Welcome to the 939th edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column in which we investigate and either validate or refute three myths, stories, and legends related to comic books.
Discover the unexpected moment when we first discovered Wolverine’s height in the comics in the first legend of an all-Wolverine edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed.
There is a scene in the popular new movie Deadpool and Wolverine when Deadpool searches the multiverse for different versions of Wolverine. At one point, he finds a version of Wolverine that is five feet three inches tall, the same height as Wolverine in the comic books.
For comic book readers, Wolverine has long been referred to as a “runt” in the comic books, but it is obviously strange to even consider him being that short for fans who have long connected the character with the considerably taller Hugh Jackman.
Marvel was releasing so many trading cards at the time, and Wolverine was clearly a regular presence in almost every trading card set, so many comic book fans of that generation are familiar with his “stats” on the back of the cards, especially that 5’3″ height. This is especially true if you were collecting comic books in the early 1990s.
Thus, Wolverine’s height of 5’3″ is simply one of those things that comic book readers discover through cosmic osmosis or similar methods. However, as longtime reader Laurence S. pointed out to me, Wolverine WASN’T that short in the comics for almost ten years!
What was Wolverine’s Height When He First Appeared?
The amazing thing is that John Romita actually noted on the design sheet how tall Wolverine was—five feet five inches—when he created his costume—no, it wasn’t inspired by the Michigan Wolverine’s football jerseys! Naturally, they are still rather short, but it seems like a huge difference between a 5’3″ and a 5’5″ person.
Indeed, the caption for Wolverine’s debut in Incredible Hulk #181 (by Len Wein, Herb Trimpe, and Jack Abel) makes it quite evident that the character is five feet five inches tall!
But as you might expect, Len Wein’s original vision of Wolverine and the final version of Wolverine are very different. Wein, who was then Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics’ color comic books, decided he needed to remove X-Men off his list of titles he was writing since his executive job was eating up too much of his time.
However, a year later, he brought Wolverine over to the X-Men in Giant-Size X-Men #1. As a result, Chris Claremont, who wrote the script for Wein’s next story arc (originally slated for Giant-Size X-Men #2 but ultimately appeared in X-Men #94-95), became the series’ primary writer. He collaborated with Dave Cockrum, Wein’s co-creator of the All-New, All-Different X-Men.
When a reader called Wolverine “shorty” in the letter pages for X-Men #103, there was some discussion about whether or not Wolverine was indeed “short.” Dave Cockrum added that Wolverine was approximately five feet FOUR inches tall.
Thus, Wolverine had already lost an inch of height in just three years!
When Did We First Learn Wolverine’s Height in the Comics?
This is the issue. The fact that someone is “nigh invulnerable when I’m blastin'” is fairly easy to incorporate into a comic book plot, but it is far more difficult to organically incorporate the fact that a guy is five feet three inches tall.
What if it even naturally arose in conversation? “Hey, Wolverine, how tall are you again?” could be said, I suppose. However, practically speaking, it’s impossible to include his height into the comics in a natural way, even while it’s obvious that he was regarded as small by both
One reason is that he was depicted as being significantly shorter than everyone else, as seen in X-Men #137 (drawn by John Byrne, Chris Claremont, and Terry Austin). Secondly, he is referred to as being short in the comics by everyone, as seen in X-Men #109 (drawn by Claremont, Byrne, and Austin).
It was evident that Wolverine was short, but no one ever made it plain just how short he was. His height was not even included in his profile in The Contest of Champions. However, with the release of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe in 1983, that changed, and Wolverine was now explicitly mentioned as being five feet three inches tall.
But if that’s a manual, when did the comics adapt it? The answer, however, is a strange place. The X-Men at the State Fair of Texas, a promotional tie-in comic book for, well, the Texas State Fair, was the first comic book to mention Wolverine’s five-foot-three-inch height.
It was published a few months after the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe was released in 1983, and it probably specifically cited the information in the handbook.
The one-shot, which was written by former X-Men editor Jim Salicrup (together with David Kraft) and illustrated by Kerry Gammill, Alan Kupperberg, and Chic Stone, had a section discussing the X-Men and mentioning Wolverine’s height.
Look into Comic Book Legends Revealed to learn more about the intriguing history of Wolverine’s height and other comic book myths! There is more to it than meets the eye, from startling statistics to famous makeovers.
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