DOUGLAS: Speaking of comics involving briefly glimpsed chess games, here’s X-23 #1!
First order of business for a first issue: make me care. The point is that Laura wants to be regarded as a real live person and not a soulless killing machine, right? OK, that’s clear. But it gets hammered in with a long conversation with Storm, then a conversation with Wolverine, then a Scott-and-Emma scene, then a bunch of “Laura’s actually not socializing very well” sequences, plus an introductory fantasy sequence that seems tacked on to establish that this is a tie-in to Wolverine’s adventures in Hell, and a closing sequence that comes out of nowhere and has no context at all. I have a sense of the one-dimensional thing she’s trying to get away from, but not what she’s trying to move toward, or why she bothers hanging out with the X-Men at all–and I still haven’t been shown why I should care.
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Also, I understand why it’d make sense for the backup “history of X-23” piece to be written in Wolverine’s voice, but “using the find/replace function to replace every occurrence of ‘and” with a-n-apostrophe” is not the same thing as “writing in Wolverine’s voice.” Plus there’s now a Wolverine line at Marvel? I suppose if he’s appearing in 19 titles a month, that exists de facto, but it still seems like a bad idea for reasons I can’t quite articulate.
MIKE: OK, here is my official apology for recommending X-23!
And by that I mean that I actually had faith in X-23 as a viable character. This young clone of Logan had some stories in her–I was sure of it. It’s clear now that every time she steps into a lead role of any kind someone is going to have to overdo her anti-social characteristics and possibly even bring up the ridiculous ‘trigger scent” story.
I guess the story I’d like to read would be the Logan family reunion. Or, more specifically, it would be her, Logan and Daken as the sole members of X-Force. Now that would be fun. Watching X try to fit in with the New Mutants (or any team really) is not what I’m signed up for. If I ever see X as a regular member of any of the Avengers teams out there I’m not going to be happy.
As for the future of this ongoing series, I might give it a second issue to turn it all around, but this was basically the complete opposite of what I wanted so far. In the meantime I will go and watch more gameplay videos of X in the new Marvel vs Capcom 3 game. (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=28350)
GRAEME: My problem with X23 was more along the lines of “Please stop talking about all of these comics that I haven’t read before.” It felt like this wasn’t a story at all, but a place to reference lots of other stories, instead – Laura was part of X-Force: Go read their comic! Wolverine may or may not be in hell: Go read his comic! And so on. I may have been looking deeper than was intended by the creators, but I actually did enjoy the fact that it was the other female characters in the book who seemed to be the only ones who identified Laura as a person in her own right, as opposed to a weapon/girlfriend/thing to pity. If the book suddenly turned into something about gender politics within the X-Universe, that’d be an interesting direction that I’d want to read more of, but that’s very, very unlikely to actually happen, sadly.
I don’t know – I don’t think I could actually call this a “bad comic,” because it seemed so slight. It didn’t even provoke enough reaction in me to think it was bad, instead, it just felt like a continuity plug-in for an audience that I am definitely not a part of.
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(I thought that the back-up with Wolverine narration was a good idea, but done very badly – Firstly, if it’s supposed to be Wolverine narrating, actually saying that at some point would’ve been useful. Secondly, holy CRAP, but the character’s had a ridiculous history already. I actually felt less connected or interested in her the more I found out about her. Surely there was a better way to tell her story?)
EVAN: I liked this issue of X-23 more than I was expecting to. I mean, it was drawn well and the dialogue wasn’t terrible. Liu showed an understanding of the characters’ inter-relations and of Laura’s existential plight.
But nothing in here makes me want to care. I felt like I saw all of this with Logan 25 years ago, or however long it was. The big difference here is that Laura’s a lot younger and that she’s a girl. The fact that Cyclops is just as culpable in her weaponization as the bad guys were just doesn’t matter much. And I agree with Mike: unless all the Wolverine characters are playing off each other, they’re far less interesting in their own comics. Logan’s repentant, Daken’s a schemer, Laura’s the girl interrupted. I almost feel like you NEED to throw them together. But, inevitably, such a storyline would come with all the continuity baggage that deadens the proceedings in this issue.