Laura: X-23 Appreciation 2018

[Ambaryerno]

Or the reason you can't find it now is that it never happened.

Which X-Men would you like to make a couple?

X-23 and Hellion.

It did, except It was Yost in an X-Position. So my bad, I was half-wrong. However as Co-Creator I'm pretty sure he should have equal say in Laura's sexuality.

Not currently, no, but he is her creator. That means he created her appearance, her personality and, yes, her sexual orientation. That's why his voice on the matter is more fact than opinion. It's exactly why many feel the recent retcon regarding Laura's genetic origin was disrespectful given that Kyle has commented very clearly on that subject previously.

As noted above: CO-creator, and I'm sure Yost's opinion is every bit as valid. And as has been commented on elsewhere, creators say a LOT of things. The fact is Laura was created for Marvel. Kyle never owned the rights to her. So while his commentary can be interesting, the reality is that it doesn't have merit since he's not the one who ultimately controls the character. FYI, while going through tweets trying to find the source to the Helix quote, Kyle flip-flopped a LOT in his opinions, too. In one tweet he might post a pithy image to illustrate how much he doesn't like the character's direction, yet in another he'll talk about how much he's enjoyed what a writer has done with her during the same timeframe.

I never said that Gabby being gay means Laura must also be gay. I just said it's a fact that supports the notion and is something that contributes to it making sense. It's like a puzzle piece that fits.

As for your argument that it undermines Gabby's story...ehhh. Makes about as much sense as me arguing that Laura should be gay because Logan is heterosexual to avoid her building off him too much.

Except that's not how it works. You can make the same argument that if two hetero parents have a kid, that kid should be hetero as well. Sexuality is INCREDIBLY complex. There's no, AFAIK from the latest research, "gay gene." In fact I'm not sure if science has even identified the mechanism that determines sexual orientation, or even if there IS a specific biological trigger (and preemptively to your point below: no, I'm NOT saying it's a choice).

Sexual orientation isn't a choice, so to bring up Laura's choices and agency seems weird. Really, all this just sounds like clutching at straws and trying to come up with arguments against because you personally strongly prefer Laura not to be gay.

This is bordering dangerously on devolving into an ad hominin attack. You KNOW that I didn't mean this was a literal choice made by Laura.

What was the single biggest motivating factor in why Rice tormented Laura so brutally in Innocence Lost/Target X? Because as Logan's clone (or at least an offspring created from his DNA after recent revelations) he projected his anger on her. That a clone (or genetic offspring) is a separate entity from their genetic template (or father/whatever) has been one of several themes at the heart of Laura's story (frankly, the concept works whether you're talking about clones OR offspring. Sins of the Father and all). By having Laura be LGBT because Gabby is LGBT — or at least using the latter as a justification in support of the former — VERY directly undermines that message.

It might be one thing if Gabby never existed, or if she were to be straight. Having them both as LGBT (especially if you use one to develop the other) is narratively problematic for both.

That is strange if Kyle planned it with 616 Laura; since there was barely ANY subtext there other than maybe a little bit with Cessily, but even that's pretty arguable.

Some people DO come out later in life, and Laura is pretty young- so I don't think it would be that much of a retcon as many felt Bobby was.

That being said, I do think the less controversial choice would be to go with Laura being bisexual.

I mentioned before, but after rereading Kyle's Tweet I don't believe he's saying it was something they INTENDED originally, (and Yost's X-Po commentary seems to suggest otherwise is indeed the case) just a direction he'd take NOW.

The lack of prior development is definitely an issue in Laura's case. While it's "only" been 15 years since her first appearance, that's still enough time that her character is pretty well-established. Revealing Sarah donating her own DNA to creating her works because there was enough ambiguity left in the cloning process, and some bits and pieces that would naturally justify it (IE Laura always being drawn to resemble a younger Sarah). The fact that the VAST majority of comments about it were along the lines of "Wait, didn't we already know this?" shows just how widespread it was. Kyle may not have intended it, but the fans ran with it long before it became canon, anyway.

Now I'm sure there's LGBT individuals who had a sudden epiphany about their orientation. But for fiction, that narrative process is incredibly important. The Claremont example is a great comparison; his work was positively loaded with subtext, and he laid groundwork that would be very easy for other writers to build on. However that's not the case with Laura. You really only end up with two examples that are ever cited; Mercury hugging her while breaking down in the aftermath of Mercury Falling, or the frame where she tempts Jubilee with her blood. The former was never really mentioned again, and is very easy to handwave away (TBH, I compare it to the people who try to use Sam and Frodo's interactions throughout the Lord of the Rings to comment on their sexuality). The latter is problematic because vampires are INHERENTLY laden with subtext so it's very difficult to separate out whether what you're seeing is because of Laura's orientation, or simply the nature of vampire fiction.

Regardless, a reveal of that nature would indeed be a rather significant retcon. Laura may not have the history Bobby did, but 15 years for a Big Two comics character is nothing to sneeze at, either.

[WebLurker]

In regards to the Laura being lesbian question: there is no reason to believe that she is based on the source material and the only person suggesting it is a writer who's no longer in charge of the character. In any event, the character's love life has hardly been important to her story.

No but it is the same kind of idea: group of people whose families and friends were killed, getting revenge through the people close to them.

With Logan, it was his illegitimate children because there was a sense of guilt there for Logan.

With Laura, it was Sarah because there was a sense of guilt there for her killing her mother figure.

Beyond the fact that both stories were invented in their own vacuums, as I recall, the Logan version ended with him killing everyone, while the Laura one ended with her being able to make peace with them by not striking back. So, even if the subject matter was the same, it’s still different stories molded by how the characters are different.

Gabby is very much a play off of Logan's relationships with Kitty, Jubilee, ect...

Light innocent sidekick that brings hope and humanity.

A younger sister is not the same thing as a mentee.

Putting her on a team with the All New X-Men never really made sense to me because:
Adult Cyclops was the one who put her IN X-Force in the first place, knowing her sense of autonomy was questionable.
She didn't trust adult Warren AT ALL in X-Force.
She had zero connection to Jean, other than really through Logan.

And once again, Bendis treated her completely as 'a fill in Logan’.

Haven’t read that yet, so I can’t really comment further.

As for what change does this bring:

1) I think Retcon's are usually a bad sign for a character.
Logan's been retconned so many times that it's diminished his character as a whole.
Jean/Phoenix we still never know which retcon writers are using, and has led to the Phoenix force being overused and losing its sense of wonder.
Superboy lost a lot of his personality from the retcon.
There's very little reason to change an origin story in my opinion- basically don't fix something that was never broken in the first place.

IMHO, this retcon hasn’t been shown to change anything beyond a few semantics.

2) It's going against the creator wishes in this situation and that seems kind of disrespectful. Comic books are a lot like improv, in my opinion. If someone says 'this object is blue' or 'it's really cold'- you have to run with it. Kyle has said- Laura was cloned from duplicating Logan's X-chromosomes, she's not related to Sarah Kinney in any way. That's what is canon.

There’s been a whole slate of creators working on this character now.

3) It makes Sarah Kinney even more awful that she'd basically let them do this to roughly her own genetic child. I'm not saying her actions weren't already horrible (justifying abuse with 'this is science') but adding the element of them sharing DNA, eliminates her thought process that she could be 'impartial' and that she wasn't doing exactly what her father did to her.

Huh? It was still her own kid, DNA link or not. Incidentally, part of her story is her realizing that she was no better than her co-workers.

4) It worked fine for XCU, because the XCU and MCU have to simplify things for general audience members and that's fine. But I don't necessarily want comics resembling the movies.

The point I’m making is that clone or not clone is getting into the semantics. The point is that Laura’s genome was artificially created in a lab. That’s what’s important. As an analogy, it doesn’t matter if the spider that bit Peter Parker was radioactive or genetically engineered; the importance is that it was a spider that had been experimented on. Narratively, the two are the same. (Also, once again, X-23 establishes that Laura is still a clone.)

It's like recently the Runaways breaking up Karolina and Julie, so it could resemble the show of Karolina and Nico being a couple. It was just awful treatment of Julie Powers so Marvel Comics could have 'synergy'. It just feels cheap.

Nico isn’t a gay character.

5) I was fine with it as a fan theory, but did it really need to be canon? Laura already saw Sarah as a mother figure, why do we need to make her Laura's actual mother?

She was her actual mother. We may not’ve needed the genetic link to establish that, but it’s just telling us stuff we already knew.

It just felt like an unnecessary overly saccrine plot point to remove any uncomfortableness Laura might have over being a clone, which is what's I honestly felt like Taylor did in his writing; remove all emotional and physical conflicts for Laura.

And as we’ve seen from X-23, that didn’t happen.

6) As for the science, my attitude is, is I'm reading story's about people bit by radioactive spiders or has metal claws coming out of their hands. I should be able to suspend disbelief that Laura has green eyes, even if that doesn't make actual sense.

I don’t think that was the reason.

[WebLurker]

In regards to the Laura being lesbian question: there is no reason to believe that she is based on the source material and the only person suggesting it is a writer who's no longer in charge of the character. In any event, the character's love life has hardly been important to her story.

No but it is the same kind of idea: group of people whose families and friends were killed, getting revenge through the people close to them.

With Logan, it was his illegitimate children because there was a sense of guilt there for Logan.

With Laura, it was Sarah because there was a sense of guilt there for her killing her mother figure.

Beyond the fact that both stories were invented in their own vacuums, as I recall, the Logan version ended with him killing everyone, while the Laura one ended with her being able to make peace with them by not striking back. So, even if the subject matter was the same, it’s still different stories molded by how the characters are different.

Gabby is very much a play off of Logan's relationships with Kitty, Jubilee, ect...

Light innocent sidekick that brings hope and humanity.

A younger sister is not the same thing as a mentee.

Putting her on a team with the All New X-Men never really made sense to me because:
Adult Cyclops was the one who put her IN X-Force in the first place, knowing her sense of autonomy was questionable.
She didn't trust adult Warren AT ALL in X-Force.
She had zero connection to Jean, other than really through Logan.

And once again, Bendis treated her completely as 'a fill in Logan’.

Haven’t read that yet, so I can’t really comment further.

As for what change does this bring:

1) I think Retcon's are usually a bad sign for a character.
Logan's been retconned so many times that it's diminished his character as a whole.
Jean/Phoenix we still never know which retcon writers are using, and has led to the Phoenix force being overused and losing its sense of wonder.
Superboy lost a lot of his personality from the retcon.
There's very little reason to change an origin story in my opinion- basically don't fix something that was never broken in the first place.

IMHO, this retcon hasn’t been shown to change anything beyond a few semantics.

2) It's going against the creator wishes in this situation and that seems kind of disrespectful. Comic books are a lot like improv, in my opinion. If someone says 'this object is blue' or 'it's really cold'- you have to run with it. Kyle has said- Laura was cloned from duplicating Logan's X-chromosomes, she's not related to Sarah Kinney in any way. That's what is canon.

There’s been a whole slate of creators working on this character now.

3) It makes Sarah Kinney even more awful that she'd basically let them do this to roughly her own genetic child. I'm not saying her actions weren't already horrible (justifying abuse with 'this is science') but adding the element of them sharing DNA, eliminates her thought process that she could be 'impartial' and that she wasn't doing exactly what her father did to her.

Huh? It was still her own kid, DNA link or not. Incidentally, part of her story is her realizing that she was no better than her co-workers.

4) It worked fine for XCU, because the XCU and MCU have to simplify things for general audience members and that's fine. But I don't necessarily want comics resembling the movies.

The point I’m making is that clone or not clone is getting into the semantics. The point is that Laura’s genome was artificially created in a lab. That’s what’s important. As an analogy, it doesn’t matter if the spider that bit Peter Parker was radioactive or genetically engineered; the importance is that it was a spider that had been experimented on. Narratively, the two are the same. (Also, once again, X-23 establishes that Laura is still a clone.)

It's like recently the Runaways breaking up Karolina and Julie, so it could resemble the show of Karolina and Nico being a couple. It was just awful treatment of Julie Powers so Marvel Comics could have 'synergy'. It just feels cheap.

Nico isn’t a gay character.

5) I was fine with it as a fan theory, but did it really need to be canon? Laura already saw Sarah as a mother figure, why do we need to make her Laura's actual mother?

She was her actual mother. We may not’ve needed the genetic link to establish that, but it’s just telling us stuff we already knew.

It just felt like an unnecessary overly saccrine plot point to remove any uncomfortableness Laura might have over being a clone, which is what's I honestly felt like Taylor did in his writing; remove all emotional and physical conflicts for Laura.

And as we’ve seen from X-23, that didn’t happen.

6) As for the science, my attitude is, is I'm reading story's about people bit by radioactive spiders or has metal claws coming out of their hands. I should be able to suspend disbelief that Laura has green eyes, even if that doesn't make actual sense.

I don’t think that was the reason.

[XCE]

It did, except It was Yost in an X-Position. So my bad, I was half-wrong. However as Co-Creator I'm pretty sure he should have equal say in Laura's sexuality.

Haha, no. You weren't half-wrong, they're different people. So you were wrong. And Yost was Kyle's co-writer on the X-23 stories, but he's not co-creator of the character. That's Kyle. He created the character and her origin story on his own.

Anyway, this discussion is pointless. Having seen you post that you'd be okay with Laura being hetereosexual, bisexual or asexual - basically anything but gay - it's clear to me that you're going to vehemently argue against anything that poses a threat to your obsessive shipping of Laura and Hellion.

[Jumpyshark]

I just want to add that I'd be careful about suggesting Laura fits being asexual because of her past abuse, as that's a dodgy road to go down, though she could still be asexual, of course. I also don't see how Gabby and Laura both being gay or bi or whatever would amount to them treading on each other's toes, story-wise.

Obviously, everyone is welcome to their preferences with regards to Laura's sexuality, and it's cool that people are this interested in the idea of Laura being gay or bi, as there's a hearty discussion in the LGBT+ Marvel thread too*. Moreover, the initial tweet has also picked up in retweets and likes over the weekend, with Jay trying to arrange an interview with Craig Kyle for X-Plain the X-Men.

* http://community.comicbookresources....ussion/page656

[Beaubier]

I just want to add that I'd be careful about suggesting Laura fits being asexual because of her past abuse, as that's a dodgy road to go down, though she could still be asexual, of course.
* http://community.comicbookresources....ussion/page656

Thank you. This train of thought really irked me, but I didn’t initially want to get into it. People often assume asexual people are asexual because of a history of sexual abuse, or have something mentally or hormonally or otherwise something wrong with them, which is apparently the only justifiable reason someone might be asexual according to this train of thought. It’s harmful. So I ask that in the future, people keep that in mind.

Back to the current debate in hand.. at the end of the day, Laura hasn’t come out as gay on panel, and it’s possible that she never will. Kyle all of the sudden now saying this kind of feels like JK Rowling. In other words much ado about nothing, as nothing will likely come of it. If what Kyle said makes some people happy, I’m glad for them, but ultimately a tweet doesn’t make something canon.

If it ever happens on panel, I won’t complain about it. I can see why some think it feels natural for her. But as I said before I would prefer her to be revealed as bi, if anything.

[RoamingGnome8]

In regards to the Laura being lesbian question: there is no reason to believe that she is based on the source material and the only person suggesting it is a writer who's no longer in charge of the character. In any event, the character's love life has hardly been important to her story.



Beyond the fact that both stories were invented in their own vacuums, as I recall, the Logan version ended with him killing everyone, while the Laura one ended with her being able to make peace with them by not striking back. So, even if the subject matter was the same, it’s still different stories molded by how the characters are different.



A younger sister is not the same thing as a mentee.



Haven’t read that yet, so I can’t really comment further.




IMHO, this retcon hasn’t been shown to change anything beyond a few semantics.



There’s been a whole slate of creators working on this character now.



Huh? It was still her own kid, DNA link or not. Incidentally, part of her story is her realizing that she was no better than her co-workers.



The point I’m making is that clone or not clone is getting into the semantics. The point is that Laura’s genome was artificially created in a lab. That’s what’s important. As an analogy, it doesn’t matter if the spider that bit Peter Parker was radioactive or genetically engineered; the importance is that it was a spider that had been experimented on. Narratively, the two are the same. (Also, once again, X-23 establishes that Laura is still a clone.)



Nico isn’t a gay character.



She was her actual mother. We may not’ve needed the genetic link to establish that, but it’s just telling us stuff we already knew.



And as we’ve seen from X-23, that didn’t happen.



I don’t think that was the reason.

I feel like this argument is going around in circles, and it's just going to boil down to fighting over semantics so I'll just say this: It's fine if you like the Sarah Kinney retcon and feel like it works; I personally don't.

As for Nico- there has been recent hints that she may be bisexual in Rainbow Rowell's new series and she is featured as bisexual on the hulu show.

[Beaubier]

I feel like this argument is going around in circles, and it's just going to boil down to fighting over semantics so I'll just say this: It's fine if you like the Sarah Kinney retcon and feel like it works; I personally don't.

As for Nico- there has been recent hints that she may be bisexual in Rainbow Rowell's new series and she is featured as bisexual on the hulu show.

It’s way more than a hint at this point. She did try to -kiss- Karolina and the narrative has basically been calling her the right person at the wrong time.

[Ambaryerno]

Thank you. This train of thought really irked me, but I didn’t initially want to get into it. People often assume asexual people are asexual because of a history of sexual abuse, or have something mentally or hormonally or otherwise something wrong with them, which is apparently the only justifiable reason someone might be asexual according to this train of thought. It’s harmful. So I ask that in the future, people keep that in mind.

Back to the current debate in hand.. at the end of the day, Laura hasn’t come out as gay on panel, and it’s possible that she never will. Kyle all of the sudden now saying this kind of feels like JK Rowling. In other words much ado about nothing, as nothing will likely come of it. If what Kyle said makes some people happy, I’m glad for them, but ultimately a tweet doesn’t make something canon.

If it ever happens on panel, I won’t complain about it. I can see why some think it feels natural for her. But as I said before I would prefer her to be revealed as bi, if anything.

Tbh given the timing, I can’t help if this is Kyle reacting to the Sarah revelation and trying to exert some sort of control. It’s weird for him to say how he thinks it would be the natural direction for her when there was never anything to even hint at it in the past.

[FBarnhill]

Okay, let me just say this:
I hate hate HATE retcons that contradict what was canon.
If there's some sort of ambiguity that's fine. They did a good job with Bobby Drake, although I have to admit when I heard about that I wasn't super happy until I actually read the ANXM where it happened. If the writers do a good job with Laura being bi, that I'm fine with, although I'm not really hoping for it either, but I'm going to be pissed if they make her a full on lesbian when it's been established that she likes guys.

But yeah, I'm 100% on board with Gabby.

That’s kind of the point of retcons.

[WebLurker]

I feel like this argument is going around in circles, and it's just going to boil down to fighting over semantics so I'll just say this: It's fine if you like the Sarah Kinney retcon and feel like it works; I personally don't.

Fair enough.

Seeing as the main X-23 series has been written so far under the assumption that Laura was a clone, I wonder if future issues will incorporate the Adamantium Agenda material in some fashion or if it'll become kind of an ignored revelation. (Or if X-Men: Red will do anything with it, for that matter.)

As for Nico- there has been recent hints that she may be bisexual in Rainbow Rowell's new series and she is featured as bisexual on the hulu show.

Fair enough. I had read the first Rowell trade paperback and was aware of that strange scene where she tries to kiss Karolina (haven't read further, thanks to the next trade being pending) and was aware of the adaptation (which, being an adaptation, can change elements of the characters for their own take). Maybe a better way to put it is that I don't really get where the idea of Nico being bisexual/lesbian/whatever came from, given that she's not only written straight consistently through the original series with more than one boyfriend, but it's also made crystal clear that she wasn't romantically interested in Karolina.

[WebLurker]

I feel like this argument is going around in circles, and it's just going to boil down to fighting over semantics so I'll just say this: It's fine if you like the Sarah Kinney retcon and feel like it works; I personally don't.

Fair enough.

Seeing as the main X-23 series has been written so far under the assumption that Laura was a clone, I wonder if future issues will incorporate the Adamantium Agenda material in some fashion or if it'll become kind of an ignored revelation. (Or if X-Men: Red will do anything with it, for that matter.)

As for Nico- there has been recent hints that she may be bisexual in Rainbow Rowell's new series and she is featured as bisexual on the hulu show.

Fair enough. I had read the first Rowell trade paperback and was aware of that strange scene where she tries to kiss Karolina (haven't read further, thanks to the next trade being pending) and was aware of the adaptation (which, being an adaptation, can change elements of the characters for their own take). Maybe a better way to put it is that I don't really get where the idea of Nico being bisexual/lesbian/whatever came from, given that she's not only written straight consistently through the original series with more than one boyfriend, but it's also made crystal clear that she wasn't romantically interested in Karolina.

[Dthirds3]

Fair enough.

Seeing as the main X-23 series has been written so far under the assumption that Laura was a clone, I wonder if future issues will incorporate the Adamantium Agenda material in some fashion or if it'll become kind of an ignored revelation. (Or if X-Men: Red will do anything with it, for that matter.)

The thing is she still it's a clone kind of, unless they retcon her to the result of a one night stand , she was still built using cloning tech on wepond x dna now just has Sarah's DNA to some extent. So it shouldn't have any impact on tamaki story, also she already saw both as her parents so there shouldn't be any big status quo change.

I just thought this migh have been done to explain why she wont get hot claws and open the door to a secondary mutation(please be a ranged attack)

[Kurolegacy]

Fair enough. I had read the first Rowell trade paperback and was aware of that strange scene where she tries to kiss Karolina (haven't read further, thanks to the next trade being pending) and was aware of the adaptation (which, being an adaptation, can change elements of the characters for their own take). Maybe a better way to put it is that I don't really get where the idea of Nico being bisexual/lesbian/whatever came from, given that she's not only written straight consistently through the original series with more than one boyfriend, but it's also made crystal clear that she wasn't romantically interested in Karolina.

Honestly that’s the problem with taking evidence of her being bisexual from the most recent series, it literally comes out of left field with no real rhyme or reason behind it. With Prodigy, while there wasn’t a lead up to it, you could see it making sense given his powers but with Nico, it’s basically at at worst synergy and at best a retcon for retcons sake.

[The Big G]

In the dissembled teaser they had her in her X-23 costume as opposed to her Red costume, so maybe by then Red and the solo run will finally be on the same page.

It will be interesting to see Kelly and Rosen get their hands on Laura again. Maybe Laura will have a decent sized role in the story.