Wolverine is the best there is at what he does, but sometimes, he’s a she. Logan was first introduced in The Incredible Hulk #181 and would go on to join the X-Men, becoming one of the most popular superheroes ever. There was a time when he was outselling everyone but Spider-Man on a regular basis and even that eventually happened as the Spider books went down the tubes in the mid to late ’90s. He became a household name and that was before an X-Man ever appeared on the big screen, thanks to X-Men: The Animated Series. He appeared in every comic you can think of; there was a time you couldn’t spit in a comic book store without hitting a guest appearance of the ol’Canucklehead. There are some amazing Wolverine stories and he’s more than earned his iconic status.
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Once a character reaches a certain level of popularity, copycats come a-calling and Wolverine was no different. Legions of pretenders to the claws showed up, but it wouldn’t be until 2003’s NYX that he would get a true successor – Laura Kinney, the girl known as X-23. We can forget her creepy child prostitute origin, but everything else about her was gold and she grew and grew in popularity. Eventually, Marvel decided to kill Wolverine in 2014 and put Laura in his place. She became an all-new Wolverine and starred in the book (wait for it) All-New Wolverine. During this period, Marvel was going all-in on legacy heroes and during Secret Empire, an otherwise maligned event, we got Generations, a series of one-shots that saw these legacy heroes go and meet their predecessors in the past. The two Wolverines teamed up, not for the first time, and readers were treated to a highlight for both of them.
Marvel Never Trusted Laura as Wolverine and This Issue Proved Them Wrong
Now, I’ve always enjoyed Marvel conspiracy theories, mostly because they always end up being true. The company does just plain weird stuff at times for weird reasons, and I’ve always felt the whole situation with the Death of Wolverine and Laura’s tenure as the second Wolverine was a little fishy. Logan was killed in 2014 in what can be best be described as excellent art with the most painfully average Wolverine travelogue story you can imagine attached to it. This death came during a period when the hero was a member of the X-Men and the Avengers, playing important roles in Hickman’s Avengers (Vol. 5), Wolverine and the X-Men, X-Men, Amazing X-Men, and the various solo books he starred in on a monthly basis. He was a cash cow.
There was no real reason to kill him. In 2014, at least. See, two years later, we’d get the second phase of the Inhumans push and the marginalization of the mutant side of the Marvel Universe. Suddenly, they were without their biggest star and their biggest representative in the greater Marvel Comics. In his place was Laura. Now, Laura was popular and had been for a little while, but she was a character with a not so great solo record. She couldn’t keep a series to save her life, so placing her in the boots of Marvel’s most popular mutant wasn’t the slam dunk it could have been.
Marvel didn’t have any trust in Laura and the proof was Old Man Logan (Vol. 2). There was no reason to bring Old Man Logan to the 616 universe, but the House of Ideas apparently couldn’t operate without a Logan. It was one thing to give him an ongoing (which ran longer than Laura’s), but they also put him in all the X-Men A-books. Laura was a B-tier; she didn’t even get A-list creators (although Tom Taylor would become an A-lister in the future). That’s why, in a lot of ways, it was surprising that they gave her the spot in Generations and not Logan. You can’t even say it was because they were technically the same person; teen Jean Grey met Phoenix Jean in her issue (I own that one, this one, and the Cap one).
However, this book proved that they were wrong to not trust Laura. This was classic Wolverine storytelling from Taylor and artist Ramon Rosanas; there were ninjas, there was Japan, there was Sabretooth. Laura fit into this world like a glove. Her and Logan had teamed up in the past, but she wasn’t Wolverine then. This time, she was and it just felt right. I’ll admit to not reading her book back then, but in the years since, I have and it was mostly because of this book. I bought it because my Wolverine fandom wouldn’t let me miss it and I was impressed with the character in a way I hadn’t been the last time I read her, in The Logan Legacy. Laura should have been in the Avengers. She should have been leading the X-Men. She was Wolverine and this book proved it.
Generations: Wolverine & All-New Wolverine #1 Proved Laura Got a Raw Deal
Marvel in the late ’10s was all about “representation”, trying to convince everyone that they were woke. Of course, anyone who was around and reading comics back then could see how cynical the whole thing was. The company patted itself too much on the back for just doing what they should have been doing all along (and had done at other times). Laura is a perfect example of this. They didn’t make her Wolverine because it was time for her to grow; they did it to handicap the X-Men when they needed them to fall a bit and then they panicked and got back a Logan when their half-measure started to stall.
Generations: Wolverine & All-New Wolverine #1 is one of those books that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a big deal, but once you read it, you realize otherwise. This was Laura proving herself in the best possible way. It’s the kind of comic that can make a believer out of anyone and yet it came at the end of the Laura experiment. It was part of a rather maligned event – no one likes Secret Empire – and it didn’t get nearly the attention it deserved. If you’re Wolverine fan who wants to give new something a try, it’s perfect for you. Come on over to the ComicBook Vending Machine and grab it, because this one is hot.
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