In “When We First Met”, we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, “Avengers Assemble!” or the first appearance of Batman’s giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man’s face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.
Reader Christian T. wanted to know when Wolverine gained a specific resistance to telepathy outside of “his thoughts are wild!”
The first time we saw anything of the kind was just like Christian noted about how Wolverine’s mind it “too wild” to be tamed. That came in X-Men #100 (by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum) and it was the first sign that we had that Wolverine had ANY sort of resistance to telepathy…
Do note, however, that that’s a freakin’ ROBOT. How do you give a robot telepathy? That doesn’t even make sense. By the way, I love early Banshee X-Men appearances, because he’s clearly a bit older than the rest of the team, so so much of his early stuff is, “What the hell are you morons doing?!? No, you idiot, you don’t jump on to a plane before it explodes! No, you don’t stab your own teammate!”
Anyhow, the first time we saw an outright resistance to telepathy came early on, in X-Men #107, when Oracle of the Imperial Guard (the Marvel equivalent of Saturn Girl of the Legion of Super-Heroes) couldn’t stop Wolverine with her telepathic powers….
That’s vague as heck, of course. Over the years, Wolverine’s telepathy resistance has been very hit or miss. Sometimes it is there, sometimes it is not.
It was Wolverine #46 (during Civil War) (by Marc Guggenheim, Humberto Ramos and Victor Olazaba) that introduced the idea that Wolverine actually has specific telepathic blocks in his mind, installed by Professor X (why you would ever let Professor X in your mind is beyond me. That dude creeps me out).
However, a few years later, Emma Frost tried to use her powers on Wolverine and she couldn’t, because, according to Daniel Way in this X-Men: Original Sin one-shot, he has build up a sort of mental armor due to all of his scar tissue…
That really doesn’t make sense, so I think we should just stick with the whole “Professor X put in telepathic blocks,” as that would leave the option that some bad guy was powerful enough to DEFEAT those blocks, ya know?
So there ya go, Christian! If anyone else has a suggestion for a notable comic book first that you would like to see featured, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!