GENERATION X-23 #3
“A Numbers Game, part 3”
Writer: Jody Houser
Artists: Jacopo Camagni & Marco Renna
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Laura lies seemingly dead on the floor, and Gabby is held back by two of the Generated. The one on the right is X-66; the one on the left is closest to X-92 but far too tall. This scene doesn’t happen in the issue.

The issue opens with an obituary for artist Jacopo Camagni, who died in March; he drew the first seven pages of this story.

WOLVERINE:

Laura is still bedridden at the start of the issue, so she must have taken a remarkable amount of damage when X-73 blew up last issue. That said, she doesn’t seem to have any significant injuries by the start of the issue – perhaps once she gets back to a certain level of recovery, her healing returns to normal speed.

She seems to bond best with X-92 (the one who doesn’t speak); she talks about how she used to be virtually silent when she was being used as a weapon by the Facility, and certainly X-92 seems to be the Generated member who comes close to Laura’s own social discomfort.

She takes real offence to X-Infinite experimenting on samples of her skin without her permission, even when he gives her an apparently sincere explanation that he’s hoping to use her healing factor to save the Generated from their degenerative conditions. She reads him as running secret experiments without her consent and finds him suspiciously similar to the Facility. She did say last issue that she “take[s] apersonal interest when anyone experiments with mutant DNA”, and apparently this counts. However, she gets a lot more sympathetic once he tells her his back story (see below), at which point she starts seeing him as someone who’s blaming himself for the things he was made to do.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Scout. She indulges X-99’s request for a two-person “slumber party”, though neither of them have any real experience of what this might involve. She’s happy to have nail polish on her claws. When the Facility storm the building, she pretty much surrenders instantly; Laura takes this to be an attempt to protect the inexperienced non-combatants, since the Facility are trying to capture them rather than kill them.

X-80. The mutant with time-related powers who seemingly died in issue #1 appears to Laura in another time distortion at the start of the issue, and then disappears again. Her single line of dialogue is “Hmm, no, you’re not there yet.” This doesn’t seem to fit into anything we saw her say before.

Her fragmented dialogue in issue #1 did include “Saw it all in my room,” though. Laura finds her room in this issue, and it’s covered in post-it notes (none of which we can read); all leading to an “Infinite” mark on the ceiling. The suggestion seems to be some sort of vision which she’s expressed in a rather garbled way.

X-92. The silent one who’s previously only appeared pering through a portal. Laura refers to them as “they”. Laura’s speech about how she used to be virtually mute seems to win their trust, and they take Laura to X-80’s room – where we see them in full for the first time. They rescue Laura and X-Infinite when the Facility attack the building. They seem to be genuinely unable to speak, and communicate by pointing even when actively trying to get something across. When Laura gives X-Infinite his pep talk at the end of the issue, X-92 gives him a hug – they seem to believe in his good intentions.

X-Infinite. He doesn’t trust Laura to co-operate in his efforts to save the Generated, and sees it as completely reasonable to experiment on samples taken from parts of her body that were blown off last issue. (He seems to suggest that he would have drawn the line at actually taking a sample from her directly without her consent, but maybe he just didn’t need to.)

Last issue, he didn’t join in the group’s training session, and when pushed, he told Laura that “Being a scientific genius doesn’t exactly lend itself to combat.” However, when attacked by Laura, he’s able to dodge all of her attacks and fight back with energy blades; Laura has to resort to setting off an explosion in order to take him down.

According to X-Infinite, the Facility scientists forced him to give the Generated their secondary mutant powers, which is what’s killing them. He regards this as his fault, and his responsibility. His reason for not leaving the Facility may simply have been that if he left, he wouldn’t have access to a lab. He didn’t mention his own role in this last issue and it seems likely that the other Generated didn’t know about it – last issue, he said that the Generated were “crafted by humans”, and X-74 talked about “the scientists” being responsible for their powers.

His line at the end of the previous issue – that Laura would have to answer for X-73’s death – isn’t really followed up on. It may just have been his way of trying to assert his authority.

X-99. She enjoys her “slumber party”. She doesn’t see any point in doing her own nails because it would be wiped clean the next time she used her powers to change appearance. She’s baffled to learn that her fake reports to the Facility (which were supposed to be assuring everyone that all was well) apparently wenen’t convincing people after all. When attacked by Facility soldiers, she tries to use her powers to become a copy of Scout, but gets caught before she can do anything about it.

X-66 and X-74 both have brief appearances in which they lose rather quickly to the Facility soldiers. X-74 ‘s room seems to have superheroes painted on the walls. (The meeting room in issue #2 had something similar, but this is clearly a bedroom.)

VILLAINS:

Facility 23. Although the Generated claimed last issue that they were keeping the Facility at bay with fake reports that all was well, the Facility show up here to arrest them all. It’s possible that it was an act all along, or that they were always waiting for Laura and Gabby to show up – but it could also simply be that Laura drew their attention when she trashed all the security robots in issue #1.

Most of the Facility forces seem to be ordinary soldiers with conventional weapons, but one is some sort of cyborg centipede scorpion woman, who doesn’t get a name.