The X-23 comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2024 with titles scheduled for release through February 2025.
X-23 is the original codename of Wolverine, Laura Kinney. She has been called both Logan’s clone and his daughter, but in her own way she’s Marvel’s Harley Quinn.
That’s because, like Quinn, X-23 originated in a medium other than comics. She was created for the cartoon X-Men Evolution by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, who would also oversee her comics journey for half a decade in a pair of mini-series and on two teams.
Kyle and Yost’s material is stellar from beginning to end. Their run on X-23 often explored the theme of her savagery – how she was raised to be a perfect assassin without being a person.
Afterwards, Author Marjorie Liu took X-23 over for two years for her first solo ongoing title. Liu focused more on X-23’s human side and her internal emotional life, forging connections with Gambit and Jubilee.
Unfortunately, her development goes on a detour from that point.
With the cancellation of her title in the midst of a reshuffling of the X-Men line, X-23 was shipped to Avengers Academy for a year. Christos Gage extended Liu’s work, but it was in a crowded team title. Afterward, Dennis Hopeless picked up X-23 and other Academy cast members for Avengers Arena – where she was cast mostly an unintentional villain.
After the end of Arena, X-23 is adopted by All-New X-Men, weirdly filling out the young cast of the 1960s original X-Men with a Wolverine analog. She’s mostly played for big action beats and romance, but her development finally gets back on track in the aftermath of Wolverine’s death in Wolverines.
Finally, in the wake of Secret Wars, X-23 regained a solo title for the first time in half a decade – this time taking on the mantle of Wolverine(!) while also continuing in All-New X-Men. [Read more…] about X-23, Wolverine – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order
I don’t really have a dog in that fight, but reading Dan Slott’s recent Spider-Man run has me thinking about Peter Parker the underdog, because Slott seems so intent on giving him his due. He’s the CEO of his own company! He’s approaching Tony Stark levels of outwardly expressed genius, and Stark is rarely an underdog.
The original Mighty Avengers series emerges directly from the end of the Civil War event, which caused a schism in the Avengers. It featured an official, government-sanction team of Avengers sponsored by Iron Man and lead by Ms. Marvel. It’s also written in an intentionally nostalgic style to contrast with New Avengers, with narration and thought bubbles.
X-Men Legacy is a title that covered a pair of X-Men volumes published from 2008 to 2014. Both volumes shared a theme of diving deeply into the continuity of a single lead character – first Professor Xavier, then Rogue, and finally Legion in the second volume.