No one in Marvel Comics is more connected with Weapon X than Wolverine. While Wolverine was born a mutant, it was Weapon X that turned him into an actual weapon, putting the adamantium skeleton into his body and then using him in its black-ops mutant experimentation program. Weapon X itself has a long history, and it was the descendant of an early program called Project Rebirth, which created Captain America. That caused the Weapon Plus Program to start operations, with scientists attempting to replicate the Super Soldier Serum, and that moved on to become the Weapon X program over time, as it was the 10th iteration of the Weapon Plus Program.
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While all the programs created superhumans through often dangerous and immoral subject testing, it was the Weapon X program that delivered the most weapons to the Marvel Universe. Wolverine is the most famous, but he isn’t the only one, and some of the other test subjects who survived came out even worse than the X-Men’s most popular character.
5) Wild Child
It is easy to see Wild Child as a more feral version of Wolverine. Wild Child is Kyle Gibney, a mutant created by John Byrne who first cameoed in Alpha Flight #1 (1983) and made his first full appearance in Alpha Flight #11. Wild Child’s mutant powers include superhuman senses, speed, agility, and reflexes. Wild Child also has razor-sharp retractable claws and fangs, and a regenerative healing factor, although it is not as powerful as that of Wolverine or Sabretooth. He also has extensive hand-to-hand combat and acrobatics training.
Kyle was a homeless teenager who was abandoned by his family because he was a mutant. The Hydra group called Secret Empire captured him and injected him with DNA from the assassin Wyre, which left him almost mindless and animalistic. Canada’s Department H, which is closely connected to Weapon X, took control of him before he ended up in the actual Weapon X program later, recruiting new mutants for the program’s Camp Neverland facility. Wild Child has been a member of several teams, including Alpha Flight, X-Factor, and the Hellions, a team he served on while living in Krakoa.
4) Lady Deathstrike
Lady Deathstrike didn’t get her powers originally from Weapon X. Instead, she is Yuriko Oyama, the daughter of Lord Dark Wind, the man who was said to have developed the metal-bonding process that gave Wolverine his adamantium skeleton. She made her debut appearance in Daredevil #197 (1983) by Denny O’Neil and William Johnson. She made her first appearance as Lady Deathstrike in Alpha Flight#33 (1986) by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema and took her full cyborg form in Uncanny X-Men#205 (1986) by Chris Claremont and Barry Windsor-Smith.
While her original connection to Weapon X was the organization stealing her father’s work and using it on Wolverine and others, she was also later captured by the Weapon X program years later when Reverend William Stryker was running it. The group then experimented on her and dissected her over and over again before finally stealing her DNA to create more cyborgs to kill mutants. It took a rescue team of Amadeus Cho, Old Man Logan, Sabretooth, and Domino to liberate her and other test subjects, although it was too late to stop Weapon X from creating a new weapon known as Weapon H.
3) Maverick
Maverick is a mutant named Christoph Nord, although he also went by the name David North. He debuted in X-Men #5 (1991) by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee as a mutant with the ability to absorb kinetic energy from impacts and redirect it into his own strikes. He later gained an artificial, Weapon X-derived healing factor derived from Wolverine’s DNA. This came thanks to his role in the CIA’s black-ops Team X program in the 1960s. In some stories, he also has a corrosive touch designed to counteract other mutants’ healing factors, given to him in a later Weapon X procedure.
He wasn’t finished with Weapon X when the organization captured him years later and threatened to let him die after a Sabretooth attack if he didn’t rejoin the program for more experimentation. He ended up genetically upgraded into an operative known as Agent Zero, with a near-invisible vibranium suit. He was then sent to kill Wolverine, but he purposefully failed in that task. He ended up working later with Wolverine and Fantomex to battle against Weapon X’s shadowy founder, John Sublime. A version of Maverick also appeared in the 2009 movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine, played by Daniel Henney.
2) Deadpool
Next to Wolverine, Deadpool is the most famous Marvel Comics superhero who was a surviving test subject of the Weapon X program. Deadpool debuted in The New Mutants#98 (1990) by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld. In the comics, he was a Canadian mercenary dying of terminal cancer who volunteered for a Weapon X-linked black-ops facility called “the Hospice,” run by scientist Dr. Emrys Killebrew. This doctor was permitted to test any procedure he wanted on subjects as long as failures were eventually terminated. However, Wade Wilson endured levels of pain and torture that killed other subjects.
This is because, before being sent to Dr. Killebrew, Department K in Canada grafted an artificial healing factor derived from Wolverine’s DNA onto Wilson’s cancer-ridden cells. It cured the cancer, but it left Wilson permanently scarred and mentally unstable. Deadpool then escaped the facility by shooting Killebrew’s sadistic assistant, Francis, who later returned to become the villain Ajax, the same as in the first Deadpoolmovie. Since his debut, Deadpool went from villain to antihero to hero and is one of the most popular Marvel characters in comics and the movies.
1) Sabretooth
Wolverine is the most popular Marvel character to survive a life as a subject undergoing experimental testing at Weapon X. Sabretooth is easily Wolverine’s deadliest villain. However, he also had a stint as a test subject of Weapon X, and he came out of it alive and with an intense hatred of the organization as well. Sabretooth debuted in Iron Fist #14 (1977) by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. He was part of a 1960s CIA black-ops squad called Team X, along with Wolverine, Maverick, Silver Fox, Mastodon, and Wraith.
Of course, Team X ended up being folded into the modern Weapon X program, where Sabretooth was subjected to memory tampering by the psychic mutant Aldo Ferro. In later stories, it was also revealed that Weapon X coated his skeleton in adamantium, and his superhuman strength and healing factor were also genetically boosted further. There were further connections between Sabretooth, Wolverine, and Weapon X, as the villain Romulus took genetic material from both Wolverine and Sabretooth and bonded adamantium to his own skeleton. Sabretooth has fought alongside his blood enemy Wolverine more than once to fight Weapon X and stop their continued testing on mutants.
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