X-23: Deadly Regenesis #5

[Ambaryerno]

Issue 5 begins with the preview, as Laura and Haymaker react to the reveal that Kingpin was pulling the strings. Laura is shot down by Kimura before she can close in, and Fisk is arrogantly unconcerned. After seeing to Laura, Jordan confronts Fisk himself, and Fisk brushes the matter of his brother off with a "For Me It Was Tuesday."

Laura and Jordan are escorted away, but Fisk isn't particularly happy with Kimura, who keeps hassling him over getting paid. Especially when one of the targets Laura was supposed to kill turns up alive on the news calling out gangsters like Fisk himself (so apparently, somehow Kimura missed the fact that Laura wasn't actually doing the job even though it should have been blatantly obvious). Fisk intends to use the MGH Laura stole in the previous issues to create himself a new assassin that's much more easily controlled.

Meanwhile, Laura and Jordan pull the "Fight Each Other To Distract Our Enemies" before breaking loose. While Laura goes for Kingpin, she sends Jordan to free Kimura's MGH slaves. Realizing shit is about to get out of hand, Kimura, Burnham, and Fisk prepare to escape. Fisk double-crosses Kimura, who is so not getting paid, and steals both her lackey AND her helicopter, leaving her to face an angry Laura on her own.

Laura sprays her with a dose of power suppressor and finally gets a well-deserved chance (since ANW hasn't happened yet) to fight Kimura on even terms. Laura takes out years of pain on Kimura's no-longer-invulnerable hide and cathartically beats the shit out of her, but stops short of killing her. Laura doesn't want to give her that "win," and she also needs to escape so Laura can drown her in Madripoor's bay in the not-to-distant future. With Kimura subdued, Laura pursues Fisk, who manages to fly the coop when she misjudges her jump and misses catching the helicopter runner, falling several stories to the pavement below.

Laura survives, but with her healing factor still compromised is slow to recover, so Jordan helps take her to the hospital, along with the rescued prisoners. Her powers soon kick back in, however, and Laura is soon discharged. The slaves soon recover with the help of medical records secretly provided by Burnham, who is now acting as a mole within Kingpin's organization, and Jordan looks towards rebuilding his life. The issue ends with Laura taking them to a support group for others who have lost family members, and reflects on her own efforts to healing from her own trauma.

-----

And with that, Deadly Regenesis comes to an end.

It's hard for me to decide how satisfying that is. The series itself was somewhat lackluster. It was let down by its artwork, and the plot was honestly hard to feel very strongly about. There's just a disconnect knowing that certain things HAD to happen, and the tension that was lost. We KNEW Kimura would get away, because she had to face Laura in Madripoor in All New Wolverine. We KNEW that Laura couldn't actually do anything to Kingpin for multiple reasons.

As with previous issues, the writing for Laura was passable, and it remains kind of pathetic just how much of an improvement merely being "passable" is with how she's been written in the current era.

The most satisfying moment was honestly when Laura sprayed Kimura, and finally got to show her just how BADLY outclassed she would actually be were it not for Kimura's invulnerability. In fact, this is a concept I'd LOVE to see explored; Kimura's appearance always show her with a particular arrogance from knowing she can't truly be harmed, and it would be fascinating to see how she would actually handle that same feeling of helplessness that her victims often experienced. Alas, her death in All New Wolverine precludes that unless she's resurrected (not impossible with comics).

The Face Turn by Haymaker is also something of a disappointment, since it leaves Laura with the same problem that has plagued her since her debut: She simply doesn't have a Rogues gallery. Jordan presented an intriguing possibility, both because of how their backgrounds connect, and that they could have taken divergent paths: Where Laura healed from her trauma, Jordan's allows them to consume them (incidentally, a similar track to what I imagine a writer could do with her and Kimura, but no one has ever bothered with it). They're certainly a sympathetic character, but that could have contributed to [I]why[I] they'd be such an effective villain.

Which brings us to Kingpin.

The biggest frustration of this series is that it doesn't provide any sort of closure on Kingpin's affect on Laura's background. Fisk was her biggest client, and she was one of his favorite assassins. His absolute callousness towards the fact she was merely a child (even then, at the time this story takes place she was only about 16 or 17) is frankly horrifying. Tom Taylor's work on All New Wolverine, specifically Orphans of X, would even set up a perfect motivation for a confrontation between them. This series even ends with Burnham being set up as a contact Laura could use to keep tabs on Fisk's activities and move against them.

The problem is, IT CAN NEVER HAPPEN.

This brings us back to the OTHER problem Laura has: She's trapped between the A and B lists in that she's a popular character who can sell books, yet Marvel simply won't give her the opportunity to actually do something meaningful. She's stuck dealing with one-off villains, and trapped within Logan's shadow. Fisk is simply too big of a name for Marvel to allow her to take him on in a story with actual consequences. In fact we're probably not going to even get a reaction from Laura (either of them) to Fisk being on Krakoa, even though she has very good reason to not want him to be there and it would be ASKING for a confrontation.

This leaves me puzzled whey they would leave it so open-ended like this.

Overall, the series was something of a letdown. Laura was written well enough, but the story ultimately accomplishes very little. It lays hints of groundwork for things that Marvel would never actually allow, and once again fails to meaningfully grow Laura's supporting cast.

[Rift]

Yeah tbh the Kingpin stuff falls flat when you think of the meta-ness of it all - which is something that has been plaguing these flashback books. And tbh, even in the context of this series, he should have been in more issues. And it'd have been cool to have SOME closure, even if it couldn't be anything that would change canon or have a long-lasting impact.

But Kimura was pretty cool here, and we got a Hellion cameo in issue 1. Laura was also good here, lack of contractions aside. I hope she gets a book soon... or at least manages to escape from Percy's book intact.

[Persephone]

The series wasn’t bad, exactly, but it did kind of fail at everything it was supposed to do. Introduce a new rogue to her gallery to replace Kimura? Yeah, no, they go to therapy together. They’re off of MGH and trying to heal. If Jordan ended the story as an unemployed merc who still didn’t like Laura that could at least set up future conflict. But now they’re just another friend / ally who will probably never show up again. It was weird to give Laura a moment where she could’ve killed Kimura but didn’t, because the last time before this in canon she faced Kimura with a chance to kill her she tried. (Julian wouldn’t.) I would’ve just cut that scene entirely and had Laura take her out of the fight some other way. I guess Kingpin is back in her story, but he was only in it for one issue lol. The only thing it really did for either the canon or future story threads is being more of her Wolverines / ANW personality and conflict aversion earlier in her canon timeline and establish that she’s at least intermittently in therapy, which also helps bridge the divide in characterization.

It was a decent mini, just a nearly pointless one.

[Dthirds3]

This was enjoyable for the most part. Just could have been better

[Grunty]

Overall, the series was something of a letdown. Laura was written well enough, but the story ultimately accomplishes very little. It lays hints of groundwork for things that Marvel would never actually allow, and once again fails to meaningfully grow Laura's supporting cast.

It can feel like the only way Laura might finaly get additional personal enemies is if they come from life action/animated adaptations or video games. Simply because of how these don't have to adhere to the listed meta factors like the comics do and the audience is often more open minded towards new or lesser characters.