GENERATION X-23 #1
“A Numbers Game”
Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Jacopo Camagni
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Wolverine (Laura) and Scout fight robot Wolverines.

This book is effectively the continuation of Laura Kinney: Wolverine with a new creative team. A group of new X-numbers is being added to the cast, but they don’t make much more than a cameo in this issue, so for the moment this is effectively still Laura’s book.

WOLVERINE:

To be honest, there’s not a huge amount to say about this first issue, annotations-wise. Naturally enough, Laura is still dutifully protecting mutants from mobs, and working with her sister Scout. She still regards Kiden Nixon as her oldest and best friend and breaks off to investigate when she thinks Kiden might be in the area – however, the possible romantic angle in NYX seems to have been quietly dropped. When she concludes that other mutants are being created from mutant DNA in the same way that she was, she’s immediately keen to stop more people from being treated like weapons and sets off to deal with it.

While Laura doesn’t mind bringing Scout along to fight routine mobs, she seems to try to give her the slip when she might be facing something more serious, attempting to shield her from further trauma. She acknowledges that this might be overprotective.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Scout. Has no interest in being protected by Laura and tails her with no difficulty. She doesn’t even let Laura finish explaining the plot before charging on into the facility.

Celia. The mutant that they rescue at the start seems to recognise them and asks if she’s getting to join the X-Men. (She might simply be reacting to the X-logo on Wolverine’s costume.)

Kiden Nixon. She doesn’t appear, but Laura assumes at first that the time distortions are to do with her – and claims to pick up her scent momentarily.

X-80. The woman actually responsible for the time distortion says that she doesn’t have a name because she hasn’t picked one yet – presumably, like the other subjects, she’s just “X-number”. We can see “X-80” tattooed on the side of her head when she accelerates her ageing and dies. She wears a tattered red hood over ordinary clothes, and has bandages on her forearms. At least one of the distortions is showing an alternate timeline (the Age of Apocalypse), but others seem to be the past and future. Laura concludes, plausibly enough, that X-80 is the result of experiments with Kiden’s DNA, in the same way that she was created using Logan’s DNA, and Scout was created using hers.

The Facility. The five other characters who show up at the end are other X-numbers. Laura claims that the base smells like the Facility where she grew up. However, despite the robot Lauras guarding the place, there seem to be no scientists there – they have the control room and they regard the robots as their property. They seem very excited to be meeting X-23, and refer to her by that name, not as Wolverine – whether that’s because they don’t know about her wider life or because they ascribe particular importance to her similarity to them, it’s hard to say.

Their numbers aren’t given in this issue, but they were given in pre-release publicity:

• The bird girl is X-66.
• The guy with the reflective skin and the fire swirling around his hands is X-73.
• In front of him, the girl with energy balls in (or near) her hands is X-74. Presumably there’s some significance to the fact that they have back to back numbers.
• The purple guy emerging from the portal in the ceiling is X-92.
• The girl who’s really excited to meet Laura is X-99.
• The man who complains about the property damage is X-∞

VILLAINS:

An anti-mutant mob appears at the start of the issue; Laura says that they’ve been dealing with similar mobs for a while now, implying that there’s some sort of organisation here. The actual mob members seem to be mundane members of the public, though.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES:

• The double page spread showing versions of Laura from left to right appears to show her in assorted costumes from different parts of her career.
  • On the far left is Laura as X-23 when she was in the Facility, as shown in the X-23 miniseries.
  • Next is a Laura in street clothes – this is evidently meant to represent the period between her escaping the Facility and meeting the X-Men, but rather than do the obvious thing and use one of her outfits from NYX, this outfit is from the Marko Djurdjevic variant cover of X-23: Target X #1.
  • Next is Laura in a Fang costume from Uncanny X-Men #450.
  • Next is Laura in her Utopia-era X-Force costume.
  • Next is Laura in her current costume.
  • There are two other Lauras after that with their back to us, presumably future iterations.
• The image that Laura sees when she first approaches X-80 seems to be the Age of Apocalypse versions of Kitty Pryde and Colossus.