Would X-Men still be popular if Wolverine was never created?

yes, some one else (maybe Gambit) would of just took his place,during the start of there popularity nightcrawler was alot more popular then him, so they would of made it to the induction of such characters and been fine without him (it would of been different yes and maybe not better but they would still be here imo

I doubt it!Since Wolverine fan base is pretty high at this point X-Men will be still popular but not that popular when Wolverine was in it.Gambit should take is place.

I think that X-Men will still be popular if Wolverine was never created because other characters could easily take his place, most likely Gambit who was pretty popular when he was first introduced.

Wolverine became popular because of X-Men, not the other way around.

Agree.

But I think some of Wolverine's fan comes from his movie.

Agree with this also, although I think that Wolverine became even more popular when the movies came out.

if one more person says Gambit... so help me... grrrr

that character is awful

@rabbitearsblog: I know that Wolverine was a very popular character already at the time, but the films were involved in boosting its popularity. Without the movies, he wouldn't be as popular. In addition, Wolverine is a character that sells due to his name, especially for those who are new to Comics or X-Men.

my dream come true.

This is why I hate the movies, it gives people the false impression that wolverine is bigger than the X-men.

The X-men were around for quite a while without Wolverine.

This is totally true. In the 90's when I was a kid, Wolverine was my (and all my friends') favorite X-Man thanks to Jim Lee's run on X-Men. I think Wolverine became the most popular member at this point, and remained popular because of 90's kids, which in turn lead to him being the star of the films. The films have introduced new audiences to Wolverine and the X-Men, and have done the same thing for kids these days that Lee's X-Men did for me in 1991.

Also, Gambit is a punk.

Beast was always my favorite X-man, wish current writers would quit trying to make him look like a bitch tho.

I agree with this, sort of. He became popular from being in the X-men, but the X-men weren't popular themselves until after he joined, so, in that way, there's really no way to know that.

I'm not sure that that's accurate; it seems more likely that Wolverine has been given such central roles in the films and cartoons because he's the only character who's solo comics have sold consistently. Lots of X-men characters have had a chance at staring in their own book, but only Wolverine has been able to keep one (or more) going for the last 25 years. Which is way before there were any movies or cartoons.

The X-men were basically canceled by the early 70's, and didn't really gain popularity until he joined the team along with Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus. To be fair, the book in general was just a better book in this period than it had been previously (and would go on to be even better than that in the early 80's) but, consider also that between '75 and '95 X-men books he was in sold better than the ones he was not, and you do start to see a pattern emerge.

I do think that, by the 90's, even before the cartoon came out, the X-men could have supported themselves without him, as evidenced by his leaving the team after Fatal Attractions and the core X-men books still being be the most popular Marvel titles; but I think, given his consistent popularity through the X-men's reign as most popular comic, it's almost impossible to say one way or the other.

Could the X-men be as popular without him now? absolutely; but the popularity of both the X-men and Wolverine has historically been far to intrinsically interwoven to really ever say one could have become popular without the other.

@oldnightcrawler: But he wasn't the only reason why X-Men became popular.

oh, no, absolutely not. In fact, if you read the letters columns from when he first joined, it seemed he was as polarizing as Emma would be years later. Thing is, when he joined happened to be when the book as a whole came into it's own, which I think has as much to do with the creators working on it at the time as it does with the addition of all of the new characters (him, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus).

My point was just that, because of that, he became the breakout star, eventually surpassing the popularity of all the others to become (by the mid 80's) the most popular. Besides being the only one to be able to consistently support his own series, consider that Uncanny X-men remained Marvel's most popular book even when Cyclops, Nightcrawler, and Kitty (who was basically the main character during her tenure) left, and would remain so until X-men vol.2 came out and he left the book for that one.

Wolverine became popular by his own merits, it just helped him that those merits displayed in the top selling book of the 80s. That's how he became popular. He himself didn't make the X-men, the Claremont/Byrne stories got the book noticed and Claremont took it into the stratosphere. Wolvie was a big part of that (no doubt amongst the biggest), but wasn't the only factor. And even though he was the most popular character in the franchise the book during the Claremont era, Uncanny during those years started off as a Cyclops book and then transformed into a Storm book. Back then it was never a Wolverine focused franchise.

@polarity: Excellent observation polarity. Wolvie did not carry the X-Men books back then he was much akin to the icing on the cake but was not of the cake itself. Ah, story telling back then was not as convulted and trite as it is now. I miss the adventure of wondering what was going to happen next. Although I am liking ANXM for the most part. No HUGE mistakes just yet. They still need to reboot the marvel universe.

I woulld say that being in the X-Men helped elevate Wolverine to the place he is today and without the X-Men the character would not be as popular. Some people say that when the X-Men relaunched with Giant Sized X-Men #1 Wolverine was there and has been part of the greatest X-Men stories. True but the Wolverine character was not the reason for the X-Men success. It was more a case of the sum it it parts being greater then the whole.I do think X-Men would survive without Wolverine if it came to that. Hopefully if that happened the spotlight would be redirected to several characters Personally I would like Wolverine to be in X-Men or Avengers not both. I still think the character is being way overused and while there are some good stories being told overall there are far too many writers each trying to put their own little touch on the character resulting in a confused picture for the character.

Can I just point out 1 thing. Wolverine would be half as popular without the X-men.

Off topic-- I am still not even sure why he is as popular as he is. I feel Storm, Gambit, or Rogue should be more popular than he is, imo.

I honestly think all of these characters would be as popular as Wolverine (if not more) if they'd been given the same attention as he's received in the last twenty years.

without wolverine, the x-men would not be half as popular as they are. they just arent that interesting. as a team, they are meh and none of them can hold a book. not storm, not gambit, not beast. only good ongoing was mystique's. and as for gambit filling his role/place, no just NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Especially with Hugh Jackman become a big actor and such outside the Marvel films (The Prestige, Les Mis anyone?).

If Wolvie didnt exist, another character would have simply be written into place in Claremont's run, that would be as popular today, but with also as confusing of a history and origin story like Wolvie analogous to Marvel trying to cash in on Wolvie's popularity.

Thunderbird would probably be super popular right now. Wolverine is popular because of the X-Men and at first he was probably more unpopular than popular, but his personality type made for great interactions with other characters. Thunderbird was the basically the one tapped to get killed off because him and Wolverine were too similar, with their rough exteriors and constant attitude. So if Wolverine never existed Thunderbird would have never been killed and with time the character would have been fleshed out and a more sympathetic honorable aspect of the character would be presented and bless comic fans, because such characters (Wolverine included) actually require other characters to help develop and define their personalities and bless humans for the tendency to try and compartmentalize things into nice little categories like separating Wolverine from the X-Men when X-Men without Wolverine would be different and Wolverine without X-Men would be very different, in ways that are not only positive and negative nut just neutralsssss. Anyhow characters popularity reflects its audience, and audiences aren't always neutral nor good objective sources and as stated X-Men was already popular and would have been as popular for the most part just different. Depends on a bunch of other things.

I agree with this. It doesn't matter which character becomes popular, that character will be overexposed like Wolverine since Marvel would want to cash in on the success of that character. For example, if Gambit was the character who was extremely popular, then he would have shown up in every book to the point where his character gets mixed up and he might show up in situations he shouldn't show up in like Wolverine being with the Avengers (although I wouldn't mind if Wolverine joined the Avengers for a short while).

'Tis a shame, he's popular, because of his ever-changing demeanor/portrayal, he's lost quite a lot of fans and overall respect, even if his books manage to sell quite well.

I think Wolverine has been seriously overused: he's had his X-Men trilogy, his own movie with another on coming soon and a cameo in X-Men: First Class. If they reboot the franchise, I don't want to see Wolverine straight away just focus on the original X-Men.

Yes, it would still be popular without Wolverine. I'm even inclined to say that it could be better, since writers wouldn't waste some much time writing Wolverine into pretty much every Marvel book there is, there could be other characters to take the spotlight, and probably books that will focus in other characters as well.

Because let's be honest, how many Wolverine books are there? Savage Wolverine, Wolverine, WatXM, and then we have Uncanny Avengers were he appears, ANXM where he's always present, Age of Ultron ended up being Age of Wolverine... and the list goes on.

I'm just glad that Uncanny X-Men is free of Wolverine for now, and I hope the same happens with adjective-less X-Men.

Wolverine has been ruined for a long time now, he's meant to be the lone wolf bad ass that shows up unexpectedly and pulls everybody's ass out the fire, now he's this horrible mish/mash of ideas that don't even make sense. He should not be an Avenger, he should not be a head teacher, he should be a part time X-Man only.

@jonny_anonymous: Well said JA. Logan was best when he did NOT have a past and was second mate to Storm's captaincy.

The X-Men will still be popular.

I pretty much agree with this, but I do think one of the things I most liked about the old replacement era X-men was how Storm eventually started to regard Wolverine as very much her equal in terms of his sense of duty to the team.

Why are nearly all of your posts negative? Yeah I agree the X-Men wouldn't be quite as popular without Wolverine but they'd still be very popular.

I also liked it better when Wolverine was the lone wolf of the group with a mysterious past since at that time, his character wasn't all over the place like it is now.

When Claremont did his alternate universe X-men book, he killed off Wolverine early on and focused on more of the team than we have seen explored in years.

Oh yeah! I remembered reading about that! Killing off Wolverine in that series did allow for more development for the other characters.

@mynamewasdeleted: Butthurt alert.

Claremont said he was originally going to kill off Wolverine before he unceremoniously left the book and that's where this alternate universe spins off.....and the resulting X-Men: Forever was DREADFUL (in my humble opinion)

Axis of Abdomen Apologetics

X-Men (Marvel Comics) shines because of two of its main avatars:

1. Wolverine --- a titanium-blade knuckle-fisted hunter mutant who evil-doers fear for his strength and grit

2. Magneto --- a cunning radical mutant who can manipulate magnetic fields

Without Wolverine and Magneto, other important characters such as Mister Sinister, Professor Xavier, Jean Grey, etc., would not receive as much appropriate fanfare.

Magneto

They would still be popular, but maybe a bit less.

X-men without Wolverine are the X-men that still somehow release two Wolverine solos......

X-Men Without Wolverine It's like a Happy Meal without a toy.

Yes. But the X-men would be missing something without him.

@kcomicfan: Yeah they'd be missing lameness.

Ba Zinga!

Seriously he was popular based on the X men's popularity some one else would have jumped up and took his glory and wolverine would just be that weird looking guy from a really old issue of the Hulk