Why is Wolverine Canadian?

Wolverine is one of the most iconic characters of Marvel Comics. He has always been renowned amongst fans, however, it was Hugh Jackman’s version of the character that truly brought about an entire world’s worth of fans. Wolverine has a series of traits that make him unique, these include his adamantine claws and his iconic hairstyle.

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Hugh Jackman in the X-Men film series
What one might not take into consideration is that his nationality has a deeper meaning than most would give a second glance to. It would seem that there was a significant reason why the character was not from America.

Why Is Wolverine Not From America?

Wolverine’s nationality has always left many scratching their heads. Even though the character spends a significant amount of time, fighting and saving people in the United States and his creators are American, the character is from Alberta, Canada. The origin of the character has always made many wonder why his makers chose such a random place.
X-Men ’97
Len Wein, who was a co-creator of his, spoke on exactly this when giving an interview with TMT. Here, he revealed that the decision to make Wolverine, and for that matter, any character from different countries was because their comics did not have a huge audience in the United States.

“What really happened was, at that time X-Men Comics weren’t selling in The States, but was selling in a lot of other country’s, and the marketing people at Marvel decided, ‘Hey lets make the characters from all these different locations to help boost the sales.’”

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in the X-Men film series
As a way to sell more comics in certain regions outside their country, they decided to make relatable characters for those other countries. Wolverine being from Canada seemed to have boosted the sales of X-Men comics in the country.

Why Did Len Wein Make Wolverine From Canada?

Len Wein then went on to reveal why he specifically picked Canada for his character and not any other country. It would seem that although Marvel wanted a please their foreign readers, they did not specifically tell the comic book writers what country they should make their characters from. This meant that they, to some degree, had creative freedom to do as they pleased.

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Wolverine and Cyclops I Marvel Comics
Wein then mentioned that in the case of Wolverine, he threw a dart on a world map and let the beauty of randomness decide where he would be born.

“No reason in particular, I just threw a dart at the map in landed in Canada, I said fuck it, he’s from there” he went on, “The problem was, they didn’t tell us where they were selling, so we just made the different characters wolverine included from wherever we felt like.”

Although the comic book writer seemed to be joking when he said this, it may not be far from the truth as he did not further elaborate on where exactly he and the other creators of Wolverine got the idea to make him Canadian. The decision seemed to have worked in their favor and by default characters like Deadpool, who go hand in hand with the X-Men, also ended up being from the same country.