Ok, a confession. During the 1990s I didn't buy comics, lost interest in the Marvel and DC Universe (thanks Joel Schumacher's crummy movies for that in part), but became a bit of a Wolverine fan. In fact Wolverine was the link between me and the comics and characters I loved as a kid and due to that link and helped by the 00s Marvel Movies and Nolan Batman films, I came back to comics in 2013 after 30 years away and the first comic I bought had Wolverine in it. So whilst I cant claim Wolverine is still my favourite character, I feel the loss of Wolverine at the moment. So why did Marvel kill him off? He was one of their most bankable and popular characters, not to mention in some ways one of the less far fetched ones. Just seeing the lack of posts on this forum right now makes me sad. So why Marvel, why?

Wolverine comics were in a slump, in terms of sales, because of the overexposure and almost-across-the-board bad writing that the charcter got, the last few years.

His sales weren't bad, he still sold more than many characters Marvel had been promoting heavily, but they were low for Wolverine.

So, Marvel decided to kill him for shock value, since that is easier than writing the character well, in good stories.