyline, Beast is taken over by an entity known as Sublime, who further enhanced Beast by harnessing the Phoenix power, turning this evil version of Beast into a threat to everybody. Logan stepped up to take on the threat, but Sublime’s powers negated Wolverine’s healing and left him vulnerable. Sublime seized the advantage to disembowel Logan, leaving him for dead without being able to regenerate.
Jean Grey used some time travel to make it so this whole incident would never happen, but the fact is, this infected version of Beast was still enough to take out Wolverine.
4. DAREDEVIL
Yet another brainwashed fight for poor Logan. What can we say? During the Enemy of the State storyline Wolverine challenged a lot of superheroes. During this fight, Logan was being forced to go after Daredevil in his own home. Logan was really being guided to take on Daredevil in the hopes of drawing out Elektra, but the fight wasn’t as easy as Logan’s controllers were likely hoping.
Even with the surprise attack in his own home, Daredevil was quickly ready for the fight. The odds were further stacked against Daredevil because Logan had brought along over a dozen of his new friends who were armed with bows and swords. Daredevil handled it just like a video game and took out the nameless goons before moving onto the big boss, but even then he was looking to get through to Logan rather than kill him.
Daredevil did have home field advantage, though, obviously knowing his own home. When he got knocked down, he knew his weight set was nearby and smacked Logan in the face with a dumbbell. The blow was enough to break through the mind control long enough that the fight came to an end for the time being.
3. STORM
Wolverine might be many fan’s favorite member of the X-Men, but that doesn’t make him the most powerful team member. You can’t be too surprised about this one, though, since Logan is a close quarters brawler, and Storm can take out her opponents from a distance. Being able to fly and strike people with lightning doesn’t stop being useful, even against enemies who can regenerate.
What might surprise you is that this encounter not only saw Storm beat Wolverine, but also kill him in the extremely short-lived X-Men Forever. The series kicked off in an exciting fashion by having Logan get killed off, and the heroes having a bit of a mystery as to who did it. It doesn’t take them long to figure out, though, since only so many characters could contend against Wolverine, let alone reduce him to an electrified skeleton.
The culprit is soon revealed to be a now-evil Storm, but fans wouldn’t get the chance to learn why, since the series was cut short before the answers were revealed.
2. PUNISHER
The Punisher’s claim to being a hero has certainly been tenuous at times, often due to how brutally he handles dealing with the criminals he hunts. Unfortunately for any superhero unlucky enough to cross paths with him, Frank Castle doesn’t change his style just because he’s facing off against one of the good guys. So when Logan crossed paths with Castle, they didn’t get along too well in their team-up, resulting in the classic crossover battle that everyone expected.
Frank wasn’t deterred by Logan’s ability to heal. In fact, it brought out the creative side in the Punisher. Frank blew off Logan’s face with a shotgun, destroyed Logan’s testicles in similar fashion, and left him crawling near helpless on the floor. Obviously Logan would just heal even from injuries like those, so Frank tried to finish the job by flattening Wolverine with a steamroller.
Logan would later gain a measure of revenge when the two met again, but Frank’s triumph is the one that everyone remembers, thanks to how brutal and over the top it was.
1. WOLVERINE
It seems like every popular superhero has to clash with an alternate version of their self at some point, doesn’t it? And Logan is certainly popular, so he’s wound up fighting himself more than once. One such incident was during the Marvel Zombies Return event, which threw in interdimensional travel to up the ante from the previous zombie shenanigans. One of the Wolverines was a zombie, while the other was still alive. The living Wolverine double-teamed his undead counterpart alongside Kitty Pryde, with living Logan stabbing his double through the chest, and Kitty stabbing him through the head. Yet despite winning, the living Logan wound up getting bit in the encounter.
Then Wolverine met himself again in the Age of Ultron comic storyline which featured time travel. So now Logan was interacting with himself from different points in history to try and avert a terrible future. Long story short is that the threat of Ultron was avoided, but now the timeline was left with two Wolverines stuck together. That was just asking for more problems, so the two Logans agreed one of them had to go. The Logan of the future volunteered, and the past Logan got the surreal experience of murdering himself.
Which hero do you think has been Wolverine’s best opponent? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Logan will be in theaters on March 3, 2017.
