2. Wolverine
So if Captain America’s hyper fast metabolism and superhuman cells prevent him from getting drunk, then Wolverine, the Canadian mutant with a healing factor, must also be unable to get drunk right? Well technically yes, but mainly no.
Though Wolverine’s mutant healing factor makes him immune to poisons and toxins, and his absurdly fast metabolism should make alcohol pointless, beer is still as synonymous with Wolverine as muttonchops. In fact, every movie appearance of Logan features alcohol in one-way or another– even his cameo in X-Men: First Class took place in a bar. This means Wolverine’s affection for alcohol has appeared in more movies than his trademark claws.
The question remains however– can Wolverine get drunk? While his mutant healing factor must break down alcohol quickly, Logan’s not the type of cretin to waste his time drinking what is essentially non-alcoholic beer. Instead, I propose that while Wolverine’s healing factor does prevent him from getting poisoned, this healing factor has its own limits. Wolverine is frequently depicted drinking not because he is an alcoholic; rather it just takes multiple drinks for him to actually start feeling anything. Why does Logan need to get drunk in the first place? Because the dude has been involved in like, every war since the 1890s and has been maimed and hit in the junk in an inconceivable number of ways. You may say that getting drunk with a healing factor is impossible, however as Logan proves, nothing is impossible when alcohol is involved.
Additionally– and this is just going to shatter everything you thought you knew about the Wolverine and drinking– alcohol, specifically beer, appears to also have a healing effect on Logan. In Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, Logan’s mind comes under psychic attack courtesy of a new incarnation of the Hellfire Club. Changing up the atypical psychic attack of “let’s turn the Canucklehead into a berserk PTSD-animal with a dash of bath salts feral survivalist,” the Hellfire club goes in the exact opposite direction by reverting Logan’s mind into that of one 1890’s fancy-lad/sissy-boy, James Howlett. So instead of Logan going extreme all over the X-mansion, we get James making paper people chains that are, as he puts it “so very pretty!” and hiding in trees in fear of everything around him. James is scared of everything, except alcohol of course. When Logan is thrown into the rubble of what was once a tastefully quaint X-kitchen, he is able to snap out of his psychically induced hallucination, if only for an instant, and recognize his totem calling out to him through all the psychic haze as it strikes him on the head and rolls into his palm– a can of beer. Suddenly Logan comes to his senses, and it is not thanks to the backhand of a metallic Russian bodybuilder, nor Hank McCoy eating a part of his leg, but beer. Logan has devoted so much time to alcohol that his habitual drinking habit was the only possible trigger that would make him rip his proverbial frilly sleeping shirt and don the embossed boots of badassery once again.
Do alcohol and superheroes mix? Well, for Wolverine, it was beer that ultimately saved the day.
