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- Weapon X: Memory Implants
Mark
Texeira, Wolverine #68.
©
and ™ by Marvel Characters, Inc.
Wolverine
#129 (Oct 1998) – “Whatever It Takes…”
Writer:
Todd Dezago; Penciler: Leinil Francis Yu; Inker: Edgar Tadeo
Wolverine vaguely remembers his experiences at Experiment
X. “Usin' all sorts o' medication an' mind-control, they went
lookin' fer my feral side, strippin' away every bit of the man
I was, leavin' nothin' left but the animal inside, primal, savage.
While I was in a state o' constant bloodlust, they studied me,
tested me, tried t'find a way t' control me an' make me inta
their perfect livin' weapon.” This brainwashing seems to have
included rearchitecting past memories in order to create a new
personality capable on being controlled.
…Experiment X begins to implant false memories in Logan
, overlaying and
altering the previous set of false memories implanted during
his time with Team X in order to transform him into the perfect
killing machine.
Wolverine
#48 (Nov 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase One”
Writer:
Larry Hama; Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green
As Logan
walks through
the Alberta ,
Canada
location of Experiment X, he spontaneously remembers a false
and implanted memory of an espionage mission on his birthday.
It is in Windsor,
Canada
during the 1960s and Logan
, codenamed Wolverine,
leads an assault on a group of revolutionaries with Creed, codenamed
Sabretooth. As a firefight erupts, both Logan
and Creed go down
with multiple gunshots wounds as another agent, Mastodon, joins
the fray. Logan
finally kills
the leader who looks exactly like the Professor from Experiment
X and confronts another revolutionary who is a dead ringer for
Silver Fox.
Wolverine
#49 (Dec 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase 2”
Writer:
Larry Hama; Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green &
Barta
Professor Xavier and Jean Grey mind-probe Logan
's memories to assist him
remembering his past. In a flash, Logan
remembers being with Sabretooth
and Mastodon in Windsor
for an op. Sabretooth is
slapping around the revolutionary who resembles Silver Fox after
a firefight, but Logan
convinces him to stop. It seems the gunshots wounds they took
were stopped by bulletproof vests. When Logan
asks the revolutionary
if she remembers him, she goes along until she can grab his
gun. When she tries to shoot Logan
, she finds the gun empty
and confesses she has no idea what he is talking about.
Wolverine
#50 (Jan 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase 3”
Writer:
Larry Hama; Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green with
Hilary Barta and Tom Palmer
Logan
discovers a warehouse in Windsor
, Ontario
, used by Experiment
X to alter memories. Specifically, he finds a movie-style set
of the location where he, Sabretooth and Mastodon fought the
revolutionary who looked like Silver Fox. This would suggest
that these events never happened and where created to sow doubt
into Logan's
memories. Based on comments by the Professor, it seems that
Wolverine, Sabretooth, Silver Fox and Mastodon all had their
memories altered at these facilities. The plan was to reinsert
the subjects into society without knowledge of their past lives,
using a lethal robot named Shiva as a failsafe should the subjects
go rogue.
Sabretooth
#2 (Sept 1993) – “A Kiss Before Dying”
Writer: Larry Hama;
Artist: Mark Texeira
Mystique tells Sabretooth that he went into a secret
program and had memory blocks put in along with Logan who was
in the same program.
Wolverine
#63 (Nov 1992) – “Bastions of Glory”
Scripter:
Larry Hama; Artist: Mark Texeira
Aldo Ferro gives Wolverine a memory jolt so he
can remember a time during Experiment X when he used his psi-talents
to control Logan in front of the Professor, Cornelius and Hines.
Instead of using movie-style sets to create false memories,
Ferro proposed using his psychic abilities to more cheaply and
effectively alter the memories of the Weapon X subjects. In
other words, the Windsor sets that Wolverine comes across were
used to create one layer of implanted memories when Logan and
Sabretooth first joined the CIA, and a second layer during Experiment
X before Aldo Ferro upgraded the program with his psi-talents.
Carol Hines argued that it was Aldo Ferro who came up with the
idea of tying false memories to pain receptors because he was
a sadist who wanted to live forever.
Wolverine
#64 (Dec 1992) – “What Goes Around…”
Scripter:
Larry Hama; Penciller: Mark Pacella; Inker: Dan Panosian
Aldo Ferro reveals to Wolverine that he was promised
the same age-suppression factor that all the Weapon X subjects
received, but the Professor cheated him.
Wolverine
#63 (Nov 1992) – “Bastions of Glory”
Scripter:
Larry Hama; Artist: Mark Texeira
Aldo Ferro claims that Logan was a special case in the
way that his tissue regenerated suggesting that Logan's healing
ability was a natural mutation instead of an acquired ability
like the rest of the subjects.
Wolverine
#64 (Dec 1992) – “What Goes Around…”
Scripter:
Larry Hama; Penciller: Mark Pacella; Inker: Dan Panosian
Aldo Ferro speculates that the root of the age-suppression
factor in the Weapon X subjects is from the adrenaline generated
from the physical trauma of the suppressed memories.
Wolverine
#76 (Dec 1993) – “Northern Dreams”
Scripter:
Larry Hama; Penciler: Tomm Coker; Inker: Al Milgrom
Heather McDonald, accessing the Canadian Government Computer
Database for Logan,
confirms that Aldo Ferro was employed by the Canadian government,
earning large sums of money for research grants.
Wolverine
#92 (Aug 1995) – “A Northern Exposure”
Writer:
Larry Hama; Penciler: Adam Kubert; Inker: Dan Green
James and Heather Hudson, Dr. Hank McCoy, and Professor
Charles Xavier compare biological information from Logan
to that of Sabretooth
and find amazing similarities along the lines of blood sugar
graphs and “anomalies in the neural configuration comparison.”
This would suggest that they were both genetically architected
during Experiment X along the same procedures and experiments.
Wolverine
#68 (Apr 1993) – “Epsilon Red”
Scripter:
Larry Hama; Artist: Mark Texeira; Backgrounds: Steve Biasi
Epsilon Red, as a psi-talent, explains to
Wolverine that his memories have been tampered with. “I have
taken a stroll through the corridors of your mind… Your mind
is clogged with false memory implants and total blocks. There
are implants on top of implants and so much memory tampering
that there is now permanent scarring and intermittent firing
of synapses.” Epsilon Red further confirms that there are memories
that have been erased that are no longer retrievable and some
memory blocks were created by Logan
's subconscious
to prevent him from going insane. After attempting to remove
all the memory blocks for Wolverine, Epsilon Red comments, “There
are blocks that are immovable and impervious to the cleansing.”
Wolverine
#60 (Early Sept 1992) – “Counting Coup”
Scripter:
Larry Hama; Penciler: Dave Hoover; Inker: Keith Williams
When attacked by Shiva, Sabretooth receives a painful
memory backlash when he disciplined his son, a teenage Logan,
for dating a young Blackfoot squaw. Considering the youthful
appearance of Logan
and the genetic
evidence that proves Sabretooth is not Logan
's father, we can
safely assume that this was Sabretooth's primary false memory
implant.
…Part of Logan's
memory alteration while at Experiment X is centered on Silver
Fox. Some 50 years earlier, Sabretooth murdered the first Silver
Fox on Logan 's
birthday. Upon joining Team X in the late 1950s, Logan and Sabretooth
are brainwashed to believe that Sabretooth did not kill Silver
Fox by employing an impersonator (the second Silver Fox) who
comes to believe that she is the first Silver Fox. During Experiment
X, Sabretooth and Logan endure another layer of implants that
restores the original sequence of events, Sabretooth killed
Silver Fox…
Wolverine
#62 (Oct 1992) – “ Reunion
”
Scripter:
Larry Hama; Artist: Mark Texeira
Both Wolverine and Sabretooth believed, based on memory
implants, that the second Silver Fox had been murdered by Sabretooth
on Logan's
birthday. It was through the Windsor
movie sets and
Aldo Ferro's psi-talents that memories mimicking actual events
(Silver Fox is murdered by Sabretooth) were layered over false
memories (Silver Fox was not killed).
Wolverine
#50 (Jan 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase 3”
Writer:
Larry Hama; Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green with
Hilary Barta and Tom Palmer
Logan
discovers the warehouse in Windsor
,
Ontario
used by Experiment X to alter memories. Specifically, he finds
the movie-style set of the location where he and Sabretooth
fought after the murder of Silver Fox. This set was used twice.
Once to show Silver Fox was alive, and a second time to show
that she was murdered by Sabretooth.
Wolverine
#64 (Dec 1992) – “What Goes Around…”
Scripter:
Larry Hama; Penciller: Mark Pacella; Inker: Dan Panosian
Aldo Ferro reveals to Wolverine that the memory of being
in the cabin with Silver Fox was real. Wolverine specifically
remembers Silver Fox preparing the cabin for his birthday and
telling him to return in one hour. He further reveals to Wolverine
that the trauma he built on to simulate Silver Fox's death was
that Sabretooth had made a pass at her and she knocked out one
of his teeth. In other words, it was Aldo Ferro who unwittingly
recreated the original events of Silver Fox's death by implanting
a new memory over an older memory implant.
Wolverine
#50 (Jan 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase 3”
Writer:
Larry Hama; Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green with
Hilary Barta and Tom Palmer
Silver Fox's implanted memory from this period is shown
to take place at a high school prom, where Logan
is beaten up for taking an Indian to the dance. Logan
then tells her that he no longer wants to see her. While Silver
Fox fights against that memory, it is interesting to note that
such a modern memory implant would only be appropriate if she
were not the original Silver Fox. She still has a specific memory
of living in the cabin with Logan,
a memory leakage from the initial set of implants created during
the “Team X” sequence of events.
Silver Fox seemingly escapes from the Weapon X program
at this time and sets markers in the NSA computers on October
5, 1972 to track anyone accessing files on Logan.
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