Well, it’s really starting to look like the summer of 2018 is the time for Marvel to make controversial changes to its characters’ origins. Having already tweaked Venom’s beginnings last month, the House of Ideas are back at it with another surprising twist that could prove divisive.
This time, it’s none other than X-23 who’s experiencing a seismic shift. Originally introduced in the wonderful animated series that was X-Men: Evolution back in the day, Laura Kinney’s since gone on to appear in countless comics and even the feature film that was Logan – and the one thing that followed her into each medium was her being a clone of Wolverine.
As it turns out, though, we can now throw that knowledge out the window because, thanks to Hunt for Wolverine: Adamantium Agenda #4, it’s been revealed that Laura is actually not a clone. That’s right, to quote Tank from The Matrix, she’s “100% pure, old-fashioned, homegrown human.”
The revelation came about when X-23, Spider-Man, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Man invaded a facility belonging to Mr. Sinister. But before the squad destroyed the villain’s databases, Tony Stark got a peek at some gene files, thus leading him to drop the bomb on Laura saying that she’s still Logan’s daughter, but that Sarah Kinney was her actual mother. In other words, she wasn’t grown in a tube, and was instead the product of what mommies and daddies do when they love each other very much (consult your health teacher for more details).
Where Marvel takes the story now is anybody’s guess, but this shouldn’t make you like X-23 any less. After all, she’s still the offspring of one of the most popular mutants around and remains the badass she’s always been. We’re just going to have to disregard any panels from the past showing her fetus in a lab, I guess.