X-23

• 1. Introduction

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  X-23 is the designation of Laura Kinney, a Marvel Comics superheroine who began life on a television screen rather than a comic page. Her creator, writer Craig Kyle, described her as "Pinocchio for Marvel Comics, she's a samurai sword trying to become a real little girl". That image holds the whole character. A secret program built her to kill, and she spent years learning to be anything else. Who built her, and what did they want? What does a weapon do when someone finally calls it by a name? And how did a cartoon character grow into the bearer of another hero's name and claws?

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• 2. A Wolverine for Teenagers

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  X-Men: Evolution, an animated series that remade the X-Men as teenagers, gave Craig Kyle his chance in 2003. Kyle wanted a Wolverine who could "connect more to the younger kids". In his words, "Wolverine was one of the old, grizzled guys". So Kyle built the opposite. Wolverine was a man "older than we know" who had lost his memory and the life that went with it. Laura would be a young girl "shackled to the murders she's committed", whose entire life revolved around the project that made her a killer.

  Laura debuted in season 3, episode 10 of the series, titled "X-23", where Andrea Libman voiced her. Britt Irvin took over the role in season 4, episode 3, titled "Target X". Kyle and Christopher Yost wrote both episodes. Yost later said Kyle "had all the beats of her origin in his head when I came on board".

  Her path into print came in 2004, in the third issue of Joe Quesada's NYX series. That issue showed what she could do and revealed nothing about her past.

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• 3. Project X-23

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  The six-issue miniseries X-23: Innocence Lost, scripted by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, finally explained where Laura came from. It begins with a top-secret program trying to repeat the Weapon X experiment, which had bonded adamantium to Wolverine's skeleton. Dr. Martin Sutter recruits the mutant geneticist Dr. Sarah Kinney to clone Wolverine. Also on the team is Sutter's protégé, Dr. Zander Rice, whose father was killed by the original Weapon X. Sutter raised him afterward.

  The only genetic sample from Weapon X was damaged, and Kinney could not salvage its Y chromosome. She proposed creating a female genetic twin instead. Her request was denied, and Rice opposed the idea. After 22 failed attempts to rebuild the DNA with a duplicate X chromosome, the 23rd sample finally worked. Kinney was allowed to proceed. Rice punished her insubordination by forcing her to carry the embryo herself, and for nine months her every move was monitored. The child she bore was designated X-23.

  When X-23 was seven, Rice subjected her to radiation poisoning to activate her mutant gene. He then extracted her claws, coated them with adamantium, and reinserted them into her hands and feet. He gave her no anesthetic. He also created a "trigger scent" that drove her into a murderous rage whenever she detected it. She was trained as a hired assassin and ordered to kill "anyone... everyone... for a price."

  Kinney's niece Megan was abducted by a serial killer, and Kinney smuggled X-23 out of the facility to save her. X-23 tracked the man to his apartment, killed him, and freed the girl. Kinney was fired when they returned. Rice then assigned X-23 to eliminate Sutter and his family and ordered her to keep it secret. She told Sarah the truth anyway. Before Kinney was escorted out, Rice showed her a chamber holding incubation pods for subjects X-24 through X-50.

  Kinney wrote a letter to her daughter with a final mission: destroy the pods and kill Rice. X-23 succeeded. But before Rice died, he exposed Kinney to the trigger scent, and X-23 killed her own mother in a frenzy. As Kinney lay dying, she told the girl that her name was Laura and that she loved her. She handed over the letter, along with pictures of Charles Xavier, Wolverine, and the Xavier Institute. Those pictures would eventually point Laura toward the man whose DNA she carried.

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• 4. Running From the Facility

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  In the six-issue miniseries X-23: Target X, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents arrest Laura, and she wakes bound and gagged facing Captain America and Matt Murdock. They interrogate her about her past, and she tells it. She had traveled to San Francisco to find Megan and Debbie, Sarah's sister, and she moved in with them as Sarah's daughter. Megan suffered vivid nightmares of her abduction, which her family dismissed as fantasies. Laura told her the man was real and that she had killed him.

  Debbie's boyfriend turned out to be a Facility agent, ordered to use the trigger scent to make Laura kill Megan and Debbie. He spilled the scent on himself and died at Laura's hands. More agents stormed the house, led by Kimura, who had been Laura's handler and had punished her harshly even when missions went well. Laura handcuffed Kimura to a radiator and set off an explosion, buying her cousin and aunt time to escape.

  Laura then tracked Wolverine to Xavier's mansion and fought him, winning through tactics and maneuverability. She chose not to kill him and told him why she had come. Wolverine already knew her story from a detailed letter her mother had sent him. Murdock accepted her innocence. Captain America wanted her to atone, but he freed her after recognizing the brainwashing, and to keep S.H.I.E.L.D. from using her as a weapon. He drove her to a bus station and told her to return to Logan. On the bus, she read her mother's letters and cried.

  In New York City, Laura fell under the control of a pimp called Zebra Daddy, who exploited her. She grew mute and withdrawn. Two young mutants began to bring her back. Kiden Nixon can freeze time when she is in danger, and Tatiana Caban takes on the physical traits of whoever she touches through their blood. Laura ran, Zebra Daddy hunted her down, and with her new friends and a mutant named Bobby Soul she defeated him. She killed him to save their lives.

  A job as a waitress at Wannabee's, a mutant-themed nightclub in New York's Mutant Town, led her to the X-Men. There she defended Jade Parisi, daughter of mob boss Don Parisi, from thugs and killed some of them. The deaths implicated Wolverine, and his teammates came to investigate. It was later revealed that Laura and Wolverine had partly arranged the encounter, so she could meet the X-Men without revealing her past. She was enrolled at the Xavier Institute and given a room with Rachel Summers and Kitty Pryde.

  An energy spike on the mansion's security monitors soon sent her to investigate, and she mistook Spider-Man for an enemy and attacked him. The two then teamed up to save a young mutant named Paul Patterson from Iron Maniac, an alternate-reality version of Iron Man. They wrecked his equipment with their own version of the classic Fastball Special.

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• 5. Claws and Healing

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  A gunshot, a slash, or a stab wound closes in seconds on Laura. Her healing factor regrows damaged or destroyed tissue far faster and more completely than an ordinary body could. She once reattached her own hand after severing it to escape restraints placed on her by Kimura. The same factor makes her immune to disease and infection, and to most drugs and toxins. It also sharpens her senses, speed, agility, reflexes, balance, and endurance to superhuman levels. Because her cells keep regenerating, she is potentially biologically immortal.

  Her claws differ from her father's in number. Laura has two in each hand, which she uses as her primary weapons, and a single claw in each foot, which she tends to use for defense. The hand claws emerge through her knuckles, leaving small wounds that her healing factor closes. Rice's adamantium coating makes them virtually unbreakable. She escaped before he could carry out the procedure that would have fused her entire skeleton with the metal.

  The Enigma Force, a cosmic entity, has chosen Laura as its host twice. She was the first mutant it ever chose, and only a handful of individuals have been chosen more than once. After the second time, it named her the heir to its power. A mark on the palm of her right hand first signaled the permanent link, at the end of the "Killing Dream" arc of her solo series.

  Laura's training was as deliberate as her design. She is skilled with long range weapons and explosives and is a formidable hand-to-hand fighter, with instruction in many armed and unarmed martial arts. She speaks French and Japanese fluently. Zander Rice once described her intellect as "off the charts". The trigger scent conditioning remains a danger, and Emma Frost is unsure it will ever be fully suppressed.

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• 6. Blood and Chosen Family

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  Aboard a submarine off the coast of Guam, a disguised black market auction brought Laura and Tony Stark together. Stark won the genetic material of Danielle Cage, the daughter of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. Then Mister Sinister attacked the seller for stealing the genetic material of the original Wolverine. Laura sliced off Sinister's left hand while helping Iron Man. In Sinister's database, Stark found proof that part of Laura's genetic material came from Sarah Kinney. Laura was not only a clone, but the biological daughter of both Sarah and Logan.

  Logan had acted like a father long before that discovery, even though he introduced Laura to the students in New X-Men as his sister. When they first met, he offered to help her start over at the Xavier Institute, saying he knew better than anyone what she was going through. He openly disapproved when Cyclops put her on X-Force. He did not force her to leave, but he told Gambit he thinks he should have.

  Sarah Kinney was the first person to show Laura affection, despite Facility orders not to treat her like a child. She often read Pinocchio to the little girl. Her last thoughts went into a letter that confessed her guilt and told Laura that she was her mother. Sarah's death is the one Laura regrets most. Writer Marjorie Liu has said she intended Laura to be part Asian through her mother.

  In the first arc of All-New Wolverine, Laura discovered that Alchemax Genetics had made clones of her. Most died in captivity, and two survivors remained, Gabby and Bellona. Laura took Gabby in as her sister, hoping to give her the family Laura never had with Logan. Gabby has a healing factor and bone claws, but only one claw in each hand. Nanites in her blood leave her unable to feel pain. Her brother Daken gave her the name Honey Badger, which she later gave up to become Scout.

  Gambit traveled with Laura during her solo series and affectionately called her "Petite". He scolded Logan for not protecting her the way he had protected Jubilee, and Logan admitted his failings. Gambit also insisted that Laura, though damaged, was far from broken, since a broken person would not be trying to change. Jubilee, a vampire, was attacked by Laura on sight. After the two talked things out, they realized how alike they were and became friends.

  Julian Keller, called Hellion, was the first boy Laura had a crush on. Screen Rant's Ashley Fields wrote in 2025 that when Laura joined the Academy X students, she met fear and suspicion, and Hellion "stepped up as one of the first people to see beyond that".

  Daken, Logan's son, is the closest thing Laura has to a brother. They properly met in Madripoor, where Daken said power was all he had. Laura answered that what she had to prove had nothing to do with power. The exchange left her understanding that she owned her fate. By the time of Reign of X, Daken openly called Laura and Gabby his sisters.

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• 7. Taking the Name

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  In June 2015, Marvel announced that after that year's Secret Wars storyline, Laura would become the lead of All-New Wolverine. Tom Taylor wrote it, David López drew it, and her costume resembled Wolverine's. After Logan's death, she had taken his name to honor his memory. When Logan returned, her title relaunched as the fourth X-23 volume, written by Mariko Tamaki and drawn by Juann Cabal. Tamaki said the series explores a girl "created to be a weapon and not someone with a birthday and a sister". It ended after 12 issues in May 2019.

  In 2018, Laura and Gabby joined Jean Grey's X-Men Red team, written by Tom Taylor and illustrated by Mahmud Asrar. Critics called it one of the best comics of the year.

  In 2021, during Jonathan Hickman's X-Men run, Laura entered the Vault with Synch and Darwin. Time ran far faster inside, and the three were stuck there for centuries, fighting generations of the Children of the Vault. Laura grew close to Synch. When the Vault's artificial intelligence captured Darwin to experiment on him, Laura sacrificed herself to give Synch time to escape and reach Xavier. The mutant resurrection protocols brought her back in a new body, but without her memories of the Vault. Synch still had his.

  The truth emerged in 2022. The original Laura had never died. The Children of the Vault had kept her alive, and Forge found her on a rescue mission. The younger duplicate gave up her resurrection rights to the older Laura but insisted on keeping the Wolverine name. The older Laura agreed, though she warned that she was not looking for future socializing or even encounters. She took the codename Talon and joined the X-Men, while the duplicate joined X-Force.

  During the Fall of X storyline, Talon and Synch led the X-Men after Orchis attacked Krakoa. They stole technology from the High Evolutionary to nullify Orchis' poisoned medicine. He retaliated by disintegrating Talon's body. Synch held on to a psychic imprint of her mind, but with Krakoa fallen there was no way to bring her back. She convinced him to let her go so that he could fight Nimrod. Her story ended in early 2024, in X-Men #31.

  The duplicate Laura, as Wolverine, remained with X-Force from issue #39 in April 2023 until the run ended with issue #50 in March 2024.

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• 8. Reception and Legacy

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  Jamie Lovett of ComicBook.com credited Laura's mentors and friends with making her a fully fleshed out character in control of her own destiny. When Logan died, he wrote, she mourned and then became Wolverine, filling the role "as well as her predecessor, if not better at times". David Harth of CBR.com wrote that fans watched her evolve "from a lab created killing machine to a well-rounded human being". Marvel's own character history calls her one of its most notable and powerful female heroes.

  Dafne Keen played Laura in the film Logan in 2017. Keen returned to the role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024. Laura has also appeared in animated films and television series and in video games.

  In July 2024, the ongoing series NYX began, written by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing with art by Francesco Mortarino. It follows Laura and several young mutants, including Kamala Khan, Anole, Prodigy, and Sophie Cuckoo, as they adapt to New York City after Krakoa. Laura protects mutants on the streets of Bushwick. Her new costume keeps the yellow and black of the classic suit but adds "a sharper cowl with more severe lines and edges" and streetwear touches. The series ended with issue #10 in April 2025, after the group had broken the hold of Mojo, who had turned New York into Mojo City.

  A solo series, Laura Kinney: Wolverine, written by Erica Schultz with art by Giada Belviso, followed in December 2024. In it Laura teams up with Elektra, then with Bucky Barnes on a cross-country trip against a Hydra plot. In November 2025, a back-up story by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo in Batman/Deadpool #1 paired her with Nightwing.

  In February 2026, Laura and Gabby began headlining Generation X-23, written by Jody Houser with art by Jacopo Camagni. Camagni died in March 2026. Houser said the second issue was the last full issue he drew. He also did part of the third issue, which will carry a tribute page with some of his initial designs of the Generated.

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