The adamantium that famously laces Wolverine’s skeleton offers the X-Men member a lethal addition to his already formidable arsenal of mutant powers, but when that adamantium is replaced with a magical metal, Wolverine gets even more perks. As fans know, after being subjected to the Weapon X Program, Logan’s entire skeleton was laced with the nearly indestructible metal adamantium, including his claws. With the adamantium upgrade - along with his healing factor and heightened senses - Wolverine became unstoppable. However, Wolverine could have received an even greater upgrade if he was given a similar metal with magical properties, one that a Wolverine variant received in an alternate universe.
During the Exalted storyline in Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #45 by Greg Pak and Mike McKone, Cyclops is stunned when he is faced with alternate versions of Emma Frost and Wolverine, among others, while in a strange new world he doesn’t recognize. He helps the variants, who are locked in pods, to escape to try to figure out what is happening and how to stop it. Emma Frost is the first person with whom Scott makes any real communication, followed by the variant Wolverine. While Cyclops finds that Emma is very similar to her Earth-616 counterpart, the Wolverine variant had a number of differences to the Logan Scott knew, including a massive power upgrade.
James Howlett, the variant found by Cyclops, shared Logan’s experience of being experimented on and having his powers increased, though the level of power increase James received was far greater than Logan’s. James had his skeleton laced with not adamantium, but adamantine, which is a magical metal of which adamantium was revealed to be a cheap copy. Adamantine did more than provide an indestructible weapon, it also gifted the wielder with incredible powers including energy absorption and deflection, as well as resistance to telepathic and magical attacks. Plus, all of Wolverine’s mutant powers remained intact, with the magic of the metal not negating any of his natural-born abilities.
Fans got to see the adamantine in action when Cyclops fired an optic blast at Wolverine, and James deflected the blast with his claws. Longtime X-Men readers are aware of the damage Cyclops’ beams can do, especially to Wolverine. In another alternate universe where the Age of Apocalypse occurred, Cyclops and Wolverine break out into battle and in the end, Wolverine loses a hand and Cyclops an eye with the implication being that Cyclops blasted off Wolverine’s hand as Wolverine gouged out one of Scott’s eyes.
The fact that James simply deflects Cyclops’ blast when fans know what kind of damage it can do is massively impressive and speaks to the power of the adamantine. The Wolverine variant presented in the Exalted storyline doesn’t stick around for very long in terms of X-Men canon, but his stint with the team is forever cemented in the minds of fans. The Wolverine variant showed that one of the strongest X-Men members could be even stronger with the use of a magical metal substitute to adamantium that gave Wolverine extra powers.
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