For a rare metal, adamantium sure does show up a lot in the Marvel Universe. Whether it’s making a body for Ultron, coating Wolverine to “kill” him or being made into a giant chair for the Hulk by a spendthrift bird-themed billionaire, adamantium has many purposes. But mostly, it seems to make mutants and other super people deadlier.
The newest adamantium-laced menace is Solem, Wolverine’s new Arrako-based foe in “X of Swords,” who has adamantium skin. Of course, this makes him the latest in a line of foes who have done the dark-mirror thing with Logan and his miracle metal. So today, we’re going to look at four Marvel villains who have a little adamantium in them. Spoiler: They’re not all Wolverine villains.
Cyber
Solem isn’t the first foe of Wolverine with adamantium skin. No, that would be Cyber, a creation of Peter David and Sam Kieth from “Marvel Comics Presents” #85, back when that title was the de facto second Wolverine title. Cyber was created with a pretty simple concept: What if there was a guy Wolverine was afraid of?
The first Cyber story was set in Madripoor and had Cyber as the enforcer for a drug cartel that was trying to make headway against the city’s administration headed by Wolverine’s ally, Tyger Tyger. Wolverine, who was already afraid of Cyber, was doused with hallucinogens and spent a good part of the story tripping out of his mind, which played to Kieth’s strength as a surrealist artist. In the end, Wolverine overcame his fear, knocked Cyber into his own hallucinogens and emerged victorious.
Cyber would pop up a couple more times, fighting X-Factor and again fighting Wolverine, until he was killed and the adamantium stripped from his skin. Through his low-level psychic powers, he is able to exist in an astral form and becomes a body-hopping villain, claiming a body and having it go through the adamantium bonding process again in “Wolverine: Origins,” while also revealing he was one of Daken’s trainers. After that body is killed, he takes the identity of Hornet, one of the Slingers, and fights the Scarlet Spider because … reasons.
By the way, you know how I just mentioned that Cyber has been killed twice? The best part about this character, hands down, is that he just keeps dying in these over-the-top, grotesque ways, and keeps being killed by other villains for his adamantium. The second death was at the hands of Ogun, the demonic foe of Wolverine, who dunked him in an acid bath and then tried to sell the adamantium to Dr. Cornelius, the beardy scientist from Weapon X.
But the first death? That one’s a classic. Cyber gets broken out of S.H.I.E.L.D. custody by the second generation of Dark Riders, the ones who served Genesis. Not Evan Sabah Nur Genesis, but Cable’s bratty son Tyler Genesis. They bring him to Tyler, who wants Cyber’s adamantium so he can rebond it to Wolverine’s skeleton. To get rid of all the fleshy parts, he releases flesh-eating mutant deathwatch beetles, who eat his non-adamantium bits, starting with his face. I’m pretty sure Itchy did something like that to Scratchy in an episode of “The Simpsons” I saw last week.
Lady Deathstrike
Lady Deathstrike is one of Wolverine’s more visually arresting villains, with her armor, helmet and long finger talons. And the fact that those talons, and her skeleton, are bonded with adamantium makes perfect sense, because she’s fighting the man most associated with it, and her origins are so tied to it. But while she is best known for being a Wolverine enemy, her earliest appearances were not in Wolverine stories at all.
Deathstrike first appeared in “Daredevil” #197, created by Denny O’Neil and Larry Hama, when she was just Yuriko Oyama, daughter of Japanese crime lord Lord Dark Wind, who wasn’t just a crime lord, but an evil scientist, the one who developed the adamantium bonding process the Weapon X program stole. Yuriko aided Daredevil to help him find Dark Wind (reasons for that later), and to both free her lover from her father’s service and get revenge on him. While she did kill Dark Wind, her lover took his own life out of an honor pact with Dark Wind, and Yuriko broke.
Now devoted to her father’s legacy, Yuriko sought out those who had dishonored him by stealing the adamantium bonding process and those who had benefited from it, leading her directly to Wolverine, although she was defeated by him and Alpha Flight. After that defeat, she went to the Body Shoppe, the den of the Mojoverse’s Spiral, and had her body altered, getting adamantium attached to her and her signature adamantium finger talons. Initially working with the three Hellfire Club guards Wolverine maimed during “The Dark Phoenix Saga” to hunt their enemy, she then became field leader of the cybernetic Reavers before they were all killed. Don’t worry, they got better.
Deathstrike has gone through multiple bodies, and now can upload her consciousness into the internet and download it into new ones. Each of these are eventually modified to include something akin to her previous adamantium-clawed hands.
Bullseye
The name on this list casual fans are probably the most likely to be surprised by, the assassin Bullseye is one of the archenemies of Daredevil. An assassin who never misses, Bullseye is a cold-blooded killer and often portrayed as mentally unstable. He often serves as the personal assassin to Daredevil’s other greatest foe, Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime.
After Bullseye killed Elektra, his competition for Kingpin’s assassin and Daredevil’s ex, Daredevil left Bullseye with a broken back. Paralyzed, Bullseye was out of the game … until Lord Dark Wind stepped in. See, I told you we’d get back to him.
Taking Bullseye back to his secret island, Dark Wind bonded adamantium to Bullseye’s spine, with the assumption that, having restored his mobility, Bullseye would be bound to serve as his personal assassin. Unfortunately, Dark Wind overestimated Bullseye’s sense of duty: Bullseye still insisted on being paid for his services, and so Bullseye just left and went back to New York to get his old job with Kingpin back. This is what led Daredevil to work with Yuriko to hunt down her father, and to Dark Wind’s demise.
Sabretooth
Wait, newcomers or those familiar with the X-Men from animation and movies will say, Sabretooth might be Wolverine’s archenemy, and he may have claws, but they’re not adamantium claws. And you’d be right for most of Wolverine and Sabretooth’s history, but it hasn’t always been this way.
Victor Creed is the archest of Wolverine’s enemies. They have worked together at times, as in Team X, have both been subject to the experiments and mind alteration of the Weapon X program, and have mostly been the bitterest of foes. Creed is Logan with all the noble samurai bits stripped away: a bestial and unrepentant killer.
When legendary X-writer Chris Claremont dipped his toe back into the X-universe after leaving the first time, but before his grand return in “X-Men” #100, he came back to write an arc on another title he started, “Wolverine.” Issue #125 saw many of Logan’s friends and foes return, and among them was Sabretooth. This was after Wolverine lost his adamantium, and as he was recovering from his bestial devolution — you know, the time he lost that most civilized of traits, his nose. When Sabretooth attacked again, it was revealed he had adamantium bound to his skeleton like Wolverine had.
It was never explained exactly how and where Sanretooth got the adamantium, and the point was soon made moot. Shortly after this story started, Wolverine was taken by Apocalypse and made into his new Horseman of Death, and when the background of that revelation came out in issue #145, it was revealed Apocalypse had pitted Wolverine and Sabretooth against each other in a battle for the honor of being the new Death. When Wolverine won, Apocalypse stripped the adamantium from Creed’s skeleton and bonded it to Wolverine’s.
When he was recruited by the new Weapon X project, Sabretooth once again had his skeleton bonded with adamantium. Theoretically, he is still laced with adamantium to this day, but it is rarely addressed, and since he was sucked into the bowels of Krakoa, it hardly matters at the moment.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
