Summary

• The Punisher manages to beat Wolverine's healing factor by stabbing him in the neck and electrocuting him, preventing his cells from regenerating.
• Deadpool kills Wolverine by using a sword made from carbonadium that slows down his healing factor, stabbing him and nullifying his regeneration.
• X-23 temporarily defeats Wolverine's healing factor by hacking and slashing at him and adding dirt to his wounds, preventing his skin from repairing itself.

Wolverine’s healing factor hasn’t been able to save him.

While most enemies don’t have the strength, skills, or intelligence to do so, there are some who have managed to get around Wolverine’s healing factor and take the X-Men hero down. Here are the Top 12 Marvel characters who officially beat (or could beat) Wolverine’s healing factor.

12 The Punisher

Frank Castle aka the Punisher has never met someone he couldn’t kill, and the character proves as much in the storyline Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe by Garth Ennis and Doug Braithwaite. While literally everyone is on the Punisher’s hit-list, it was clear from the start that Wolverine would be one of the hardest to take down - though not impossible. The Punisher beat Wolverine’s healing factor by stabbing him in the neck to throw him off-guard, and then tossing him into a maximum voltage generator. The subsequent electrocution is so devastating, that Logan’s cells don’t have the chance to regenerate, killing him permanently.

11 Deadpool

Like the Punisher, Deadpool also decided to kill the entire Marvel Universe during one of his off-shoot storylines. In Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe by Cullen Bunn and Kaare Andrews, the fact that Deadpool knows he’s a fictional character causes him to become a deranged mass murderer, killing everyone in Marvel Comics because he’s ‘saving’ them from the eternal torment of their fictitious lives. Naturally, that included Wolverine. Deadpool killed Wolverine with a sword that’s made from carbonadium, which has the ability to slow Wolverine’s healing factor exponentially. Deadpool stabbed Wolverine with this sword, nullifying his healing factor and killing him in mere moments.

10 Ultimate Mad Thinker

In Ultimate X-Men/Fantastic Four #1 by Mike Carey and Pasqual Ferry, Wolverine goes toe-to-toe with the Ultimate Universe’s version of the Mad Thinker aka Rhona Burchill. If fans thought Earth-616’s evil genius was bad, they haven’t experienced the true sinister brilliance of Earth-1610’s. With the power to come up with maniacal plots in a fraction of a second, it didn’t take long for the Mad Thinker to figure out how to take Wolverine down. Rhona created a retrovirus that weakened Wolverine’s healing factor by attacking his cells every 12 seconds, making Wolverine easy to defeat, as his body couldn’t repair any damage to it at that rate.

9 X-23

While Laura Kinney has now taken up the moniker of Wolverine herself, there was a time when she was little more than a living weapon known only as X-23 - and one of her targets was Logan. In X-23: Target X #6 by Christopher Yost, Craig Kyle, and Mike Choi, Laura is stalking Wolverine with the intent to kill him. When the two of them finally fight, X-23 hacks and slashes at Wolverine with her claws, and she shoves handfuls of dirt into every bloody opening she makes in his skin. By adding dirt to the open wounds, X-23 kept Wolverine’s skin from repairing itself. This was a temporary measure that had to be repeated over and over again along with increasingly brutal attacks to have any kind of lasting impact. Though no matter how simple and short-lived it was, X-23 pulled off what few people have and actually beat Wolverine’s healing factor.

8 Hulk

X-23 and the Mad Thinker used their heads to beat Wolverine’s healing factor, whereas Hulk simply used his world-destroying strength. In World War Hulk: X-Men by Christos N. Gage and Andrea Di Vito, the Worldbreaker Hulk is fighting every member of the X-Men to get to Professor X, as he’s in the middle of exacting vengeance upon the Illuminati for sending him off-world, and then allegedly killing the family he found. However, the X-Men weren’t going to let that happen, especially Logan. Unfortunately, this version of the Hulk was much more focused and intelligent than other ‘Hulk’ persona’s within Banner’s fractured psyche, and he knew exactly where to strike Wolverine to render his healing factor utterly useless. By repeatedly punching him square in the head, Hulk was causing Wolverine's brain to rattle around in his skull and smash into the adamantium that coated it. After a few hits, Wolverine was down for the count, with a level of brain damage that even he needed an extensive amount of time to recover from.

7 Ultron

Ultron is a villain with near-limitless potential in of how deadly he can be, and in one What If…? story, he proves it on Wolverine. In the What If? Astonishing X-Men #1 story titled “What If Danger Became A Bride Of Ultron?” by Matteo Casali and Mike Getty, Ultron weaponizes a device that’s been underutilized in the main Marvel canon for decades: the Encephalo-Beam. This weapon allows Ultron to enter the minds of his victims. Ultron can use it to control people, wipe their memories, or just melt their brains. When he used it against Wolverine, Ultron reduced Wolverine’s brain to mush in a matter of seconds, giving Logan’s healing factor no time to even what was happening, let alone do anything to prevent it.

6 Blink

In the Age of Apocalypse timeline (primarily featured in the Astonishing X-Men tie-in miniseries by Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira), Blink is a mutant member of what became of the X-Men, using her power to create portals to combat En Sabah Nur and fight his planet-destroying agenda. The furthest location Blink has canonically been able to create a portal to is the moon, meaning she could easily open up a portal underneath Wolverine’s feat and teleport him to any area of space in between Earth and the moon and leave him to die in the vacuum. While the two have never fought, Blink’s abilities makes her one of the greatest threats to Logan should he ever find himself on her bad side, as she can end him in the blink of an eye in a way that makes his healing factor totally irrelevant.

5 “Death of Wolverine” Hivemind Virus

Introduced in Wolverine Vol. 5 and brought to its naturally grim conclusion in the miniseries Death of Wolverine by Charles Soule and Steve McNiven, Wolverine loses his healing factor after he’s infected by a virus originating in the microverse. This virus was sentient, a hivemind-like organism that wanted to engulf the entire world, and even beyond. Wolverine helped prevent that from happening, but in doing so, he lost his healing factor. For nearly two full volumes of Wolverine comics, Logan is hunted by his greatest enemies, as they finally had a chance at killing him once and for all. In the end, Wolverine does die, and while the microverse hivemind doesn’t deliver the final blow, it wouldn’t have happened if the virus didn’t rob Logan of his healing factor.

4 Doctor Nemesis

During Marvel Comics’ “Wolverine vs the X-Men” arc by Jason Aaron, Daniel Acuna, and Corey Petit, Wolverine is possessed by demons from the Red Right Hand, forcing him to turn against his fellow X-Men . To stop him, Doctor Nemesis shoots Logan with a dart gun containing some of the world’s deadliest diseases, including bubonic plague, mouth cancer, and flesh-eating bacteria. After a few of those darts, Wolverine was too busy vomiting and convulsing to fight, as the illnesses overloaded his healing factor.

3 Nimrod

In Inferno #1 by Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti, the X-Men are battling their greatest foes in the history of Marvel Comics: the Sentinels. Specifically, they’re trying to take down Nimrod and save the planet from the evil organization known as Orchis. With the X-Men’s resurrection ability, they can throw everything they have at Nimrod during every encounter without fear of death, as they’ll be back with new, resurrected forms in no time. In Wolverine’s case, that meant he had to experience the same horrific death over and over again. As shown in this issue, Nimrod would sear the flesh from Wolverine’s adamantium bones, cooking his brain inside his skull, and reducing Logan to a life-sized trophy. This was an homage to Wolverine’s famous death in Days of Future Past by the hand of a Sentinel, though Nimrod did it with much more authority. This villain made killing Wolverine a legitimate hobby of his, and Logan’s healing factor was of little to no concern, as Nimrod was able to vaporize him faster than he could heal.