The Marvel Next line is really taking shape. We've got a teenage version of Spider-Man (Arana), and teen versions of the Avengers coming up soon. This title shines the spotlight on a teen version of Wolverine, or at least it will, once the origin story picks up. The writers do a decent job when it comes to fleshing out a new character here, and I don't mean X-23. No, the scientist who created her through cloning takes centre stage in this first issue, and she's well realized. On the other hand, reading another story about another Weapon X experiment involving another mutant with another set of claws... it just seems to me that Marvel has miled this particular cash cow dry. The plotting here and conflict are far too familiar.
Years ago, when Logan escaped from Weapon X in an eruption of berserker violence, many of the scientists working on the project were killed. Among them was Zander Rice's father, and he's grown up to follow in his dad's footsteps, supervised by the man with whom his father worked on Weapon X so long ago. Together, they've revived the project, but Zander's authority is challenged when a new specialist -- Dr. Sarah Kinney -- is brought in to clone Weapon X's greatest creation: Wolverine. Kinney soon discovers that her sense of morality threatens to overwhelm her ambition and scientific curiosity as her work suddenly becomes quite personal.
Tan is clearly emulating the style of Jim (Batman, The Intimates) Lee here. The problem is that Lee's popular style is geared specifically for the super-hero genres, and there areno spandex-clad characters to be found in this first issue. These characters just don't seem real, and that means their thoughts and feelings don't come off as convincingly either. Tan doesn't convey the visual representations of the pseudo-science stuff well either, but then again, the script is rather impenetrable when it comes to that stuff as well.
Look, it's more decompressed storytelling from Marvel. The writers lead us down a painfully long path to arrive at a point that's pretty much apparent from the cover. X-23 is a Wolverine clone, literally. OK, can we get some real plot on the go now? Kinney's problems in trying to get the cloning process to work offer no dramatic tension since we know that eventually, she will succeed. She has to in order for there to be a second issue.
Here's what I want to knw: how did these Weapon X types come to lose their grips on their morality? Zander Rice is first presented to us as a grieving little boy, and then we see he's grown up into a mad scientist. It's one thing for him to hate mutants, but we see him delighting in the pain of others here. Kinney becomes a character by finding her moral center, but the rest of the players in this drama don't seem human. 5/10
