Once upon a time, so the story goes, Fox was going to release a movie about something called the X-Men. These X-Men, as they’re known to be called, were based on things called “comic books” from a company called Marvel, and one of the lead characters in the story was a gruff Canadian fella who is the best there is at what he does. However, that character — despite existing for about thirty years — did not have an “origin story”; that is to say, a story about his history. The movie people said, “We’ll tell it!” The comic people said, “I don’t think so!” And so, as these things go, a comic was created by two talented individuals named Paul Jenkins and Andy Kubert called “Origin” that told the story of Wolverine aka James Howlett and how growing up his life sucked.
Now, with The Wolverine nearly in theaters and about five thousand people passing along the rumor that Wolverine is going to die in October (us certainly included), history is repeating itself with “Origin II.”
This time, Wolverine’s latter days will be told by Kieron Gillen and Adam Kubert, brother of the aforementioned Kubert, to pick up the story exactly where it was left off. James Howlett is now in the woods hanging about with wolves (apparently he doesn’t know which animals he’s supposed to hang out with) and is found by scientists such as Nathanial Essex who view him as an X-Man, studying him in a fashion that history will repeat later on in his life. As Kieron Gillen explains to CBR,
The X-Ray was originally called that because they had no idea what it was. An “Unknown” or X-Ray was pretty much the short hand for that, and this story is only a few years after that. So it makes sense that if they found a new form of human living in the woods, they’d call him an X-Man. That’s all kind of built into the period detail. Ideas like Eugenics were prevalent around this time in this world that was on the brink of war.
This is a story about Wolverine’s early days that deals with a core question about his character. It’s a story about him learning to heal. It’s a story about family and loss. He’s a man with a healing factor, and this is about him coming to terms with the wounds his mutant ability cannot heal. That’s the emotional heart to the story.
He’s stopped living with humans at the start of this story. This is him learning to care again and discovering what that costs.
The series launches in November.
