“The All-New Wolverine”
Writer: Tom Taylor
Artists: David Lopez & David Navarrot
Publisher: Marvel
When Marvel announced they were killing Wolverine last year, I was skeptical. After all, it’s not only comics, it’s an X-Man. Hell, it’s THE X-Man. Even in death, Wolverine’s an insanely popular character, so kudos to Marvel for sticking to their guns and letting Logan stay six feet under. But it’s not the Marvel U without a Wolverine, and while they’re cheating a bit by having a universe displaced Old Man Logan show up in Extraordinary X-Men, it’s been decided that the mantle would go down to Wolverine’s clone Laura Kinney, formerly known as X-23.
And the pleasant surprise is, the book’s good. Really good.
The crux of the issue is Laura finding her place. She’s adopted the Wolverine identity and is working to protect an assassin’s target, but the key here is Laura doesn’t want to kill anymore, as explained during a hallucination where she converses with a dead Logan while her body is healing. There were a few failed attempts to do a Wolverine story about Logan fighting the urge to kill, but it never really came off as sincere. Probably because he was appearing in every other title being released and murdering people left and right there. But that’s not the case with Laura, who largely appears in the perpipheral of other titles while headlining her solo book along with her boyfriend, the time displaced Angel who’s still sporting his rad fire wings he acquired during The Black Vortex, an event I didn’t read and can barely find information about.
I’m genuinely excited to see where they take Laura from here. The set-up, a Wolverine clone, hardwired to kill, trying to escape her programming and prove she’s better, has potential. But without the burden of popularity and constant appearances her predecessor had, there’s a chance she may actually pull it off.
