Wolverine: Origins #4
Wolverine: Origins #4 is the penultimate chapter of the debut 'Born in Blood' arc — the storyline that launched Logan's first-ever solo ongoing series dedicated entirely to excavating his past. The issue delivers the arc's most consequential narrative payload: Emma Frost's telepathic probe of Wolverine's mind, which first surfaces the existence of his son (later revealed as Daken), a revelation that would reshape the character's mythology for years. Equally significant is the issue's central argument — that Nuke was engineered as an attempt to replicate Wolverine rather than Captain America — which retroactively reframes the entire government super-soldier program and tightens the thematic knot between Logan and Steve Rogers as parallel victims of institutional manipulation.
ComicBooks.com Value
This exact issue on ebay
Raw — MINT ▾ $2.99–$8.5 3 listings
Raw — VF ▾ $3.4–$9.98 2 listings
Raw / ungraded ▾ $1–$69.95 29 listings
More listings for this title
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
The series was written by Daniel Way and edited by Axel Alonso, a creative partnership that had been developing since Alonso first brought Way into Marvel's orbit years earlier. Steve Dillon — already celebrated for Preacher and his Punisher collaborations — served as penciller from issue #1 through #25, lending the series its characteristically blunt, street-level visual texture. The series was designed as a direct continuation of both the House of M event and Way's prior 'Origins and Endings' arc in Wolverine vol. 3 #36–40, meaning issue #4 sits inside a tightly constructed multi-year editorial plan to systematically fill in Logan's recovered memories.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Part 4 of the 5-part opening arc 'Born in Blood,' released July 12, 2006 (cover date September 2006).
- Written by Daniel Way; pencilled and inked by Steve Dillon; colored by Dan Kemp; lettered by Randy Gentile; edited by Axel Alonso.
- The issue's action is set in Vietnam, with Wolverine fighting Captain America (Steve Rogers), who has been dispatched by the U.S. government to bring Logan in alongside Nuke.
- Emma Frost, alongside Cyclops and Hellion, appears at the Xavier Institute in a parallel subplot; her telepathic probe of Wolverine's mind surfaces the first indication that Logan has a living son — the seed of what becomes the Daken plotline.
- Wolverine confronts Captain America with the claim that Nuke was created by the same shadowy forces who controlled Logan — and that those forces were trying to replicate Wolverine, not the super-soldier serum, predating even Weapon X.
- Captain America is cast in this issue as an antagonist figure (listed as such in the Marvel Database), reflecting the arc's thesis that both heroes are instruments of a government conspiracy they do not fully understand.
- The issue was collected in the trade paperback Wolverine: Origins Vol. 1: Born in Blood (ISBN 9780785122876), which reprints issues #1–5.
- The broader series — of which this issue is an early chapter — is the first Marvel series to introduce Daken, Wolverine's son, a character who went on to headline his own title (Dark Wolverine).
Cast · 2 characters
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Wolverine #156 (2007), Wolverine: Origins #1 (2007), Wolverine by Daniel Way: The Complete Collection #1 (2017)
Key issues in Wolverine: Origins
Variants (2)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.