Writer: Marjorie Liu
\nArtist: Sana Takeda
\nLetterers: Clayton Cowles and Cory Petit
\nEditor: Jeanine Schaefer<\/p>\n
See, I said I’d get to some of these storylines sooner or later…<\/p>\n
When I read the final issue of this three-parter, I thought it was a bit of a mess. \u00a0Reading the arc again, though, I’m coming round to it. \u00a0It has its problems – and they’re mainly in part 3 – but they don’t really undermine the central story Marjorie Liu was telling here.<\/p>\n
The basic premise of this series is X-23 heading out into the big wide world in order to discover herself and generally try and evolve herself beyond being just a one-dimensional trained killer. \u00a0She has no particular idea how she wants to change or even any real understanding of what being different might be like. \u00a0She just wants to change.<\/p>\n
Or, possibly, throw in the towel and commit suicide. \u00a0The previous arc ended with her being reminded of how many people she killed on behalf of the Facility; this one starts with her vaguely toying with a death wish. \u00a0The point of this arc is to get her past that, and use guest star Jubilee to change her perspective and give her a reason to live… or at least a feeling that if she sticks with it she’ll find<\/em>\u00a0a reason to live.<\/p>\n And that works. \u00a0In fact, using Jubilee for the role turns out to be an excellent idea on a number of levels.<\/p>\n For one thing, as you may have gathered, X-23 is a bit of a mopey character, and so if this book’s going to be readable to anyone other than teenage poets with excessive eyeliner, she needs some more cheerful characters alongside her. \u00a0Gambit serves that role in the regular cast, but Jubilee helps too.<\/p>\n More to the point, while X-23 is technically part of Wolverine’s family, it’s Jubilee who was a full-blown sidekick and gets treated as a proper friend. \u00a0As Gambit helpfully points out, there’s an obvious contrast between the way Wolverine treats the two, which makes Jubilee simultaneously something for X-23 to aspire to, and a reminder of the sort of relationships she’s unable to form for herself (save for Gambit, who this book credits with the patience of saint as he continues working away at her). \u00a0As far as Wolverine’s concerned, he doesn’t treat X-23 as normal because she isn’t normal… but there’s a vicious circle there.<\/p>\n And there’s also just a neat bit of irony in having X-23 learn about reasons to live from a character who’s recently undead.<\/p>\n Liu also has another angle, which is that both girls had to leave Utopia in order to get perspective and develop as people. \u00a0Unfortunately the details of this get bogged down in what seems to be a garbled misreading of Kathryn Immonen’s Wolverine & Jubilee<\/em>\u00a0miniseries, and so that bit falls a bit flat. \u00a0But it’s hardly a fatal problem.<\/p>\n All this plays nicely into the book’s central story and gives us some sense that X-23’s actually making progress, however slowly. \u00a0Which is a reason to stick around. \u00a0The book is best when it’s dealing with the lead’s character development, even if it sometimes lurches into heavy-handedness (such as calling a storyline “Touching Darkness”, or giving Gambit dialogue like “You hurt me more when you tried you hurt yourself.”)<\/p>\n The guest stars here give artist Sana Takeda a chance to show a bit of range, since Jubilee’s about as far removed from X-23 as you can get. \u00a0This story needs an artist who can get across the contrast between the two simply in terms of their body language, and Takeda pulls that off nicely. \u00a0More generally, there’s a rather nice delicacy to her art which shifts gears easily to accommodate the sporadic bouts of bloodshed. \u00a0You can argue that her X-23 is a bit one-note, but then that’s kind of the way she’s written, and at least it’s a note that the art gets right.<\/p>\n So the bit that doesn’t altogether work: that would be the plot. \u00a0Or rather, the villains, since even Marjorie Liu isn’t pretending that they’re at the centre of this arc. \u00a0Their plot doesn’t even appear until halfway through part two, when the storyline about X-23’s “trigger scent” rears its head, and we get an oddball story about unnamed baddies marketing a version of the scent that turns anyone into a crazed killer. \u00a0Now, that’s actually quite a fun idea – there’s a lovely visual of a little baby ineffectually clawing at people – though I’m not sure the story has really sold me on the idea that it’s a particularly useful weapon. \u00a0And the head villain is evidently going to be a recurring character, so there’s that.<\/p>\n But having introduced this element in order to provide the arc with some conflict, the story doesn’t really seem to know what to do with it. \u00a0Once the characters have infiltrated the baddies’ HQ so that they can find the thingie that will lead them on to the next<\/em>\u00a0arc, the story starts flailing around looking for a way to build to a climax without actually resolving anything. \u00a0And so, much of part three involves the vastly expensive trigger scent being pumped onto a subway platform for no discernible reason other than to engineer a climax.<\/p>\n That bit doesn’t work, and since it’s the main focus of the final issue, it rather drags down the arc. \u00a0But read it as a whole and the strength of the earlier parts does come through. \u00a0A better story than it first seems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Touching Darkness” Writer: Marjorie Liu Artist: Sana Takeda Letterers: Clayton Cowles and Cory Petit Editor: Jeanine Schaefer See, I said I’d get to some of these storylines sooner or later… When I read the final issue of this three-parter, I thought it was a bit of a mess. \u00a0Reading the arc again, though, I’m coming 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