Wolverine Series 2 Cards – Random Toys

Finishing out our random look at Wolverine toys for this month’s celebration, we’re looking at a non-toy. The Wolverine From Then ‘Til Now II trading card series by Comic Images. I know trading cards aren’t toys, but rather than show off another Weapon X figure, I thought I’d share a Wolverine collectible that had a huge impact on me as a kid.

The From Then ‘Til Now II trading cards were released in 1992. Wolverine was already a popular character being featured in his own book along with various X-Men titles and the Marvel Comics Presents book, but he was about to get even more popular later this year when the X-Men Animated series debuted on Fox. So it’s no surprise there was a series of Wolverine trading cards already (or two in this case)

I’m not really sure how many cards were in each package as I’ve only ever bought full base sets. Sometime in the 90’s I found the full set (minus any of the special prism cards) at my local comic shop (The Cosmic Cat in Tallahassee, FL) I was already pretty full into collecting comic cards as I’d been buying Marvel Universe Series 3 packs by that time. The allure of being able to get a full set in one shot was tempting enough for me to buy them right then and there.

The cards had full artwork on one side (no borders or titles or anything like other comic book cards) and the back had a good paragraph or so of info along with the number and title of the card. I’m not 100% sure but I believe most of the artwork is reused from various comics

There were many cards with classic comic cover artwork on them. The lines look to be the same as the actual comics but I believe they’ve been recolored (The Wolverine #8 cover has a pretty obviously recolored background) While I read comics back at this time, I hadn’t yet gotten into full on collector mode so some of the artwork on these cards wasn’t as familiar to me as it would be to an avid collector. In many cases, this was my first exposure to these images.

As I mentioned earlier, the backs of the cards had a good paragraph or so of info on them. Most of them explained about Wolvie’s powers or memorable events in his life. Card #3 mentions the initial idea behind Wolverine’s origins involving the High Evolutionist, a fact that I had completely forgotten and only recently read again on some online list of crazy facts about Wolverine. At the time I read the online list I was all “Huh, That’s interesting and new”….apparently it wasn’t as new to me as I thought.

I’m pretty sure this is the first time I had ever seen any Barry Windsor-Smith artwork and it cemented my love of Weapon X. Most times I think of that control helmet, I think of that particular image on the card. So much of this set spurred me on to find out more about Wolverine and helped to place him as a major character in my collecting habits growing up.

The full 90 card base set can still be found online for pretty cheap. I reacquired this set recently for around $10-$15 shipped