What I Bought 6/24/2026

Alright, this is it. Last day - hopefully - I have to play fake boss. He's supposed to be back in the office Monday. I'm so ready to be done with the added stress. It makes me dread getting up, and makes me want to go to bed earlier so I can wake up and be one day closer to being done.

Here's two X-books.

Generation X-23 #5, by Jody Houser (writer), Marco Renna (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - That is definitely a picture of Laura Kinney lunging at the reader, claws extended.

X-80, the time traveler that originally clued Laura into this whole mess, shows up to rescue her. This is a younger version than the one Laura met earlier, because time travel, although that power is one that was grafted onto her later. The energy blades X-Infinite uses are her original mutation.

While Infinite drags Gabby off to use as a genetic material source, and the rest of the cast figure out he's a bad guy, 80 takes Laura on a trip through the past to see how things got to that point. Infinite (X-39, then) used to try and protect the others by getting the guards angry at him, but eventually a Dr. Chiles (and for some reason that name seems familiar) convinced him to help her with this grafting of powers. Except she was only interested in powers rich humans would pay for, which apparently doesn't include having wings and feathers? I mean, there are lots of other powers I'd rather have, but it's not a bad power.

Laura and 80 rescue the others, then free Gabby. Whose enhanced senses somehow still work, even with the mutant power neutralizing collar on. Don't quite understand that. Laura's willing to leave Infinite there and take the others to safety, but 74 decides to blow him up. Except 66 - with the bird powers - throws herself on the grenade, so he's still alive.

If the point of this arc was to give Laura and Gabby a supporting cast - and the remainder of this bunch are going to live with them, so that seems to be the case - Houser probably should have moved faster. Speed-run Infinite's reveal as the villain, weed out whoever you were going to kill, get on with having Laura be a leader/mentor/friend to the survivors. Especially given Marvel's quick-trigger on the cancellation button these days, I'm not sure you can afford to burn 5 issues just getting to the actual point of your book.

(Also kind of strange to introduce the Kimura Scorpion-bot and not have it be a bigger deal. Maybe save that for after Infinite was dealt with, or vice versa.) 

Especially since none of the new characters Laura's going to be interacting with have much in the way of personalities yet. 92 is silent and lurks in the walls, 99 is chipper and playful, which seems to be designed for her to interact with Gabby rather than Laura. 74 is the one with a quick temper. That's pretty much what I've got on them so far.

Moonstar #4, by Ashley Allen (writer), Edoardo Audino (artist), Arthur Hesli (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - We got a zombie bear, zombie elk (stag?), zombie wolf, and zombie hyena? I was thinking this was in North America, in which case the hyena's a long way from home, but they end up in Iran, so maybe all those are native fauna.

Dani thinks it through and concludes Kyrion will want to kill her parents in front of her. So they have time to get to the tablet first, and hide it, then rescue her parents. Dani has enough of the residual magic from the sword infecting her to use it as a tracking beacon, so they fly to Iran on Brightwind. Dani says she learned a spell that can provide acceleration over short distances, but Colorado to Iran wouldn't seem to qualify as short.

As it turns out, this is where Kian grew up, and where he first started messing with magic, which is why his eyes are messed up now. Something else that's messed up: the native wildlife, which is back from the dead and running rampant. Kian tries some kind of spell to dissolve the reanimated corpses, but they just combine into a monstrosity that would make John Carpenter proud. I mean, that thing is truly disgusting looking, props to Audino.

Dani's able to panic the chimera by hurting it, then playing off the instinctive reaction that pain causes, which leaves them free to continue to the tablet. Kian keeps advising her to at least consider alternative approaches, like taking out Kyrion's backup and saving her parents, but Dani won't be swayed. She's certain she can save everyone if she does things her way.

It's funny she doesn't ever point out that if they don't keep Kyrion from getting the tablet, saving her parents will be a moot point, because he'll kill everyone. As it turns out, the tablet is somehow too big to move now, and Kyrion's brought her parents along to use it as a sacrificial altar. And Dani's arrows don't seem to be doing much. That's not a great turn of events.

I'm curious to see how Allen wraps this up. Kyrion and Kian both keep commenting on Dani's optimism or hopeful attitude, which feels significant in a story about accepting death as part of life. Or refusing to accept it, in Kyrion's case. Whether Dani saves people today, she can't save them forever, but she still persists in trying, and in believing she can save everyone today. I don't know where Allen's going with that. There's also the fact Kian's caught feelings, as we get a panel where he's very close and asking if she can lend him some courage, while Hesli colors the background a very soft focus pink. Dani's either oblivious or too locked in to notice, so I guess we'll see if Kian just booked himself a room in the fridge next month.

Sunday Splash Page #430

"A Fractured Mirror," in All-New Wolverine #1, by Tom Taylor (writer), David Lopez (penciler/inker), David Navarrot (inker), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

Around 2016, Marvel killed Wolverine. Marvel, being Marvel, didn't let the concept lay fallow. They pumped out more Wolverine books than ever. Wolverines, about a bunch of characters that weren't that particular Logan, but liked to carve things up with claws, so close enough. Old Man Logan, because some dumbass thought we needed more of Mark Millar's bullshit in the Marvel Universe. And All-New Wolverine, which was about Laura Kinney trying to take on the legacy of her genetic donor. I hesitate to apply the label of "father" to Logan, given how bad he was at it.

Tom Taylor wrote the title, which ran for 35 issues, plus an Annual. It had a host of artists, because of course it did. Pretty much a different primary penciler for each arc. David Lopez on the first six issues, Marcio Takara and Ig Guara splitting the next six, Nik Virella and Djibril-Morissette-Phan on the third story, Leonard Kirk on the fourth arc, Juann Cabal on the fifth, and mostly Ramon Rosanas in the sixth arc, some "Old Woman Laura" thing I didn't keep, as should be self-explanatory given my comments in the previous paragraph.

Taylor's focus is on Laura trying to branch out and build a life, with friends and loved ones, while also moving beyond her past as a weapon. He starts by establishing Alchemax - this was when Alchemax was a thing in the present, rather than just in 2099 - cloned Laura. The clones were implanted with nanites to block their healing factors and lack claws - or so it seems - but the few survivors are trying to take out the ones responsible before they die. Of the four, only one appears to survive, the youngest, named Gabby (later Honey Badger or Scout.)

Gabby's the one constant presence throughout the run, despite Laura often trying to handle things alone to protect her new kid sister. Taylor writes Gabby as very quick to get excited about things and equally quick to judge. She's usually got some funny or clever remark ready, but a lot of Taylor's writing seems to revolve around that kind of quippy dialogue. It probably works here because Laura is mostly subdued. She's the quiet core all the more bubbly or outgoing characters orbit.

Besides Gabby, Maria Hill and Nick Fury (the one they put in the Marvel Universe that looks like Sam Jackson, 'cause Whitebread Nick Fury was/is busy being a Watcher) show up a few times, usually with something they want Laura's help with. Critically, Taylor makes these tasks Laura trying to rescue or help people, rather than kill. In the second arc, they need her to look for several missing SHIELD agents. In the fourth arc, it's a dying alien child who said Laura's name before keeling over of some engineered plague. People wanted her to kill, to take advantage of how much punishment the healing factor would let her take, but now she's using it to save lives.

To that end, Taylor uses the third arc to get rid of the "trigger scent" that sent Laura into berserker furies. As far as I know, nobody's undone that yet. Fittingly, that arc is the one that seems to delve most into previous Laura Kinney stories, as she's being hunted by Kimura, the woman who trained and/or tormented her in the Facility, and Gambit shows up for support, after being a big part of Laura's first ongoing series.

There's also the fifth arc, where a group of people who lost loved ones to various Wolverine-themed characters formed a support group to hunt down and kill them with bullets made of broken shards of the Muramasa Blade. Laura has to convince them she understands what they lost, because she lost part of herself being made into a killer, so she wants to help them by finding and punishing the ones who did that. Which is swell, but doesn't really address the fact she saved Sabretooth, Lady Deathstrike or Daken, who don't have the excuse they were kids when they were slaughtering people, nor have they demonstrated much regret.

But regret never stopped Logan from killing people. Why should the knockoffs be any different?

At times, though, the book feels like Wolverine Team-Up, as every arc has some guest star. Dr. Strange and the Wasp both appear in "Four Sisters", as well as the time-traveling teen Angel, who at least has the excuse of being Laura's boyfriend. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl shows up in the story Marcio Takara drew, which is a fun little team-up about rescuing a squirrel that Laura's actions endangered, and then Old Man Logan and HYDRA-Cap show up in the obligatory Civil War II tie-in. You've got Gambit and Teen Jean Grey in the third arc, plus Tyger Tyger, Maria Hill and Nick Fury, then Laura travels to space with the Guardians of the Galaxy to find the source of the sick alien kid.

It's old hat for the new kid to meet up with established characters and get their stamp of approval. In the '90s, Spider-Man was a lock for a guest appearance by issue #3 in every new Marvel book. But it feels like Taylor spams that particular button. I guess the point is to use people who knew Logan to contrast Laura to her predecessor, but if the idea is her reinventing herself to be someone who protects, then maybe the focus could have been on non-super powered characters that were being saved by her?

I know, that's silly. All supporting cast members must be supers themselves now.

As far as the artists go, I'm always partial to Lopez's art. He's got that clean linework with expressive body language and faces I enjoy. It works with Taylor's tendency to do 3-panel sequences of "action-silent panel-reaction." Laura tells Angel not to hug her until her ribs heal. He pats her head instead. She asks if he did that, he freezes, then acknowledges the obvious. Or Taskmaster catches Laura's kick, talks shit, she extends the claw in her foot through his hand, he screams in pain.

Takara's work is a lot rougher, the characters more blocky, but the art captures Squirrel Girl's cheerful and earnest personality, as well as Gabby's excitement and Laura's resignation that she needs to make things right. Kirk, I think is like Rick Leonardi: He needs a strong inker or his figures get a little like a wax figure left in the sun. Things kind of stretch and elongate abnormally. There are four different inkers in that story, including Kirk himself, and sometimes the details start to slip, but mostly it works. The Guardians of the Galaxy look appropriately alien, if there's slippage, it's when Laura gets emaciated because her healing factor is overworked by the alien plague. Deadpool and Gabby hit it off and are all smiles with each other.

Cabal's work is a little stiff in the fights, but he's good with emotion and he's the only artist I've seen that leans even a little into the fact part of Laura's DNA comes from a stocky, burly man. Laura's traditionally drawn as sort of a waif. Partially (OK, mostly) because it's usually guys drawing the comics for guys and they want the girls to look the traditional sort of cute or hot. But also somewhat so she looks like this unsuspecting girl, who turns into a tornado of murder. It's not as though Cabal gives Laura body hair, or a square head, or hair swooped into little wings, but he does give her more musculature, especially in the shoulders and back, than I can recall most artists doing.

Logan came back eventually, somehow. Laura went back to being X-23. Then she was Wolverine again, at the same time as Logan. Now she's back to X-23, but still dressing like Wolverine? I don't think they've ever given her a brown-and-orange costume like Logan had. It's only ever the yellow-and-blue, or sometimes black-and-red when she's in X-Force mode. I'm not sure what that means, if anything. The artists want to use colors that are more sharply distinct? 

What I Bought 5/27/2026

I finished Trigun today on my anime re-watch project. I forgot how exhausting all Vash's hemming and hawing about not shooting Legato gets. He wants to die, just do it already!

Sorry, reflex. Tomorrow is Trigun: Badlands Rumble, and that's the end of it, minus the first half of a series I bought a few weeks ago. But I haven't watched Ghost Hound yet, so it's not a re-watch.

Generation X-23 #4, by Jody Houser (writer), Marco Renna (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - I'm very curious why they gave the robots hair, but otherwise left them looking entirely mechanical.

Laura, X-Infinite and X-92 (the portal-making kid) are following the guys who took everyone else, courtesy of a trail of blood Gabby is leaving for them. It's kind of funny that she's apparently so used to having a healing factor that she didn't consider that it's a bad thing if she just keeps bleeding indefinitely. 

Although that raises a question. They all got stuck with collars that neutralize their powers, meaning no healing factor, which is what Gabby's counting on for the bleeding. So does that mean the collar has entirely blocked her ability to heal, rather than simply knocking it down to a "normal" level? Because I sure don't have a healing factor like a Wolverine, but any cuts or scrapes I get do stop bleeding eventually.

Laura and X-Infinite get inside the facility, courtesy of X-92's portals and start looking around. But Infinite's more interested in reprogramming those knockoff X-23-bots to kill all the staff of the facility, so he can have it for himself. And then having them overwhelm Laura, so he can have access to all of her blood he wants. Well, he seemed pretty suspect, but I did not see that level of backstabbing coming.

Laura also has a 3-page fight with the weird crab/centipede lady, who we're told has part of the face of Kimura, the woman who used to torture Laura when she was a kid (and who I thought Laura drowned in Tom Taylor's All-New Wolverine.) Granted, all that's organic is her face and half her hair, so there wasn't much to go on, but I would not have figured that to be Kimura in a million years.

Houser tends to script the fights, or Renna's drawing them, to emphasize Laura's speed. Lots of short, broad panels that show the distance she covers, lots of flips and dodges and acrobatics. She's definitely not just charging into the fights and tanking hits (and then complaining about how much healing hurts) like she was in her previous ongoing.

Houser switches the caption boxes between Laura and a mystery person through the issue. Laura's focused mostly on what she can scent, or who she's fighting at that moment. The mystery person talks about paths and outcomes, and reveals themselves at the end of the issue as the time-traveler Laura saw die in issue 1. So I guess she went forward to this point, then back to that point later. 

What I Bought 5/4/2026 - Part 2

I got through Read or Die: The TV Series back in April on my anime rewatch. It was pretty good. I appreciate the silly sibling stuff between the Paper Sisters more than I remember in the past. Then Mr. Joker showed his face around episode 15, and it was ten episodes of me groaning, "Just shoot the fucker, stop listening to his bullshit!" But they never listen.

Generation X-23 #3, by Jody Houser (writer), Jacopo Camagni and Marco Renna (artists), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - So that foul-up where Laura got resurrected during the Krakoa era with a full adamantium skeleton, instead of just her claws, never got undone? Poor quality control.

The whole thing where the previous issue ended with X-Infinite saying Laura must be held responsible for two deaths is not really followed up on. Laura's alone in the infirmary, until some of those weird time shards show up, then vanish. So now Laura's got questions, and X-92's got a lead on answers. Which, predictably, point to X-Infinite, who is experimenting with some of Laura's skin that got scorched off.

As it turns out the kid's attempts to file reports that everything in the facility didn't work as well as they thought, Laura, Infinite and 92, escape. Infinite admits that, once the scientists figured out he was smarter than them, they made him help with their work. So all the other kids having multiple powers is his doing, and it's the old, a "Wolverine's healing factor could save them," bit. Well, at this point it's more like Laura's propensity for stabbing could save them. 

With the apparently abrupt passing of Jacopo Camagni, I don't know if Renna's going to be the regular artist on the book going forward. If so, I don't know if this issue is representative of their work. I would figure they were working under a time crunch, since they probably weren't expecting to draw 13 pages of this particular comic. Here, at least, Renna's style seems a little simpler than Camagni's. Faces and bodies are more basic shapes, fewer little details. Might simply not had enough time for as much shading, because I feel like that's a big difference between the two. There's more gradation and depth to Camagni's pages.

That said, Renna's art works perfectly well. The fight between Laura and X-Infinite is easy enough to follow. I'm not sure why one of the soldiers who attacked the facility is a giant, robotic crab-centipede-person, but it was a pretty impressive reveal. Got me to stop, blink, and wonder where the heck that thing came from.

Touched by a Demon #3, by Kristen Gudsnuk - As the city burns, one man tries to hide his eyes behind some strange wrapping paper.

Having concluded demons giving humans advice is not helpful, Frons takes the priest's recommendation of providing tools literally. So this week's client, Max, was given a chimp's paw, granting 5 wishes. Not a monkey's paw, mind you. No ironic comeuppance! But do I get a free frogurt with it? If you wish for one, I guess.

So after wishing for $10 million in an offshore account (the password to which he forgot), and an endless bag of weed and Adderall (which might have something to do with forgetting the password), Max starts messing around with people's free will. Making the girl he likes love him, making her kinks conform to his, for him to feel fulfilled. Stuff like that. But, as long as he doesn't try to make a sixth wish, he's fine.

Then he casually wished for them to not have to go into work and an earthquake knocked their office building - among other structures - down. I feel like Gudsnuk missed an easy joke there. When Max makes that wish, one of the chimp's fingers uncurls, and it isn't the middle one.

Despondent over another failure, Frons comes to the priest's church to aid in their relief efforts with a big sack of cash he. . .summoned from Hell, I think. Then he confronts Father Angelo, who he blames for giving him bad advice. Angelo either hasn't twigged to Frons being a demon, or is just jerking him around, but he claims to have found something that suggested fallen angels could be redeemed, and seems to be semi-related to Frons' idea of shattering souls to create something of pure evil. Except, you know, the flip side. Frankly, the idea of the soul as something you can chip pieces off of like some oversized ice cream cookie cake is maybe the part I'm having the most trouble with.

Oh, and the cop showed up at their office, looking into the disappearance of Wendy's family. And right as Frons' boss (Mammon) shows up. If somebody burned a roast I'm going to think I fell into an '80s sitcom. But no, in all seriousness, I'm really interested to see how Gudsnuk pulls this together with one issue to go. Interested and worried, since I actually like all these goofballs and I'm worried it's going to end badly for them. Especially Wendy, who did, you know, kill her asshole parents and her perpetually terminally ill older sister.

What I Bought 3/25/2026

It was 90 here yesterday, but I will not turn on my air conditioning. Not yet. Plus, it's barely into the 50s today. Lousy Smarch weather. Here's two comics from this week.

Fantastic Four #9, by Ryan North (writer), Humberto Ramos (penciler), Victor Olazaba (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - 

The FF get their tails kicked by Evil Sue and run with their tails between their legs. Galactus gets left behind. Ha! Regular Sue tries to reason with Evil Sue, since fighting her isn't working. Talking doesn't work either. In fact, Evil Sue decides she ought to make another just like her, and Johnny barely manages to cut in before his sister gets the same brain surgery.

Oh, and Earth is being attacked by aliens of some sort. I don't know what they're supposed to be; Ramos just draws them as big purple things with sort-of grasshopper legs. Don't really think that should be such a serious problem just because the FF aren't around. The Avengers and the X-Men deal with aliens, too!

I have to wonder at Evil Sue's motives for wanting to make Regular Sue just like her. If she can do everything, if the rest of the FF are useless, if Galactus is no match for her, what does she need a duplicate for? I kind of hope this isn't a Killing Joke, where she wants to prove anyone that goes through this will end up acting like she does.

I'm toying with the possibility she wants to die, and figures another Sue like her is the only thing strong enough to do it. A death wish wouldn't really track with her notion that she no longer feels guilt, but unless Evil Sue has a very different educational background from Regular Sue, she's not a brain surgeon. How could she be sure she burned out the right part of her brain? She admits she's holding back, that she lets Sue hit her with some attacks to see if she'll go for the kill. She's playing with the rest of the team, just throwing things at them to keep them busy while she tests Regular Sue.

I guess that could just be villain ego. Get to the end and find out Evil Sue is just like Doom, she like monologue and show off too much.

Generation X-23 #2, by Jody Houser (writer), Jacopo Camagni (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Laura is this how you make friends?

All the teenagers with powers were kids being experimented on in the facility where they currently live. But, as the apparent leader, who calls himself X-Infinite, tells us, one of the test subjects got loose and released some kind of vapor that killed everyone. And X-Infinite is the only witness. Not suspect at all! 

The handful who didn't die stuck around and call it home. They tend to have several powers, as a result of being experimented on, and they all refer to themselves by their experiment numbers. X-73, X-92, and so on. More concerning, X-Infinite insists on referring to Laura as "X-23", despite her repeatedly saying her name is "Laura." Not concerning!

Scout participates in a little training exercise with the others - just enough to give us some general sense what their powers are - until X-73 suddenly starts generating heat. Or fire. Either way, he's not immune and despite Laura's encouragement - to the extent, 'You have to control it!' qualifies - he blows up. And when she wakes up, X-Infinite says she has to answer for his friend's death.

I don't feel like Houser is being particularly subtle that something isn't on the up-and-up with X-Infinite. On the other hand, he isn't wrong that maybe they're safer in this secure facility than accepting Laura's offer to join whatever mutant school is currently available. If they don't think of themselves as mutants, or even if they do but don't particularly want to get missed up in X-Men nonsense, that's their business. Laura doesn't need to be proselytizing. 

What I Bought 2/18/2026 - Part 2

The anime re-watch wrapped up Gundam Wing over the weekend. That was fun, since I hadn't watched it in at least 15 years. I forgot how quickly things would change. Maybe one episode spent letting us think Heero died after self-destructing his Gundam, a half-dozen episodes on Relena trying to run a pacifist nation she only learned she was the inheritor of like 15 episodes earlier. She surrenders to avoid more deaths, an episode later she's a figurehead queen. An episode or two after that, she's running things for real, only to lose that one episode after. Gundam creators got no time for decompression, clearly (consecutive recap episodes in the middle of the series aside.)

It's Jeff! Meets Daredevil, by Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru - Those might be the most pronounced horns I've ever seen on Daredevil.

It's another collection of brief Jeff stories by Thompson and Gurihiru. Contrary to my expectations, they aren't focused on Jeff working with Daredevil. Their interactions are limited to the first comic, appropriately titled "Daredevil did it," where DD knocks over a statue while pursuing some thief (complete with a big sack with a $ symbol on it, so you know they respect tradition.) Jeff was sitting on a bench eating lunch in front of it, so the cop that comes along arrests Jeff.

Fortunately, Gwenpool and Kate Bishop hire Matt Murdock, and Jeff is acquitted, while Daredevil is sentenced to the community service of picking up all those pieces of statue that have just been lying scattered around the park ever since? So if you always wanted to see Daredevil doing in that a reflective vest. . .you'll have to by the comic because I scanned a different image. Hah!

The remainder of the comic is Jeff in his usual hijinks, most of which involve food. Although he does get mad when he keeps losing a fighting game and hurls the TV through the Hulk's kitchen window, which I can both relate to and think is an unwise choice. There are consecutive strips where Gwen is trying to make Jeff take medicine for some skin rash he's got, but Jeff proves extremely capable at not swallowing the pills. Although all that could have been avoided if Gurihiru simply drew a picture of Jeff's stomach, allowing Gwen to slip through the gutters to drop the pills in there.

It's cute fluff, but that's fine with me.

Generation X-23 #1, by Jody Houser (writer), Jacopo Camagni (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Maybe it's the angle, but Gabby;s lower body looks majorly elongated relative to her upper body.

Laura and Gabby are protecting a random mutant girl from a bigoted mob. Bigoted, idiot mob, given at least one of them shouts, "Just little girls!" at two girls with very long, very sharp claws extending from the backs of their hands. I'm once again amazed every citizen of the Marvel Universe hasn't managed to accidentally kill themselves trying to gargle bleach instead of mouthwash.

In the middle of the fight, something weird starts happening. Something like stained glass pieces appear from thin air, and as they pass through people, they get switched to, I'm not sure. Gabby thinks she smelled a friend of hers from her days as a sex worker, Kiden, who had time manipulation powers. Except seeing Laura at one point as young girl in a frilly dress, while Gabby looked like some Rob Liefeld creation for a second (sleek, elongated helmet with glowing visor) seems like more of an "unlocking alternate realities," power.

But I never read NYX, so maybe this is how the power worked. Laura follows the scent, finds more of the stained glass, plus a machine with the same claw set-up and hair as her. Beyond that, someone who isn't Kiden, who was looking for Laura, because people are dying from experiments involving mutant DNA. The girl speaks in fragmented and cryptic sentences before aging like she drank from the wrong Grail. Laura tracks her scent to a too-normal looking building, she and Gabby break in, there are more of the robots, and then a bunch of teenagers who are very happy to see Laura.

It feels like Laura is going to assume the teens are victims, while I suspect they're the ones conducting the experiments in order to make themselves more powerful. Maybe Gabby will be more suspicious, maybe not. Houser keeps Gabby as very eager and chatty, while Laura looks after her but plays along in trading jabs occasionally. The way the relationship was written felt right, which is a good sign.

Camagni plays into the characters' personalities by having Gabby be very expressive with her body language and facial expressions, where Laura is more reserved. So Laura will study a "too-normal" building, and all we get are narrowed eyes, while Gabby will stand there with one finger tapping at her lip in a "thoughtful" posture. When Laura tracks the girl's scent back to said "too-normal" building, in a page of her riding a motorcycle through the city, Camagni layers on panels showing the girl's progress as Laura's following the trail to its source. 

What I Bought 2/21/2025

The snow last week was not considerate. It waited until the long weekend was over and I had to go to work. I ended up taking Wednesday off just because the roads were getting worse all day Tuesday and I did not feel like messing with that.

And now it's 60 degrees outside. February, everybody!

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #3, by Erica Schultz (writer), Giada Belviso (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - What did those poor pallbearers ever do to you, Laura?

Laura survived the explosion, though it blew the flesh off her hands and part of her face. Not sure how she's lifting and manipulating her hands given there's no muscle of circulatory system visible, but whatever. Bomb's been taken to a hospital, under O*N*E supervision, but Laura, still healing, sneaks in with Elektra to speak to him.

They get just enough information to track down the guy that sent the kid off to explode, but by the time they find him, he's holding a dead man's switch and threatening to blow up half a block. I'm not clear on if he wants them to let him go, or if he's just planning to go suicide bomber. Either way, Elektra keeps him from releasing the switch, Laura stabs him, he's arrested, the heroes go their separate ways. Then Bucky (looking a lot like Sebastian Stan) shows up at Laura's apartment. Sorry, I'm not calling him "The Revolution" unless he shows up with Prince (who hopefully is still alive in the Marvel Universe.)

This book is not working for me. It feels like it's just going through the motions. If Laura is so concerned about Bomb, why does she quietly accept he's been taken somewhere by O*N*E when she returns to the hospital? Shouldn't she be rushing recklessly after him, to rescue him from being locked up somewhere after he was abducted and used to stage a terrorist attack? That was how she handled the missing kid in issue 1, and everything else so far. If the point is she's trying to exercise patience, because rushing in like a lunatic hasn't worked very well, give us something in the writing that reflects that character beat. Because as it's presented, Laura just decided, "eh, good enough," and went home to eat Chinese takeout.

For that matter, why is Esger drawn looking regretful as he sends Bomb off to explode on page 1, but by the end of the issue he's yelling about how he was the only true believer in his group, and he's willing to die to kill two mutants (one of whom isn't a mutant, because it's Elektra?) He goes from, 'Now, I know you don't wanna. . .' to 'Mutants will be wiped from the earth!' in the span of 15 pages.

Hell, why does Bomb go along with the plan at all? Esger takes the power dampening collar off and just sends him into the crowd by himself. Even if Bomb can't control his power so an explosion was inevitable, and I don't know if that's the case, no one made him walk into the protest. There's no indication he thought, "well, if I got to explode, I might as well kill this particular bunch of assholes." He seemingly just did it because the plot demanded it.

Maybe this is all something Schultz intends to loop back to later. I'm half convinced the lady in the first issue that runs the sanctuary for mutants is actually the front for, essentially, a trap. Mutants come in expecting safety and get sold off to whoever has a need. (Not unlike how Genosha was presented in the '90s cartoon.) But that's me guessing, because there's, at best, vague hints in the book so far. And that's something that might play out. Eventually. At some point. In the here and now, there's really nothing in the comic - writing or art - that makes me feel like I've gotta know what happens next.

What I Bought 1/15/2025

Diamond filed for bankruptcy apparently. I know that doesn't automatically mean death in business, but it doesn't seem like a good sign. It isn't the worst thing for the distributors to have competition, rather than a monopoly. But I did like being able to go to one place and check out all the comic publishers and what they were offering. Found a lot of books I probably wouldn't have otherwise. Oh well, it's out of my control, unless I get stinking rich and suddenly decide I want to be a businessman (the latter is far more improbable than the former.)

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #2, by Erica Schultz (writer), Giada Belviso (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I guess the back of the claw can't cut.

Elektra asks Laura to let her handle the transfer of a mutant kid. Laura declines. The buyer escapes with the kid, who has the mutant ability to explode, so that's not good. Elektra and Laura alert Mayor Luke Cage (that's weird to type, but preferable to Mayor Wilson Fisk or Jonah Jameson) that the kid is going to be used in the middle of a protest against Cage repealing Fisk's anti-vigilante laws. Cage asks Laura not to get involved. Laura declines. Then she nearly starts a fight with a bunch of protestors, and the kid blows up. Great hustle, Laura.

So, in a continuation of last issue, Laura's very angry and taking it out and everyone. Especially anyone advising her to exhibit patience, caution, good judgement, you name it. It's funny to watch her complain that people think she heals instantly, but gunshots take time to heal (and still hurt), without considering that maybe the way she's fighting is why her healing factor is having so much trouble keeping up. Laura knows how to be silent and sneaky, I've seen it in other stories. She's the one choosing to leap into every fight yelling and hacking away like she's in a particularly lucid berserker fury. She jumps on top the getaway car instead of maybe slashing through the tires to slow it down.

And now it's literally blown up in her face - assuming that last page wasn't some sort of fakeout - so we'll see if that prompts some sort of reflection or adjustment. Or maybe she'll just keep barging ahead, trying to help people to escape her frustration with how Krakoa fell apart. Either/or.

Avengers Assemble #5, by Steve Orlando (writer), Jose Luis (penciler), Oren Junior (inker), Sonia Oback (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Cap-Snake, he's gonna get you! Cap-Snake, he's. . .I don't know where I was going with that.

It's the Avengers against the Serpent Society (plus Cap-Snake.) That's it, that's the issue. The key seems to be the Avengers do demonstrate teamwork and cooperation, where each member of the Society fights on their own. Anaconda's clearly not going to be able to hold Hercules, but no one leaps in to try and blind him or poison him for the time he is caught. Meanwhile, because Hawkeye's holding back against Cap-Snake, Night Thrasher steps in to get Cap-Snake off his back. Which frees up Hawkeye to give She-Hulk some back-up against Titanoboa.

This feels like a place where the mini-series needed more space, because as unfamiliar as some of these characters ought to be with each other, you'd expect teamwork not to come so easily without practice. Also, speaking of Titanoboa, I kept expecting a surprise reveal on that guy's identity. He's strong and large, and able to shrug off punches from She-Hulk and attacks from the Wasp and Photon. But he also keeps boasting about how well he knows the Avengers and their tendencies. Which made me think it was some typically more cerebral villain who ganked Pym Particles or something. But if it's supposed to be anyone we've ever heard of, Orlando's not telling.

Wonder Man deals with the Serpent's Tears by. . .inhaling the lot of it, reasoning that he's not really flesh and blood, so it might not affect him. Given Pit Viper claimed it would affect the soul as well, the fact Simon's gamble works out would seem to imply certain things about his existence. I guess all the dying and returning has to have some drawbacks, depending on how critical you think a soul is.

Maybe Pit Viper can expound on it, if he's in any state after the one-two punch of feeling shocked that Mephisto might have sold him a bill of goods (shocked Pikachu face), and getting his body crushed by Lightspeed's rainbow trail. I though that trail was just light, immaterial, not solid like the trails that follow the bikes in TRON. Learn something everyday, too bad so much of it is of little use.

What I Bought 1/11/2025 - Part 2

Last Friday, once I got through a nerve-wracking drive to work in the snow that had me (not for the first time) questioning my life choices, I took a break for a walk at mid-morning. I got about two steps out the back door before being reminded that the frozen precip the previous weekend never melted back there. Slipped on the ice beneath the fresh snow and got to test the structural integrity of the back of my skull against the ice. Results: inconclusive.

In the meantime, here it is: The last comic from 2024. A first issue, no less. Oooh-la-la. We'll start up the Year in Review posts next Monday.

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #1, by Erica Schultz (writer), Giada Belviso (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - If you're not going to kick too, why even bother extending the toe claws?

Laura is not really settling into life after Krakoa. When she finds a place in the tree base the X-Men had in New York where people have been leaving letters asking for help, she decides to focus on that. So, that's the basic plot: have Laura try to help mutants now that there's no safe island nation. In this case, she's looking for a boy with the ability to give people different emotions, who was taken away from his sister. 

Laura finds the boy, but also finds the ones controlling him are mutants, too, which really pisses her off. I had pictured her as too jaded to be surprised by the notion of mutants exploiting each other for personal gain. But I wasn't keeping track of what she got up to on Krakoa, so maybe she really bought into the notion of mutant solidarity and is angry to see that fall apart.

Angry enough she's just bulling ahead into everything like the Juggernaut. She gets torn up and tossed around a fair bit, because she's fighting stupid. She didn't make any attempt to figure out what she was up against, just charged in and started slashing. She accuses a mutant who created a small safe space for mutants in Dubai of doing so out of guilty conscience. Guilty over not moving to Krakoa? Probably worked out all right for her. Laura does apologize later, though the vague way Polly uses the term "benefactor" makes me think that's going to be a big reveal at some point. By the end of the issue Laura's pursing another letter right into a fight with Elektra.

It all makes it look like Laura's just trying to keep moving so she doesn't have to deal with what losing Krakoa meant to her. Keep busy, do concrete things like helping specific people. Don't think about the people she couldn't protect from ORCHIS. (I'm honestly afraid to ask about Gabby/Honey Badger/Scout's current status.)

Belviso's art reminds of Humberto Ramos'. Mostly in the elongated faces (especially the mouths), and the elongated and angular limbs. The people Belviso draws aren't nearly as oddly proportioned as Ramos' would get, but it has that same sort of feel. I'm not sure if that's a good thing; I was never a Ramos fan (going from Mark Buckingham to him on Peter Parker: Spider-Man gave me whiplash worse than cracking my head on the ice did.) But he clearly has his fans, and Belviso's can handle the quieter moments fine from what I saw here. I'm less sure about the action sequences, which could be a problem if Schultz is going to keep having Laura pick fights.

Random Back Issues #103 - Wolverine #51

Well, the graphics still beat what you'd get in the Metaverse, and Xavier's less morally compromised than Zuckerberg. Barely.

We are just past the big 50th issue showdown with Shiva, the killer robot, which is presumably trying to track down and kill Sabretooth. In the meantime, the X-Men are trying to get a handle on what the revelation that many of Logan's memories were faked on a bunch of movie sets had on him.

Results are either troubling, or totally rad, depending on your perspective. Wolverine hacks through the highest settings the Danger Room's got with barely any change in his vitals. Logan knows it, too, so Xavier offers him a new challenge, 'virtual reality visualizer and sensors.' Because putting Logan in a big metal helmet with a red eyescreen never ends badly.

Logan's confronted with, as he puts it, 'refugees from a Dire Straits video' forms of Ogun and Shigen, and the helmet supplies dialogue based on his own mind. The longer it goes, the more Kubert shifts from a cubic, 80s computer graphics look to his normal style, as Xavier and Forge add Sabretooth and Lady Deathstrike to the mix.

Not that it matters, Logan takes the quartet out in 4.839 seconds. Forge notes his emotional pattern has regressed to that of a berserker, while retaining more sophisticated combat skills, using the comparison of doing a gold medal gymnast routine while beating four chess computers.

It's only after the "fight" is over and Logan's just howling that Storm and Cyclops decide this is something they don't want to be a part of and leave the control room. As though that would stop Charles Xavier when he's got a bad idea! But really, Xavier thinks this gruff, more hostile Logan, may be the real Logan, reasserting itself with the memory blocks removed.

Or maybe Logan's just an asshole. He gives Jubilee the brush-off to go to a nearby dive bar, where he meets a blonde woman in a tight mini-skirt. He correctly notes she's not there to shoot pool with, 'no hoi-polloi'. After some quick discussion of the selection on the jukebox (and the tendency of musicians to die in plane crashes), and some dancing, they retire to her motel.

Jubilee, meanwhile, can't sleep and goes rollerblading into town, finding Logan's motorcycle parked outside the Cloud 9 motel. Against her judgment, she investigates, and who emerges from a motel room but Jean Grey! Hey, timeline-wise, we're about 25 issues from Logan getting his Admantium torn out, which means we aren't too far ahead of that whole thing where Psylocke (for some reason) tried to seduce Cyclops. Jean's just getting pre-emptive revenge, for that or the messing around with Emma Frost thing.

Logan's motorcycle mysteriously falls over seconds later (and Logan refers to it as his, 'scoot', which is the same term Jubilee used when he brushed her off, but looks damn weird coming from Wolverine's voice bubble), by which time we know the blonde/Jean Grey is actually Mystique! Jubilee figures something's up about the time she reaches the Mansion and finds Jean Grey heading out on a morning jog.

As for Mystique, she's acting a little odd. Logan claims to have known it was her in the bar, due to her scent, and Mystique mocks the notion he accepted her offer strictly for business. It also turns out she impersonated Silver Fox at some point during their fucking, which is mostly confusing to me in terms of how Mystique knows about Logan's old girlfriend. Did he go to the trouble of describing her? "No, the hair needs to be silkier. The headband is darker red. Damn, Raven, are you even trying?"

Anyway, Logan claims he played along because he could smell fear and wanted to know what's happening. Mystique keeps speaking in vague terms about someone having gone off the deep end, and she can't use the person's name, because they'll know and track her down. Logan finds it unlikely the person in question could pick out their name among all the everyday uses. It's not that common a word, is it? Spiral?

Oh. Well. Never mind then.There's also a subplot about the Wolverine robot Albert and Elsie-Dee repairing their stealth ship and going to do. . .something, with a big white werewolf in tow. No clue what that was about.

[12th longbox, 160th comic. Wolverine (vol. 1) #51, by Larry Hama (writer), Andy Kubert (penciler), Dan Green (inker), Steve Buccellato (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letterer)]

Sunday Splash Page #265

 

"Out of the Mouths of Smelly Canadians," in Iron Fist/Wolverine #3, by Jay Faerber and Jamal Igle (storytellers), Rich Perrotta (inker), Liquid (colorist), Starky and Comicraft's Troy (letterer)

Like an unexpected rain that brings on a sharp freeze, killing all your flowers, Iron Spring is here to upend your day with a very early-2000s mini-series meant to tie up some loose ends from both Ostrander's Heroes for Hire and Faerber's New Warriors, with Wolverine along in the attempt to goose sales.

The chi of Shou-Lao was stolen from Danny (see what I mean about that being a recurring theme?) by the snot-nosed punk doing the DragonBall Z homage on the far right. Then Junzo and his sorcerer mentor were able to bring K'un-Lun onto Earth, so it began to overlap and override Tokyo.

Iron Fist and Luke Cage show up to try and fix things, though Danny mostly succeeds in getting his ass repeatedly kicked by the kid. Captain America shows up with SHIELD, because an ancient-looking city with dragons appearing from thin air is a big deal. Stark's company was Stark-Fujikawa at this time, so he gets involved. Wolverine shows up because the Hand are working for the kid, and we know how Wolverine likes stabbing ninjas. Logan brings Psylocke because she hates the Hand for stuff they did to her previously.

Everyone has a reasonably viable excuse to show up, but it still feels overstuffed when you throw in the ninjas, dragons, the kid and his sorcerer buddy, Danny's uncle Yu-Ti. Jamal Igle manages to keep the many, many fight scenes broken up so that the reader can have a general idea of who is doing what in relation to everyone else.

This being set in Japan, Sunfire is contractually obligated to show up. He agrees to work with everyone, for about five minutes. Once he learns this is somewhat Danny's fault, he reverts to, "Begone outsiders! Sunfire will protect his homeland without your help!" As he does. Captain America smacks him in the puss with his shield. As he does.

The fusion of K'un-Lun with Tokyo can be undone if Danny or Junzo die. Danny appears to make the sacrifice, but there's some deus ex machina that brings him back. K'un-Lun also doesn't entirely disappear, and the kid still has the chi of Shou-Lao. Neither of those two points will ever be mentioned again, to my knowledge. You'd think Junzo might be a loose end for Danny to pursue, or someone who could show up trying to claim Danny's legacy, but everybody always reverts to Davos for that.

Danny, Misty and Luke decide to stick around in Tokyo to look after the dragons and handle any other residual problems. Again, never referenced. There's a six-issue mini-series in 2004 and Danny's roaming on his own with the Iron Fist back in his possession.

The next thing after that was Immortal Iron Fist, which really should have rendered all the, "Danny loses the Iron Fist" nonsense moot. If he and Orson Randall could use it simultaneously, because just a small bit of the chi flows into each of them, rather than residing solely in one, then you can't very well steal it away, can you?

Sibling Differences

We talked a bit about volume 2 of Mariko Tamaki's X-23 series back in Sunday Splash Page #21. Where the first six issues larger focused on Laura and Gabby's connection in terms of them working together and looking out for each, this volume (which consists of the remaining 6 issues) concentrates on their differences.

Tamaki brings back Robert Chandler, the villain of the first six issues of Tom Taylor's All-New Wolverine, and the one responsible for cloning Gabby and her sisters from Laura's genetic material. Since that went poorly, Chandler is taking the approach of making cyborg Laura clones from damaged genetic material. No healing factor and seemingly no natural claws, but I assume they have her other natural athletic abilities, as well as being more docile, loaded with weaponry and armor. Best of all, the lack of healing factor means people will have to keep buying them!

This whole scenario does not end well for Chandler, which, is fine. It also doesn't end well for the first of the "X-Assassins" Laura and Gabby encountered, who Gabby had grown fond of and wanted to help make a life for herself, as Laura had for her. Laura dismisses X-Assassin as just a weapon, which is a harsh assessment coming from her. While Gabby spends most of a night singing to the X-Assassin and telling "her" stories, Laura keeps insisting X-Assassin is an "it".

Of course, Logan never shied away from acting like he was better than Deadpool or any number of other victims of government experimentation, so Laura comes by that hypocrisy naturally.

The X-Assassin never speaks, other than with simply gestures, but Diego Orlotegui's art would seem to lean towards Gabby's point of view. The X-Assassin never shows any hostility, spending most panels with either a vacant look, or one of vague sadness and resignation. But there are a few panels where Gabby does or says something, and it's followed by a silent reaction panel from the X-Assassin. her watching the young girl thoughtfully. It's enough I understand Gabby being sad over how things end.

That covers the first four issues, with the remaining two trying to deal with the fallout. Gabby is processing her grief and shutting Laura out in the process. Laura, as her internal narration notes, doesn't know how to deal with this delicately. So it turns into a shouting match where Gabby accuses Laura of just making the decision on her own that no one else gets the chance the two of them got. Which leads to Gabby storming out (and taking Jonathan the Wolverine with her), and trying to rescue a bunch of turkeys that have been spliced with X-23's DNA as well.

Yeah, I know. It's kind of hilarious in its absurdity, and maybe Tamaki means it as a sign of Gabby's general youth and way of looking at things, but I'm not sure it lands. Turkeys might be a bridge too far of a connection to insist on. Although the idea of trying to use the healing factor as a method for organ replacement, and trying it on turkeys to start, actually makes some sense. It's essentially what Butler was doing with Deadpool in Duggan and Posehn's run. Either way, it does highlight both some similarities and differences in the sisters. Laura is focused on finding the people who do these experiments and stopping them, while Gabby seems more concerned with helping their victims.

But both of them demonstrate very black-and-white views for most of the volume. Gabby says she wants to help all of them (though she had no problem fighting the other X-Assassins swarming Laura), while Laura seemingly is fine not worrying about any of them after Gabby. 

Orlotegui's art is well-suited for the story. His lines aren't overly busy, but he can be detailed when he needs it, and it's the little details that help highlight the differences in Gabby and Laura. Gabby wears a hairband with some little monster face on it all the time, and favors pajamas and baggy hoodies with X-logos, while Laura, when not in her mission outfit, goes for very plain tank tops and the like. Gabby carries nunchaku with her on missions. Why does she need them? I assume because it's fun to hit people with them. Especially if you have a healing factor, so there's no permanent damage when you accidentally smack yourself in the face. 

That helps add some levity to the story, keeps it from being too depressing. It also helps to demonstrate why these two live together. Tamaki mentions things in passing about how they argue and fight like sisters, with it being cranked up to 11 because they're both Wolverines. But there's still affection, and this version of Laura's apartment looks much more lived-in than it did at the beginning of All-New Wolverine.

Saturday Splash Page #28

 

"Tales from the Collector's Storage Unit," in Wolverine and Jubilee #3, by Kathryn Immonen (writer), Phil Noto (artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

Hey, remember when Marvel had vampires attack the X-Men on their little island nation near San Francisco? No? Sure you do, it was when they made Dracula look more like a Final Fantasy villain. Anyway, point being, to show the event "mattered", there had to be a casualty. And lo, did Jubilation Lee become one of the blood-drinking undead. And there was much consternation. among the muckety-mucks on Utopia about whether Jubilee could be trusted.

Which is, as I recall the same issue X-23 was experiencing at the start of her first ongoing series. Mutant teenagers are surprisingly unfriendly and cliquish. Maybe not so surprising if I focus on the "teenager" part instead of the "mutant" part.

Anyway, the healing factor in Wolverine's blood for some reason blunts the vampire instincts or influence, so he's pretty much her keg, and her keeper. Which puts Jubilee in a rebellious mood. Noto's art is pretty good at capturing the mix of emotions Jubilee is dealing with. The despair and frustration especially. Both of which get her mixed up with some other vampire, which gets her banished to some weird space as a way to force Logan to do something for that vampire lady. There's a dragon involved, or at least something that looks like a dragon. I think the fact Logan and the audience are unclear on what this accomplished for the vampire lady is intentional on Immonen's part. Jubilee got used, and nobody's really sure to what purpose. But the whole experience lets her actually try to make decisions for herself and adjust to her new circumstances.

It's a little hard to parse what Logan's trying to accomplish. On the one hand, he's using his time-honored tradition of being an asshole until the teenage girl stands up for herself. Which does lead to an amusing bit where Jubilee threatens to hit him with his own motorcycle, but ends up just trashing it so he has to walk all the way home. On the other hand, when she does buck against the leash he's putting on her, he yells at her, drugs her, and drags her off to Siberia. But no one's ever said Logan's a good role model. Yet they keep putting him in charge of children.

Rockslide's in there as a supporting cast/comic relief person. I feel like Noto struggles to draw Rockslide. Kind of a reverse Greg Land, who is better when he has to draw things he can't photo-reference. The proportions are all off somehow, and while I imagine in real life a face made of rock wouldn't be terribly expressive, Noto's artwork doesn't lend itself to the liberties that would address that. 

Rockslide seems to want to help Jubilee, and occasionally says something profound, but mostly just acts like a moron and gets intimidated by Wolverine. I suppose he's just more obvious about the fact he really has no idea how to help her. Everyone's trying, but they're hampered because all their approaches are about minimizing risk or the level of threat Jubilee poses, not actually guiding her through this.

Saturday Splash Page #27

 

"Looks Painful," in Wolverine (vol. 1) #75, by Larry Hama (writer), Adam Kubert (penciler), Mark Farmer, Dan Green, and Mark Pennington (inkers), Steve Buccellato (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letterer)

Ah, Wolverine. I liked this character so much when I was younger. He gave Cyclops a lot of grief, which is always a plus. He was OK with being violent, which was very appealing to me at certain agres. For someone who was also into Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers and thought swords and weapons like that were cool, the character who came with his own set of swords, in his fists, was very cool.

I think the earliest issue of his book I owned was #29, because the cover looks familiar. I can't remember a thing about the story, other than I think there's a conversation around a campfire. Beyond that, I grabbed scattered issues here and there over the years. The one above, where we learn Logan had bone claws beneath the adamantium all along. Issue #50, with the cover that had the 3 jagged tears (actual tears, not ones that were drawn on there) so you could see part of what was supposed to be a personnel file underneath. Part of a story where Joe Fixit Hulk comes to Madripoor. The Acts of Vengeance tie-ins by the Archie Goodwin, John Byrne, Klaus Janson team.

I did buy Wolverine monthly for a long time, starting probably in late 2000. Roughly when Frank Tieri started writing it. That wasn't why, I didn't know Tieri's work, just coincidence. Sean Chen drew a lot of those issues, and some of them were OK stories. There's big throwdown with Sabretooth when Logan's healing factor is on the fritz that also answers his questions about what memories Weapon X took from him (the answer: none). A team-up with Alpha Flight that wasn't too bad. There was a knock-off Bloodsport arc that I enjoyed at the time, but looking back, pointlessly killed some minor villain types to no real purpose. Which would have been a waste if, you know, anyone at Marvel paid attention to who was dead or not.

Suffice it to say, none of it has retained a place in my collection.

I bought it all the way until that volume ended, and then continued on into the new volume that started almost immediately after. Through Greg Rucka's run with Darick Robertson, on into Millar and Romita Jr.'s stretch, and finally bailed out during Daniel Way's story that introduced the notion Logan had a son (who turned out to be Daken) he'd forgotten about, whose mother was killed by Winter Soldier. Way's run felt pointless. Millar's was his usually BIG ACTION, Michael Bayesque spectacle. Enjoyable on its own, but no weight to it. I know, would I expect different from Millar? Not now, but I didn't know any better then.

Rucka's run, at least the first 12 issues, hung on the longest. Ultimately I didn't care about the FBI agent he introduced as a temporary love interest (who seemed pretty much like every female character Rucka writes), or yet another story about Logan questioning his humanity because he just finished killing a shitload of people in another berserker fury. Especially since Logan doesn't stop killing shitloads of people, which kind of undercuts his concerns. Either make peace with it or stop doing it.

Saturday Splash Page #21

 

"The (Metaphorical) Claws Come Out," in X-23 (vol. 2) #11, by Mariko Tamaki (writer), Diego Orlotegui (penciler), Walden Wong (inker), Chris O'Halloran (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

After her first ongoing series ended, Laura Kinney had to wait five years to get another, by which time she had a different codename. All New Wolverine ran for 35 issues, and we'll get to it (someday). Almost as soon as it ended, though, she got shunted back to her old codename, and another ongoing series to go with.

This series still focused on Laura trying to deal with her history as a designed weapon. But where previously that had been through either trying to bring her under their control, or focused on the trigger scent that made her go berserk, this series looked at those who were trying to make more weapons like her, minus that inconvenient free will.

But Tamaki seems more interested in the differences in opinion between Laura and Gabby, who is a younger clone version of her. Despite that, differences in age and experience mean they see things differently (which is always something I find interesting to play with about clones.) Not just that Gabby is more versed in pop culture references and phrases (I feel like Tamaki downgrades Laura's knowledge there, as she doesn't even know "K.O." stands for "knockout.") Gabby talks about their birthdays, and Laura dismisses it, acts as though they don't even have birthdays because they're just clones.

More critically, especially in the second half of the book, they see things differently when it comes to who counts as family. When they encounter a clone of Laura with cybernetics but no healing factor, Gabby treats her as another potential sister. Someone to befriend and help the way Laura did for her. Laura sees the "X-Assassin" as just a machine, a damaged weapon. She's not family, she's not even a person. The end of that story would seem to argue in Gabby's favor, although it's undercut somewhat by the fact the X-Assassins were being mass produced and neither she nor Laura hesitated to kill the hell out of all the others.

Juann Cabal drew the first five issues, which involve another group of clones, the Stepford Cuckoos. There's a one-shot drawn by Georges Duarte about Gabby and Laura going undercover at an elementary school. Then Diego Orlotegui took over as artist for the remaining six issues. Cabal's art is a bit closer to photorealistic, his version of Laura is bit bulkier. As I noted in a review of one of All New Wolverine's tpbs, you can see a little more of Logan's genetics in her build when Cabal draws her compared to most artists. Orlotegui exaggerates expressions a bit more, there's more comic effect in his work, when it's warranted. The last two issues have a bit of humor in them, even as they're a continuation of the argument between Gabby and Laura.

OK, we are done with the Xs! Whoo!

Saturday Splash Page #20

 

"Wolverines Can't Fly, Wolverines Can't Fly!" in X-23 (vol. 1) #12, by Marjorie Liu (writer), Sana Takeda (artist), Cory Petit (letterer)

Laura Kinney (aka the sorta Wolverine clone/daughter) had been in a couple mini-series through the mid-2000s, focused primarily on her origins and how she got to the point of being where she was in the NYX mini-series which was her debut. This was her first ongoing series, running for 21 issues.

Marjorie Liu wrote the series, this being the same time when she was writing her Black Widow ongoing (see Sunday Splash Page #89). It's at an interesting moment for X-23. Her stint on Cyclops' Stabbity Kill Team had just wrapped up, as someone finally realized having the girl raised as a weapon treated as a weapon was maybe not the best strategy for her. Liu has Laura realize she doesn't really relate to the other kids on Utopia (since this was also during that stretch of X-Book stuff), and they're mostly afraid of her. The adults mostly treat her as something to either pity or monitor. A beaten dog that might bite anyone's hands.

A rough confrontation with a demon running around in Logan's body (as a result of some nonsense Jason Aaron cooked up to explain how Logan survives some of the crap he does) helped convince her it was time to go see who she was some place where people didn't know and immediately judge her.

Liu picks Gambit of all characters to act as Laura's travel buddy. Presumably because Gambit has done plenty of questionable things, and to a certain extent, he was raised that way, what with da T'ieves Guild (or however you would spell his accent phonetically) and all. Gambit does have some experience acting as a mentor to a teenage girl (teen Storm), but isn't necessarily going to do things the same way as Logan. He's a little more lighthearted, encouraging Laura to enjoy herself, trying to be playful.

A decent chunk of the series revolves around Laura dealing with the legacy of her existence, that she was created to be a weapon. She took a lot of lives (though not all the ones she was ordered to), and there are still people who want to profit from her one way or the other. So that's part of it, her trying to figure out how to move forward from that. 

Liu also runs Laura into her, I guess half-brother, Daken. Gets a look at someone who is still a weapon, but tells himself it's solely on his terms. Logan eventually pops up, minus the demonic possession, but with Vampire Jubilee in tow. Which is its own opportunity for contrast. Not only between Laura and Jubilee (the former started as a weapon or creature of instinct and is trying to learn to be a person, the latter is reversed) but how Logan tends to act around Laura versus how he acts with Jubilee. There's a team-up involving Spider-Man and the Invisible Woman that had to do with the Enigma Force, and Liu draws a line under the relationship Laura had with Hellion at some point that I couldn't identify. Laura's growing and he doesn't fit, or he's still stuck in the past, or hasn't gotten over losing his hands somehow.

As with most Marvel comics at that point, the book goes through a bunch of artists. Will Conrad draws most of the first six issues, where Laura realizes she needs out of Utopia and runs afoul of Miss Sinister. Conrad's version looks the most underfed and haunted. Not exactly bags under the eyes, but she sees a lot, and she's exhausted inside.

Sana Takeda draws most of issues 7-12 (including the Paris jaunt with Jubilee), plus 3 out of 4 parts of Laura trying to babysit the Future Foundation kids, while Phil Noto draws 13-16 (which includes the first part of the babysitting story), plus issue 20 and 21. Takeda's work is very pretty, and manga-inspired, but Laura typically looks either bored or just out of it. Noto's art is, well, I know a lot of people like it, but I've never thought it was great for storytelling. Great for static images or reaction shots where you need emotion, but not so much if there's any action.