The start of the storyline details how a virus from the microverse caused Wolverine's mutant healing factor to burn out and stop working, allowing enemies from his past to attempt to finally kill him. The main series is followed by a number of aftermath mini series that chronicle Wolverine's friends and family as they come to terms with the death of Logan. These series form a lead in to the weekly Wolverines title beginning in January 2015.
Plot
In September and October 2014, the "Death of Wolverine" storyline began after a virus from the microverse turned off Wolverine's healing factor, allowing his enemies to be able to kill him. Heroes such as Mister Fantastic offered to work on finding a means of reactivating his healing factor but Wolverine accepts who he is and decides not to try and fix it. When he learns that there is a bounty that has been placed on his head, Logan resolves to find his foe. It initially leads him to Viper, who then points him in the direction of Lord Ogun, and Ogun eventually identified him as Doctor Abraham Cornelius, the founder of the Weapon X program. Wolverine then travels to Paradise, where he finds Cornelius trying to replicate what he did to Wolverine but he is missing one thing: Wolverine's Healing Factor. Wolverine then reveals to him that he no longer has his healing factor; on hearing this Cornelius is enraged and sets his latest experiment on Wolverine. Wolverine then defeats Dr. Cornelius' latest experiment and Dr Cornelius, in desperation, tries to escape by activating the adamantium bonding process on the three other subjects. Wolverine slashes the adamantium container before the bonding process can begin, but Wolverine gets covered in the adamantium when the container shatters. Dr. Cornelius is then shown to be fatally injured with a piece of glass as a result of Wolverine throwing the Experiment through the glass window previously. As Dr. Cornelius dies, he demands to know what Wolverine accomplished in his life. Wolverine reflects on this and thinks he has done enough with his life, before he dies from suffocation from the hardening adamantium, kneeling in the sunset outside of Dr. Cornelius' base. This leaves Storm in charge of the X-Men and the team is heartbroken over what happened to Wolverine.
Aftermath
An elderly Steve Rogers and Deadpool are shown collecting anything which has Wolverine's DNA on it and destroying it, so no one would be able to clone the Wolverine. They then infiltrate an A.I.M base, where they steal a blade with Wolverine's blood on it. As they leave, Steve goes inside, leaving the blade with Deadpool and saying that Deadpool knows what to do with it. Deadpool then takes the blade to Butler's incubator, which could regrow an entire being. Deadpool then scrapes on the blood from the knife into a petri dish but hesitates before putting it in the machine, wondering whether he should resurrect Wolverine or let him rest and decides that he needs to think it over. Cyclops is shown entering a bar and there he beats a couple of men who were insulting one man's son for being a mutant. After beating them, he raises a glass of beer as a toast to Wolverine. Nightcrawler and Colossus travel to Mariko's grave, where they take out Wolverine's sword and slam it into the grave as a sign of them being together. The men guarding the grave take it as an insult and attack them. Nightcrawler says, "First we honor his love, then we honor what he did best," and they then fight. Hisako Ichiki is shown in the danger room fighting villains when Hellion interrupts and tries to console her, saying that Wolverine would become a part of her armor and he would always be with her. As one of his last requests, Wolverine arranged for Spider-Man to become a member of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning's staff, wanting Spider-Man to investigate a suspected double agent. Despite the initial hostility he faced from the rest of the team, Spider-Man soon exposed a plan by Mister Sinister to acquire genetic samples from the X-Men and create a new clone army. Storm even noted after Sinister's defeat that Spider-Man's unconventional attitude made him more like Wolverine than she had acknowledged. This is shown in Spider-Man and the X-Men. A team formed by test subjects at Paradise awakes after Wolverine's life force has depleted and escapes from Paradise. They find that Cornelius experimented on them, giving them super powers. But since they were test subjects, they were designed to die quickly. In an attempt to stay alive, they go after X-23, Daken, Sabretooth, Mystique, Lady Deathstrike and Elixir to obtain or copy their healing factors.
Titles involved
Reception
Death of Wolverine received positive reviews. IGN gave the story and the overall graphic novel a positive review giving it a 6.0 rating out of 10 with a verdict, "Death of Wolverine is not a perfect story. The spartan approach to storytelling hurts as well as helps the book at times. But between Soule's clever take on writing Wolverine and the amazing work produced by the art team, this is a story every Wolverine fan should experience. The hardcover version only enhances the presentation quality". Eric Diaz of the Nerdist gave it a positive review rating it 3 out of 5 burritos. However, Stew Shearer of The Escapist gave it 2 out of 5 stars stating that "Death of Wolverine is a lousy send-off for a character who is easily one of Marvel's most iconic. Setting aside the fact that this is most certainly all temporary, the book does little to draw the reader in or keep them interested."
In other media
The Death of Wolverine served as one of the two "Wolverine" storylines alongside Old Man Logan as the main sources of inspiration for the 2017 filmLogan. While featuring an original premise, the death of the titular character was taken from The Death of Wolverine.
