Hello everyone, and welcome back to another great character spotlight in Marvel Snapshot! In this week’s edition, we’ll be focusing on Marvel’s sometimes psychotic, and always ready to fight, X-23! This young girl has proven to be more than a match for anybody in the Marvel U., and is certainly tearing it up right now in her own ongoing (big shout out to Majorie Liu).
OK, so, Laura Kinney was created from some of Wolverine’s DNA, so she is an exact copy of him. She does have an accelerated healing factor that seems to be better than his, though. She was created by Weapon X to be their killing machine, but eventually broke free of their control. Her first appearance was in the series NYX. After that, she was in her own limited series where we learned of her origins, and then was showcased in Uncanny X-Men. The interesting thing about this character is that Laura didn’t actually make her debut in comics first, but in television on X-Men: Evolution. Her creator, Craig Kyle, is usually known as part of a tag-team with Christopher Yost and their phenomenal work on X-Force vol. 3.
One of the main enemies of Laura is a woman named Kimura. This savage is the person who looked after X-23 when she was a pawn of The Facility. Kimura, on a daily basis sometimes, would torture and mutilate X-23 to satisfy her sadistic needs. X-23 would usually need to try and outsmart her, as she has indestructible skin and could withstand anything X-23 could throw at her physically. In one instance, X-23 handcuffed Kimura to a radiator and blew the house to pieces to slow her down. X-23 eventually joined the X-Men after fighting with Wolverine (she held him responsible for what she had become), and they eventually became good friends.
The best usage of this character, though, has got to be in X-Force. Kyle and Yost wrote every issue of X-Force vol. 3 and did a spectacular job showcasing the ferocity of this character. She was the team’s go-to tracker, and also when they needed someone to go farther than others were willing to in killing certain people. She seemingly has killed dozens of soldiers, Lady Deathstrike, Scrambler (Mauraders), and countless others. Yes, that cute little girl is quite the killing machine, and I think that’s why I like her so much. Checkout the recommended reading list below, and some great pics, too!
Recommended Reading
NYX #1-7 (2003)
New X-Men Tpb’s Vol. 2 & 5 (Childhood’s End) (2004)
Innocence Lost – Tpb (2005)
X-Men: Messiah Complex – Tpb (2007)
X-Force vol. 1-3 (2008)
X-23 #1-current (ongoing) (2010)
Billy Dunleavy
billy@comicattack.net
I like X-23’s character however I think that Marvel will keep her in Wolverine’s shadow. I hear the new series is pretty good though and I think she’ll do better away from the core X titles for a while but you are so right man, Yost and Kyle helped her reach another level of cool during their run on X-Force.
@Speech- I’m really liking the “Wolverine Family”, especially X-23. Daken is cool too but the writers need to do something different with him. He’s getting stale already.
I’ve always liked Daken but I definitely agree with you about him being stale. Marvel slammed us with him but didn’t develope the guy to make him more than Logan’s son who also kills people. Marvel was also too busy ramming the fact that he was bi down our throats also. Hopefully he becomes a lot more in the future.
X-23 is awesome. And so is Daken. Give his new series a chance. It’s turning out to be pretty solid so far.
@Speech- Yeah, the “I’m a switch-hitter” routien every 5 minutes did get old quick.
@Andy- Both are great characters in my opinion ands hopefully Marvel will get them going in the right direction.
I like X-23 and Daken and I think they are really going to come into their own in their new books.
@Nick- I’ve liked everything X-23 has done so far. Daken is good, but in my opinion he’s still too much in Wolverines shadow. I think X-23 was fantastic in X-Force!