A lot of people think Wolverine’s healing powers are *too* powerful and that it robs the stories of any tension because you can’t kill him (this same argument is applied to Superman). But I think this ignores that a superhero’s primary goal is not to survive the latest battle (otherwise you could just stay home), but to save *other people*.

The conflict in a Wolverine story should never and can never legitimately be “Will Wolverine survive this issue?” (If I were writing a Wolverine comic, I would have him narrate everything in the past tense just to emphasize that no matter what happens, Wolverine is getting out of this one alive.) The conflict is whether who he’s trying to save will survive the story, or whether Wolverine will be left standing in a smoking crater filled with charred bodies that used to be his friends.