REVIEW: X-23 #1 BY Marjorie Liu; Buy it. Read it. Fall in love with Laura Kinney and the X-Men all over again.

Reviews

X-23 #1
Written by Marjorie Liu
Art by Will Conrad & John Rauch

X-23 is a fantastic first issue, and well worth your money and time.

Like last week’s Daken, Marvel’s goal is simple: they want those of use who know the character to invest in her, and they want new readers to check out little Laura Kinney. There’s perhaps the added challenge of getting the jaded Marvel reader to give a damn about yet another Wolverine title, especially since six years later, X-23 is still a polarizing character. Younger female knock off of a more iconic character has to sting for some of the more loyal Marvel fans, considering the abuse May Parker has taken.

So I’m proud to say that X-23 succeeds on every level. Which of course means Marjorie Liu (once again) knocks her characters (all of them, not just Laura) and the story out of the park, and that the visual end of the storytelling goes beyond the requirements.

In this first issue, we kick start Part One of The Killing Dream. It could have been sticky. The title is coming out of the wake of the most recent X-Force run, and Laura is taking a lot of her baggage from those days and molding it in the coming issues. It’s coming on the heels of Second Coming, and Liu makes sure to remind us of the shared continuity in a way that pays respect to her own story, and yet acknowledges the rest of the X-Universe without being overbearing.

There are a lot of smart nods to X-23’s history throughout, and there’s a touching Storm moment (two, actually), a revealing Wolverine moment, and Cyclops shows why he’s the leader. You might not expect those moments in a solo title devoted to X-23, but they’re there, and they work to build Laura and her story as a whole. As I said, respectful without shoving it in our faces.

When I reviewed Daken last week, I mentioned how you can feel Liu texturing the characters in Daken. Well, now you can see her work her magic in full, on her own.

Will Conrad’s art is a natural for this title. There’s something distinctly…Marvel about his style. More so, it’s seems distinctly X-Men. His layouts are clean, his camera angles are inventive and really lend motion to the story, and most impressive of all, he can work seven or more panels on a page without disorienting the reader, and without sacrificing the art. His scenery and backgrounds are painstakingly detailed, and his mastery of body language really helps the dialogue heavy scenes tug at your heart. Character’s figures are varied, and everyone is facially distinct.

I haven’t enjoyed an X-Artist this much since Choi on X-Force or Cassady on Astonishing. I want to draw like Will Conrad.

Of course, line art isn’t everything when your book is in color, and John Rauch doesn’t let us or the linework down. Every scene uses it’s own tone and pallette, which really adds to the mood. The coloring is clean, and there’s a mastery of lighting that really polishes the package. Many of the dusk and dawn scenes have a wonderful otherwordly glow to them that is understated and sells that special brand of late night and early morning. Letterer Cory Petit is on hand, and I was actually impressed by the caption and word balloon layout. Yes, impressed.  I know a lof of you don’t really think too much about the colorists and letterers, but as an artist myself, and looking at the finished comic as a whole as art, I have to give respect when it’s due. X-23 is a masterpiece of a single issue, and I’m eager for art leaks of the next few issues.

Like her “father”, X-23 is a killer at her core. A weapon. An animal. So the story opens to make sure we’re aware of that, with a stylized dream sequence of Laura running through a wasteland, running from death. Until she finds her father, Wolverine, seated on a throne in a den of briars and brambles. He wants her to be his queen, his right hand. The world engulfs in flame and…

We’re back at the safe haven of Utopia, a sunset slipping away over the edge of the earth to bring the dark. We see Laura keeping her distance from her friends, hiding in the woods like the animal she believes she is. And while her peers seem to not notice her absence, the X-Men adults are concerned with her. We see Storm potentially set up in a mentor roll. Logan empathizes with Laura in his own, cruelly logical way. Even Emma Frost takes a stand for the poor girl, with a line that gave me the belief that Liu knows exactly how to handle Laura and where to take her from here:

“We never gave her a chance. We treated her exactly as her handlers would have. Like a weapon. A thing to be used. She’s always been used.”

Surge confronts Laura over her killing nature. She feels betrayed. The team seems torn over their friend and teammate, and again Liu gives us a fantastic unexpected character moment, from Dust of all the team. And Cyclops then charges Laura with an unusual task.

If X-23 has a flaw, it’s that the entire issue is set up for story through characterization, and it’s only until after I finished the issue, twice, and closed it, satisfied, that I realized: There wasn’t an action scene. You’d think X-23 would have an action scene (beyond the opening dream sequence), given that it’s X-23 starring. And it doesn’t. But I’m also not bothered by it, because the characterization and dialogue is so strong and defined, that I can’t help but feel that was Liu’s point.

X-23 is much more than a killing machine. Little Laura Kinney is a person. And now in her own title, we have a chance to really see her for the first time. Not only her, but how the X-Men and world around her view her. I’m excited for it.

Like Daken, there is a backup feature, to bring everyone up to speed on who X-23 is and where this book is taking off from. It’s to the point, easy to follow, and you get a bonus gallery of sorts of all the other artists that have given X-23 life over the years.

10/10

Buy it. Read it. Fall in love with Laura Kinney and the X-Men all over again. And if you never did, and you can’t with this issue, I don’t want to know you, you heartless, tasteless beast.

Matt Graham is a freelance contributor when he's not writing and illustrating for himself and others. A screenwriter and illustrator with experience in nearly every role of comic and film production, he spends most of his time rationalizing why it's not that weird to have a crush on the female teenaged clone of the hairiest, barrel chested man in comics.