Wolverine is more popular than Captain America. Cap's popularity and Marvel's focus on him has been growing in the past decade.
Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, the Avengers, etc. and the rest of the Marvel "Superheroes" (with the exception being Spider-man, but he had his own "Clone Saga" mess) all floundered in the 90's. The whole Mutant "X-Men" craze took off with Jim Lee on X-Men, Wolverine's own series that was on-going (and he was in every X-Title) and all the X-Men cross-overs.
Ultimately, Marvel tried to resurrect their "Regular" superheroes by doing the whole "Heroes Reborn" that turned to be a flop after the "ONSLAUGHT" storyline.
Captain America, Iron Man, and Hulk have since gone through several volumes of artists and writers since then. The ULTIMATES brought a new focus on Captain America (and by extension, the Avengers) in particular and his own regular 616 comic started getting better slowly but surely culminating with Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting. THE AVENGERS was getting better as well and the AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED storyline was the turning point that boosted the popularity of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor back up into the stratosphere. Marvel did a lot of careful storyline planning and groomed him slowly with CIVIL WAR being his and Iron Man's "starring" roles.
Wolverine has consistently been popular with modern audiences since he debuted and is probably more recognized (lets not forget that Cap being an American icon can result in less exposure outside the USA). Cap's recent popularity is due to the hard work of Marvel in steering him in a better direction for his character and putting some time and focus in bringing him back (alongside Iron Man and Thor to name a few) to being "cool".
They've put the right talent on him.
Remember when he had that crazy exo-suit during the 90's? Or became "Cap-Wolf"? Yeah the Cap comics in the 90's were terrible.
Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, the Avengers, etc. and the rest of the Marvel "Superheroes" (with the exception being Spider-man, but he had his own "Clone Saga" mess) all floundered in the 90's. The whole Mutant "X-Men" craze took off with Jim Lee on X-Men, Wolverine's own series that was on-going (and he was in every X-Title) and all the X-Men cross-overs.
Ultimately, Marvel tried to resurrect their "Regular" superheroes by doing the whole "Heroes Reborn" that turned to be a flop after the "ONSLAUGHT" storyline.
Captain America, Iron Man, and Hulk have since gone through several volumes of artists and writers since then. The ULTIMATES brought a new focus on Captain America (and by extension, the Avengers) in particular and his own regular 616 comic started getting better slowly but surely culminating with Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting. THE AVENGERS was getting better as well and the AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED storyline was the turning point that boosted the popularity of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor back up into the stratosphere. Marvel did a lot of careful storyline planning and groomed him slowly with CIVIL WAR being his and Iron Man's "starring" roles.
Wolverine has consistently been popular with modern audiences since he debuted and is probably more recognized (lets not forget that Cap being an American icon can result in less exposure outside the USA). Cap's recent popularity is due to the hard work of Marvel in steering him in a better direction for his character and putting some time and focus in bringing him back (alongside Iron Man and Thor to name a few) to being "cool".
They've put the right talent on him.
Remember when he had that crazy exo-suit during the 90's? Or became "Cap-Wolf"? Yeah the Cap comics in the 90's were terrible.
