James Howlett, also known as Wolverine and Logan, is a shell of his former self. Across all forms of media, Logan has been portrayed as a miserable life filled with tragedies. An aspect of Logan is his dehumanization, which is best showcased, in my opinion, in Weapon X. This analysis of one of my favorite characters ever will cover his themes, characterization, and complexity.

To start, the comic book, “Weapon X” by Barry-Windsor Smith portrays the duality of Logan and his endless cycle of violence through the use of dehumanization, characterization, and animal symbolism in order to convey how Logan slowly loses his humanity in a fight for survival. Although Logan is killing to survive and escape, he fails to realize he is becoming more and more, like a wild animal.

As Logan is strapped into Hell, he is entirely conscious, the molten metal injected into his bones, while they place neural implants on him, stripping his physical control away from him. Throughout the story, we see Logan break free and kill a doctor, only to be placed back in, symbolizing his fate to never-ending violence as each time he dives deeper, losing his humanity and going feral. One of, if not, my favorite things to analyze about this story is how much it resembles the original Frankenstein story. Logan, like Frankenstein, is the subject of mad scientists who strip away his humanity.

As explored in the original Frankenstein novel by Mary Shelley, Weapon X also explores man versus nature. Logan has to fight himself from becoming an animal. To add, Logan parallels Frankenstein when they escape into the arctic at the end of their respective works. I also can’t help but love the placement of captions spread throughout the comic, its organization initially confused me. When I first read Weapon-X, I had trouble following the captions because of their messiness. Luckily, I eventually came to realize the true intention behind it. The captions, which might even form a u-like shape, resemble the life of Logan, A blotchy and muddy life filled with agony. That U-shape caption might even hint at Logan’s cycle of never-ending violence.

In the end, Logan is portrayed as living a life of never-ending violence, which is why his death in the movie Logan(2017) is so beautiful. Unfortunately, he had to go through tons of misery and torment to finally achieve peace in nothing, but his death. Weapon-X showed Logan’s attempts to rid the animal side of him, but he ultimately fails, in Weapon-X, that is.  This analysis is pretty short as it really only covered one of Logan’s great pieces of media such as Old Man Logan(2009) and Logan(2017).