WOLVERINE

The celebrated first meeting between Logan and Steve Rogers carried an agenda neither Avenger learned about for more than sixty years. The five-part “Our War” storyline in Wolverine Origins Vol. 1 #16–20 (2007–2008), by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon, revealed that during the Second World War Logan was working as an operative for the fixer Seraph — who was herself serving the shadowy manipulator Romulus. Logan's assignment placed him at Captain America's side with orders to exploit the young hero's confidence.

The orders, spelled out in Seraph's briefing, ran in sequence: get close to Rogers, judge whether he could be turned, and failing that, uncover whether the experiment that created him could be replicated. Failing everything, Logan was to kill Captain America outright. Instead, the Canadian spent the mission fighting beside Cap, Bucky Barnes and a young Nick Fury against Baron von Strucker's forces — while Bucky, smelling a rat nobody else could, pulled a gun on Logan the first time the two were left alone and had to be choked out in a sleeper hold for his trouble.

Logan never carried out the final order. Watching Rogers lead gave the drifting mercenary his first close look at a man who fought for something other than pay or orders, and the memory stayed buried under decades of brainwashing, Weapon X tampering and erased years. Only after the House of M restored his full memory — and after Captain America's death in the aftermath of the first Civil War — did Logan finally revisit that first meeting whole, and understand how close the friendship had come to starting with an assassination.