By now, everyone and their mother has seen the trailers for the upcoming standalone Wolverine movie, Logan. Thanks to Hugh Jackman's on-screen performance of the character for nearly two decades now, Logan hardly needs any introduction. But who’s his Mini-Me sidekick in the trailers? You know, the one taking Pringles, fashionable eye-wear, and the lives of baddies whenever she sees fit. Well, as awesome as the brief glimpses are of her in the trailers are, they're only scratching the surface when it comes to the insane things she’s done since she first hit the pages of Marvel comics in 2004.
Her name is Laura Kinney, AKA “X-23”, and she was created using Wolverine's DNA. Unlike her predecessor, who had his own life before being captured by Weapon X, Laura was trained from birth to be nothing more than a deadly weapon. She eventually escaped, but with virtually no understanding of what it means to be an actual human.
That said, it’s not hard to see why she’s had a slightly different approach to solving problems. So before we see what kind of R-rated gory goodness Laura Kinney has in store for us on the big screen, here’s a look at the 15 Most WTF Things X-23 Has Ever Done.
15. She Used Her Claws To Escape A Great White Shark
Metal claws can come in handy in a variety of situations, including being stuck in the jaws of a blood-thirsty great white shark. In the book Daken/X-23: Collision, Laura was in the middle of a fight with some pirates (yes, pirates) when she ended up in this exact scenario.
For this particular throwdown, Laura was helping fellow mutant Gambit with a personal matter. Seeing Gambit in trouble, Laura tackled the leader of the pirate crew into a shark-infested pool, and one of the sharks immediately had its way with him. The shark decided it was still hungry, however, and made a move on Laura for a second serving. It actually succeeded in getting Laura almost completely down its gullet before finding out that its teeth were no match for Laura’s adamantium claws.
Once she freed herself, she rescued Gambit, and the two made it out on a speedboat where they took some time to process the madness that had just transpired. It's a good thing Gambit had the help of the claw-wielding mutant, because, well, "dead men tell no tales."
14. She Stole Her High School Principal's Car
Long before she was stealing Pringles and sunglasses, X-23 was honing her craft at the expense of high school teachers and principals. On her first day of school in the Target X miniseries, Laura jacked the school principal's ride, but not before partaking in a slew of all sorts of hilarious shenanigans.
First, she was asked in class if she speaks French, to which she responded with a monologue of assassination techniques. Then, in biology, she decided it would be a good idea to correct her teacher regarding how many pints of blood are in a human. The teacher asked if she had anything else to add, and Laura decided to share some practical instruction on the use of poisons.
Cue a visit to the principal’s office, where similar back-and-forth’s led to the aforementioned grand-theft auto. Needless to say that, for all the students and faculty at the school, these were some WTF moments for the ages.
13. She Killed Her Pimp
Yes, that’s right—X-23 was also a prostitute at one point. In the NYX comic series, Laura had just recently escaped the Weapon X program and was still trying to find her way in the “real world”. She was virtually a mute, had no friends or family, and ended up wandering the streets of New York City. Physically strong but mentally unstable, she eventually found herself in over her head under the control of a notorious pimp named Zebra Daddy.
Like most pimps, Zebra Daddy didn’t treat Laura with much respect, and exploited her fragility. Even though she was fragile, Laura was still able to make some new mutant friends who helped her find her way and come to her senses. She finally decided to attempt an escape, but unfortunately Zebra Daddy was able to track her down.
Luckily, her new friends came to her aid, and together they took down his whole crew, with Laura putting her own personal finishing touch on the man in charge. While it’s no comparison to the nightmares she endured at the Weapon X facility, it’s instances like these that make it all the more impressive that X-23 turned out as “normal” as she did.
12. She Wore Ant-Man's Suit To Save Her Sister
Laura was recently promoted from X-23 to full Wolverine status in the All New Wolverine series, and since then, she’s teamed up with a lot more familiar faces from the greater Marvel Universe. One of the most notable team-ups has been with Wasp, who aided Laura in saving one of her clone sisters.
It wouldn’t have been in Laura’s nature to politely ask if she could borrow the Ant-Man suit; she did things her own way and decided to steal it instead. Wasp inevitably caught her in the act, but after Laura explained that her sister was infested with nano-robots, Wasp agreed to help her shrink down and take care of the little buggers.
They shrunk down Magic School Bus style to enter the clone’s blood stream, where Laura proceeded to do what she does best. She whipped out her microscopic claw blades and started stabbing nano-robots just like any other day on the job. Doing another superhero’s job for them? Check.
11. She Got Her Head Stomped In By The Blob
It’s times like these where an adamantium-coated skull would really come in handy. Unlike Logan, X-23 wasn’t graced with that feature, and it made for quite a messy situation when she went up against The Blob in All New X-Men #6.
The two squared off in the ring, and thinking that he would be slow due to his size, Laura didn’t put forth her best effort. What resulted was her unprotected skull finding its way under the foot of The Blob, where it was then reduced to a gooey mess of blood and brains.
Even though she didn’t have the adamantium skull, she did still have her healing factor. So no worries, right? As soon as her skull reformed, she didn’t hesitate to square up for a second round. Hopefully X-23 realized the error of her ways, though, as overconfidence is a weakness that plagues heroes with regenerating capabilities. Just look at all the messy situations in which Deadpool finds himself.
10. She Threw A Rapist Out Of A Fourth Floor Window
This is the first entry on the list that ventures back to the screwed up things that Laura was forced to do while under control of the Weapon X program. As a subject at the Weapon X facility, X-23 was trained, nay, programmed, by a man named Zander Rice, as well as by her own mother, to be an absolute killing machine. She was subjected to all kinds of torture and forced to do all sorts and sadistic acts, many of which will follow on this list. In this particular instance, though, X-23’s mother decided to take her on an unauthorized mission to rescue her cousin after she was kidnapped by a serial rapist/child-murder.
Doing what she had been trained to do, Laura single-handedly tracked down the perpetrator to his apartment. Dressed as a girl scout, she succeeded in baiting the man out of his apartment’s front door. She then entered his apartment, and before he knew it, he was flying head first out of his fourth floor window. Luckily for him, there was a parked car down below to break his fall. Okay, more like break every bone in his body. Sadly, this wasn’t the last time she would be forced to take a life against her will.
9. She Cut Off Her Own Hand
Laura’s Trigger Scent comes into play for the first time here—a chemical designed specifically by Zander Rice to trigger her into a berserker killing rage. She was living with her aunt and cousin at this point, trying her best to do the whole "normal life" thing (see #14). The three of them found themselves targeted by Laura’s former Weapon X facility handler, Kimura, who was on a very specific mission: use the Trigger Scent to send Laura into a rampage that would cause her to kill her own family.
Kimura succeeded in triggering Laura, but luckily she only killed her aunt’s boyfriend, who turned out to be a facility spy. In an improvised effort, Kimura handcuffed herself to Laura and was about to kill her cousin right in front of her eyes. Understandably, Laura didn’t care for this very much and proceeded to hack off her own hand, shackle Kimura to a pipe, and then blow up the entire house with Kimura inside. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
8. She Dove Head First Into Fin Fang Foom
Fin Fang Foom is pretty much the Marvel Universe equivalent of Godzilla, but even a monster of his magnitude couldn’t hold up to the mayhem of X-23. In All-New Wolverine #9, Laura was working side by side with Old Man Logan, who found himself inside the belly of the enormous monster after Fin Fang Foom decided a Wolverine would make for a tasty snack.
So what does any hero in her right mind do in a tricky situation like this? Launch herself into the mouth of the beast to rescue her partner, of course. Especially if that hero has a perfectly good set of adamantium claws that would work wonders for slicing the inside of said beast into a julienne salad. So instead of the old leather shoe that Logan probably tasted like, Laura offered Fin Fang Foom a healthy and practical substitute. It's very slimming. You're welcome, Mr. Foom.
7. She Sliced The Fingernails Off A Man's Hands
During her Weapon X days, Laura endured a lot of torture. It was a method intended to bring out her madness and instill a sense of ruthlessness and anger. But what it also created was a pretty remarkable thirst for exacting revenge on the people who were responsible for said torturing.
For Malcolm Colcord, that’s exactly what he figured out when he crossed paths with X-23 while on a mission to recreate the Weapon X program. While he wasn’t personally responsible for any of the torture Laura suffered as a child, the mere fact that he wanted to recreate it with new victims was enough to warrant a lesson from the former Weapon X subject.
In an effort to pull information from him regarding the status of his operation, she removed his fingernails one by one (using her claws, of course), telling him that it was exactly the kind of torture she had been forced to endure. What comes around goes around, right?
6. She Intentionally Set Off Her Trigger Scent
For anyone that’s seen Kingsman: The Secret Service, just think of the church scene while reading this entry. Except with the caveat that in Laura’s case, it wasn’t the enemy that triggered the killing rampage-- it was Laura herself.
In the Not Forgotten series, Laura was captured and returned to the Weapon X facility, the source of all her childhood trauma. She found herself trapped in a room and in dire need of an escape plan, with facility soldiers getting closer and closer to reaching her. Thinking on her feet, she concocted a Molotov cocktail and used it to set off the sprinklers, releasing the Trigger Scent throughout the facility just as the soldiers made their way into the room.
With the proper “motivation” now acquired, Laura made her way through the barrage of guards, turning them into pin cushions as she made her way out of the facility. Oh yeah, and seeing as how her old friend Kimura chopped off her left arm a few minutes earlier, Laura did all of this with one hand. Not too shabby.
5. She Let Herself Get Cut By A Chainsaw
It’s easy to think that instances of self-mutilation are no big deal for folks like X-23 and Wolverine, considering they have full regenerating capabilities. But given taht we know from Wolverine that it even hurts “every time” their claws come out, it’s safe to assume that all of these other incidents of brutality are no walk in the park for either of them.
That said, in the book Daken/X-23: Collision, Laura once again makes a voluntary effort to endure excruciating pain just so she can get the best of her enemies. In this case, Malcolm Calcord is looking to use X-23 for a little experimentation and has her tied down with restraints. As two scientists begin to cut her open with a saw, Daken (her “brother”) secretly cuts one of the bands that are restraining her.
Could she have made an escape at this point? Probably, but she found it more practical to let them give her a deep tissue massage with the chainsaw so that she could pounce at the most opportune moment. Now that’s dedication.
4. She Killed Her Own Mother
In X-23’s origin story, Innocence Lost, we’re introduced to Zander Rice, the man who tortured X-23 mercilessly and forced her to do a multitude of unforgivable things. Rice blamed her personally for the death of his father, who was killed by Wolverine in his escape from the original Weapon X facility. He subjected her to radiation, made her assassinate innocent people, and even ripped her claws from her hands without anesthesia. But of all the twisted acts he made X-23 commit, his sick version of a grand finale was forcing her to kill her own mother.
Just before this tragedy took place, X-23’s mother (who also worked for Weapon X) had ironically just given her daughter one final mission: to kill Rice. X-23 succeeded in her mission, but not before Rice exposed her to the Trigger Scent. Confused and enraged, she took the life of the only person who had ever treated her like an actual human being.
X-23 came down from the effects of the Trigger Scent just in time to hear her mother’s final words, in which she gave her daughter the name “Laura”. This moment was perhaps the saddest in X-23’s history, as she was finally free yet alone at the same time.
3. She Killed A Puppy
It’s hard to believe, but killing her mother was not even the most sadistic thing forced upon Laura during her Weapon X days. Earlier in the Innocence Lost series, it was actually X-23’s mother herself who decided that something more extreme was necessary for X-23’s training; she needed to get her hands dirty.
Laura was provided a “pet” and left in a room, with her task laid out plain as day. She was to kill the puppy so that she could understand what her future had in store for her as a killer. After failing to complete the task for hours, and attempting to comfort the animal, the scientists gave her one final option: complete her task, or see the animal taken away to be victimized to a tortured, slow, excruciating death.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, X-23 had no choice but to take the helpless animal and spare it from an even worse fate. It's no wonder she came back all John Wick on them later.
2. She Was Set On Fire Mid-Fight And Was All, "NBD"
Believe it or not, Laura actually had a boyfriend at one point, despite all the dehumanization she had endured over the years. In the Ghosts of Cyclops issue of the All-New X-Men series, Laura teamed up with several other teen mutants, including her boyfriend, Angel, to combat a resistance that had sent the remaining original X-Men into seclusion. When the angsty teens ended up in a tussle with a gang known as the Ghosts of Cyclops, Angel played the overprotective boyfriend card, and Laura didn’t care for it very much.
Amidst the chaos of the fight, one of the gang members blasted Laura with a vicious green fire that set her ablaze. No big deal, right? Angel, however, found it to be a big deal and swooped in to save his damsel (not) in distress. Laura was actually in the middle of sassing the gang member who torched her when Angel cut her quip short. This must have been pretty early on in their relationship, because Angel clearly didn’t know what X-23 was all about.
1. She Assassinated A Presidential Candidate
After reading all of the previous entries on this list, it’s probably not too hard to guess when this incident happened and who was behind it. That’s right—Zander Rice and the Weapon X facility.
Three years after Rice developed the Trigger Scent for X-23, he sent her on her first field mission: to kill presidential candidate Greg Johnson. After all, this is exactly the sort of thing he had been grooming her for. Using fake leg braces and crutches to sell her innocent appearance, she gained entry to the presidential candidate's V.I.P. section for a photo-op. Everyone quickly realized she wasn’t looking to take a selfie, as she proceeded to kill the candidate, his bodyguards, and his entire family.
What's most disturbing, though, is the reason why X-23 was sent on this mission in the first place. Was the presidential candidate a corrupt politician? No. Were his policies going to interfere with the plans for the Weapon X facility? Nope. In fact, everyone that was killed that day was completely innocent. The only reason they died was so that X-23's services could be "advertised" to the world, now that she was ready to be an assassin for hire.
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Be sure to catch X-23 in Logan when it hits theaters on March 3rd.
