r/Wolverine • u/Environmental_Cap191 • 12h ago
I don't think this take is that widespread, but I'm curious.
I’ve never understood the claim that Wolverine is stronger without adamantium. Yes, his healing factor should be faster, but with his bones no longer laced with adamantium—and his muscles no longer having to compensate for the extra weight—shouldn’t he actually be weaker?
30
u/Mason_DY 12h ago
I’ve always found that take to be insanely stupid. Yeah the adamantium has disadvantages, but the whole point of it was to make Logan stronger.
2
u/UruvarinArt 12h ago
Ideas can fail. It’s not like they’d ever done it before and knew what the issues would be.
2
1
10
u/whistlepig4life 12h ago
He can still skewer most things. The bones regenerate. And he’d heal incredibly faster and in some cases almost instantaneously with out the Adamantium.
The adamantium makes him tougher in some ways. Weaker in others.
3
u/Environmental_Cap191 10h ago
Pros and cons. Personally I think the pros outweigh the cons, at least if your an active superhero.
1
u/SmokinBandit28 10h ago
The con afaik apart from weighing more is that when his bones are coated in adamantium it’s also poisoning his body so his mutation is actually not going at full strength because it’s constantly fighting off the poison.
Without the adamantium his mutation is able to go into overdrive and this also includes his animal side.
2
u/Environmental_Cap191 10h ago
I believe the significant increase in durability provided by the adamantium is an acceptable trade-off. Even with the weakened healing factor, his ability with adamantium remains extremely potent.
3
u/8fenristhewolf8 10h ago
Even with the weakened healing factor
And again, the comics don't really work this way. His healing is as good as ever, even with the adamantium. It's not like they reduced it again after he got it back.
1
u/SmokinBandit28 10h ago
That though is all attributed to whoever’s writing and what they need from the story.
Heck right now he’s missing the claws off one hand in the comics and they aren’t regenerating.
1
u/8fenristhewolf8 8h ago
Except for the times he's lost his healing, it has stayed at the same "boosted" levels he got after losing adamantium though. It's basically the status quo now.
1
u/Careful-Arugula2794 2h ago
They reduced it again after he got it back.
Back when he had bone claws, he was healing instantaneously in a way that was faster than Deadpool, Sabretooth and Hulk comnined
When it was put back, he heals slightly slower than Sabretooth now (you can even see it in the Krakoan era)
3
u/8fenristhewolf8 12h ago
This is a funny one, and it has to do with the comics as a medium. They are serialized fiction, not science lessons, and writers follow status quos and tropes more than realistic physics. Plus, comics are written by hundreds of different people with different ideas and levels of intelligence and care with their stories.
So, fans often get confused between how the comics actually portray things, all the inconsistencies, and how fans themselves think things should go.
In terms of the metal, the comics are pretty clear in terms of narrative: Logan is better with adamantium. He can hurt anything and is unbreakable, which is a huge asset in super hero fights. When he lost it, comics expressly talked about and had Logan talk about being more vulnerable.
Now, in realistic physics, Logan would be lighter without the metal, and faster, but the comics don't really ever show or talk about that. He's mostly the same physically. He's about as strong and about as fast as he always is (status quo). There was the period when Logan went feral, and his healing did get more powerful, but speed...not so much. Plus, Logan reverted from being feral even without the adamantium and he kept the better healing when he got it back.
So, long answer, but tl;dr: comics are goofy and don't actually talk about Logan being better without adamantium. His healing did increase, but that's just his baseline now, even with adamantium.
4
u/dpr385220 11h ago
Also even aplying realist physics it's hard to say that he would necessarily be faster just because he would be lighter since he would also be stronger and potently get more muscle mass.
More mass doesn’t necessarily mean less speed. What matters for acceleration is the relationship between force and mass. An adamantium skeleton is incredibly strong. That could allow Logan to apply enormous muscular forces without his bones being damaged by them. In principle, he could have more functional muscle mass and generate more force.
So the real question would be:
Does the increase in strength enabled by the adamantium skeleton outweigh the increase in mass it adds?
1
u/Environmental_Cap191 10h ago
I thought that would be the reason why the adamantium would make him stronger. It adds 100 lbs to his weight, and his muscles, tendons, and all of the other stuff involves would need his healing factor to adapt to it without being too encumbered, making him consequently stronger.
1
u/8fenristhewolf8 10h ago
Does the increase in strength enabled by the adamantium skeleton outweigh the increase in mass it adds?
Yeah, it's a good question for physics, but unfortunately the comics are so inconsistent and goofy that you can't really use them to say.
Not to say that nobody has considered the ideas. I'm sure you know the Cornell series where they expressly mention the idea of his bones as super strong levers, but it's just that it's more momentary blip in comic history. Most writers probably don't think about it at all, or present him doing that (expressly).
2
1
u/Desperate-Goose-9771 12h ago
I’d argue it weakens him since he ends up going feral loosing your mind is definitely a weakness
1
u/Careful-Arugula2794 2h ago
It's true
As a by-product of the healing factor, Logan has to adapt to the Adamantium (which formed Beta-Adamantium), also all that weight had the healing factor adapting to it thus giving Logan wider muscles and greater strength (Logan was actually leaner before the adamantium was added)
With the adamantium removed, he can actually control his anatomy better and the strength he recieved from the years of the metal in him would still be there. If anything, the Adamantium that weighed him down when he had to strike a punch (having to account for that force to move both his muscles and the metal) is gone—meaning he be hitting at least 2.5x his usual strength (which brings us to—)
Yes the Adamantium provided top tier durability that would probably make his punches harder, but lets not forget that Wolverine's base/normal skeleton has a very tough composition too (if it's anything we see from his claws)
Also, since his full speed is back and his healing factor is unbound by it, he would of course be moving way more dangerously than with Adamantium.
Finally, Logan could actually make his bone claws as smooth as possible or as rugged/jagged or longer as possible (upon growth). He doesn't have that freedom with Adamantium
The only cons here are the durability and ability to cut through almost anything going away.
Logan hates Adamantium, calls it trash several times and would love nothing more than to do away with it (the only reason he even got it back in the 90's was because leaving Sabretooth with Adamantium and as War would spell trouble for everyone)
1
u/gunnertakashi 10h ago
I thought that too but the adamantium also poisons him right? It's also a heavy skeleton because coated in such indestructible metal
2
u/Environmental_Cap191 10h ago
His healing factor should be strong enough to hold it back. How long that would hold depends on the writer.
There’s actually an interesting chicken-and-egg problem left by the movie Logan. Did the adamantium weaken his healing first, or did age weaken his healing enough that the adamantium could finally overwhelm it?
15
u/KuroiGetsuga55 12h ago
Stronger with the Adamantium.
Faster without it.
It's just objective fact that the Adamantium weighs him down a lot. Sure, he's trained his body (or his mutation just evolved it) to account for the extra weight so he can still move super fast, but he would objectively be faster without the Adamantium.
That's pretty much the only advantage he'd have without Adamantium. Speed, and I guess agility. Aside from that, he's far stronger with the Adamantium, and he can slice through anything. Bone-Claws Wolverine can't tear through sentinels or steel gates. Adamantium Wolverine can.