C&C Comic Review - "Marvel's X-23" Comic Book Series

C&C Comic Review - "Marvel's X-23" Comic Book Series

The Weapon X Program didn't end with Wolverine...

By Steven Carter

 

Ahead of next years "X-Men: Apocalypse" film, I thought it would be appropriate to review a series of comics that took me by surprise. I downloaded the first issue in the series for free but simply had to buy the rest to see the story reach its conclusion. The series was written by the duo of Christopher Yost and Craig Kyle and illustrated by Billy Tan. X23 is a clone of Wolverine. This series covers her dark origin. 

 
Released back in 2005, the 6 part series just kept on teasing me with more secrets, twists and revelations. It also kept this up without using any other mainstream characters to boost X23’s profile. Weirdly, the only mention of Wolverine was in the first book. You see him in a scene where he had just had Adamantium bonded to his bones. During his berserker rage, he kills one of the scientists involved in the weapon X programme. 

We follow the exploits of this scientist’s son Zander Rice. Zander has grown up and followed his fathers footsteps, continuing to work for the “diabolical human killing machine” company. Since the colossal failure (or success) of the weapon X programme, they have been doing their utmost to recreate a living weapon. Zander had just put in his requests for more human specimens when his Boss/adoptive father introduces the company's newest employee, Dr Sarah Kinney; A leading authority on Mutant genetics. She proposes that they go in a new direction. Instead of implanting weapon X’s genes into a human subject, they should instead build a clone embryo.

 Eventually, on the 23rd attempt, they manage to create a successful female embryo, much to Zander’s dismay. Zander is tasked with finding a surrogate mother. Full of anger at the fact the project was given the green light, he threatens Dr Kinney and gives her a choice. She either becomes the surrogate, or the embryo will not survive the night. Kinney found herself no longer the experimenter, she was now part of the experiment itself. 

The other 5 issues cover X23’s training and eventual graduation as a deadly assassin, all before she reaches her teenage years. There is an interesting element added in the form of a “trigger scent”. A special batch of pheromones that when exposed to X23, cause her to go into a mindless rage and kill anything standing near her, similar to Wolverine’s berserker rage. 

Zander really turns out to be a proper nasty piece of work. You do feel empathy for him in the first issue when he was a child, where he receives the news that his father had been killed by Wolverine, but that quickly dissipates as you read on. Who knew that the son of an evil scientist would turn out to be just as evil eh? The relationship between Kinney and X23 is the highlight of the story. Despite the fact Kinney was merely a surrogate mother, it never takes away the fact she gave birth to X23. In her eyes, X23 is her own flesh and blood. She builds a mother-daughter bond with X23 in secret. The security cameras show her reading “The Art of War” when in actual fact, she was reading “Pinocchio”.

The narrative is fleshed out with extracts from a letter that Kinney has written to X23, almost like a confession. The love that is shared between the pair is in stark contrast to the cruelty X23 is shown from Zander. He treats her like scum. All-out stick treatment. When the moment came for him to lace X23’s claws with Adamantium, he prevents her from having any kind of anaesthetic and just before surgery, he whispers to her “This is for my Father.” There is a serious chip on this guy’s shoulder! The plot’s climax in the final issue is both highly rewarding and gut-wrenchingly sad at the same time. It certainly does the job in keeping you hooked right up to the final page. I liked the style of the artwork too. Tan has a great way of showing off the characters emotions and the action shots are spot on. 

This series gets a well deserved

9/10