The X-23 "Innocence Lost" Storyline Was Not Original

[SCampo98]

I read the X-23 comics a little while back, and after recently finishing a novel I find it hard to believe that X-23 wasn't either completely based on this novel or almost completely based off of it. The novel is Dean Koontz's Sole Survivor. (THE REST OF THE POST WILL HAVE SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK)

In the novel, it turns out a woman and a young child have survived an unsurvivable plane crash. Late in the book, it is discovered that the woman works for Project 99, a top-secret agency tasked with taking samples of blood from children deemed to have "supernatural" abilities, such as telepathy or telekinesis in order to find the specific genetic markers causing the abilities. Beyond this, the agency has used these genes and has created a handful of children out of scratch, one of which is a young girl named CCY 21-21, sound familiar?

The resemblances are astonishing. The idea to create CCY 21-21 was that of the woman who worked at Project 99, named Rose. In X-23, it is the idea of Sarah Kinney to clone Wolverine's genes to make X-23. After leaving the facility in Sole Survivor, both Rose and CCY 21-21 become targets, and Rose ends up dead when all is said and done. In X-23, the Kinney and X-23 are targets when they leave the facility and Kinney ends up dead after everything is said and done. Also, in Sole Survivor, CCY 21-21 views Rose as her mother and calls her mom. In X-23, X-23 views Kinney as the same, although the comic goes one step further in actually making Kinney X-23's biological mother.

After reading the novel, I just felt that the similarities were to significant to be of simple coincidence. I find it hard to believe that Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost simply came up with the idea for the Innocence Lost storyline without taking part of it from Sole Survivor. If they did, they did a real good job in coming up with a story so extremely similar to Sole Survivor.

[SCampo98]

A couple similarities I missed in the orginal post:

Both were horrified by acts they committed with their powers when they were young, X-23 by killing her Karate teacher and CCY 21-21 buy healing a women who went somewhat crazy after being completely healed. As for healing powers, CCY 21-21 has the power to heal others while X-23 is the mirror opposite, only being able to heal herself, Finally, in their younger years, both spoke very rarely, if ever.

[The Dying Detective]

I don't know nothing is new not even Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare stole some ideas for that one.

[WebLurker]

It's possible that there were some connections, however, a lot of the X-23 character was based off of Wolverine. Since the idea was to have a Wolverine-like character at the age of a child/teen, she would inherently have his mutant powers and similar backstory of being the victim of an illegal lab project. Her gender and other traits were chosen to be the exact opposite of Wolverine, so any parallels there with the novel would be happenstance.

As far as I know, Craig Kyle and Chris Yost have never indicated that they took inspiration from a novel when developing their story and I'm not aware of any evidence to the contrary.

[Nazrel]

I don't know nothing is new not even Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare stole some ideas for that one.

Romeo and Juliet was actually an adaptation of the tragic history of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke.

As for this thread... I wouldn't go so far as to call those elements cliche yet, but they are far from unique, and tend to lend themselves to each other.

This is almost as bad as people saying Frozen is just the Lion king.

[Ambaryerno]

Romeo and Juliet was actually an adaptation of the tragic history of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke.

As for this thread... I wouldn't go so far as to call those elements cliche yet, but they are far from unique, and tend to lend themselves to each other.

This is almost as bad as people saying Frozen is just the Lion king.

I don't know about that, but the Lion King was pretty much MacBeth.

Anyway, I don't think there was any deliberate adaptation or reference to Koontz's book. Any similarities are entirely coincidental. Otherwise we'd be saying Eleven's backstory in Stranger Things riffed on Innocence Lost, too, or that X-23 is based on Firestarter.

[Nazrel]

I don't know about that, but the Lion King was pretty much MacBeth.

Anyway, I don't think there was any deliberate adaptation or reference to Koontz's book. Any similarities are entirely coincidental. Otherwise we'd be saying Eleven's backstory in Stranger Things riffed on Innocence Lost, too, or that X-23 is based on Firestarter.

People say the Lion King is a lot of stuff... which reminds me of this video which has a lot to say about both the Lion King, and the ideas of this thread.

[The Dying Detective]

Romeo and Juliet was actually an adaptation of the tragic history of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke.

As for this thread... I wouldn't go so far as to call those elements cliche yet, but they are far from unique, and tend to lend themselves to each other.

This is almost as bad as people saying Frozen is just the Lion king.

Right I learned that in a lecture thanks. I don't know the elements of Laura's character and background sometimes feel so tropy that she can something of a cliche character that alone allows me to see why some might not like her that and how easy it has been for her of late. And Marjorie Liu's run which leans too closely to the Broken Bird trope my least favourite trope.

[Beaubier]

Based on your description, the two stories are hardly identical. A couple of similarities, sure, but not enough to make me think K/Y copied Koontz.

[Dthirds3]

It's a very basic concept, that anyone would come the same conclusion when trying to creat a character with this backstory. I'm also sure if you dig deep enough your find sole survivor is based it some one else work or someone did the consent early.