Wolverine Crush

About

Wolverine Crush, also known as Wolverine Staring At Picture, is a two-panel exploitable comic series featuring the Marvel superhero Wolverine gazing longingly at a picture frame, which often contains various humorous images superimposed over the original photograph.

Origin

In Season 1 Episode 5 of the animated television series X-Men, originally aired on January 30th, 1993, the character Wolverine is shown^[9] jealously looking at a picture of the superheroes Cyclops and Jean Grey (shown below).

The earliest known instance of the exploitable comic featured a lewd selfie of actress Scarlett Johansson and was submitted by Redditor Jamy18 to the /r/funny^[5] subreddit on September 18th, 2011 (shown below, right). Prior to being archived, the post accumulated over 1,000 upvotes and 20 comments.

Spread

On April 10th, 2012, BuzzFeed^[1] highlighted a Wolverine Crush image featuring a superimposed photograph of Ridiculously Photogenic Guy. On the following day, Redditor xchaos submitted a comic of Wolverine holding a photograph of Valve founder Gabe Newell to /r/gaming^[2] (shown below, right).

On July 8th, 2013, Reddit Samisneat submitted a comic of Wolverine caressing a picture of actor Nicolas Cage to the /r/onetruegod^[3] subreddit, where it gained more than 1,700 upvotes and 15 comments before it was archived. On September 10th, Redditor dinojoe posted a Wolverine Crush image featuring a photograph of marijuana to the /r/trees^[4] subreddit, garnering upwards of 2,800 upvotes and 45 comments prior to being archived.

Hugh Jackman Recreates Wolverine Crush

On July 28th, 2024, Hugh Jackman^[6] posted a picture recreating the same pose as the Wolverine Crush meme, thanking fans after Wolverine and Deadpool became the #1 movie in the world on that weekend. The post (seen below) amassed more than 284,000 likes and 37,000 reposts in a few hours.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References