The origin of X-23 jumps ahead a few years with issue #2 as we settle down to the crucial business of torturing her for an issue.

These things are tricky to play correctly, and after a strong start last time, the second issue falters a little bit.  The strength of the first issue, and the better parts of this one, was that the X-23 project come across as scientists who are more interested in their work than in moral complications.  It's institutional abuse, believable on the level of those old experiments where you turn up the electricity and ask people to press the electric-shock button.

However, this issue stretches credibility in two ways.  Zander becomes much more explicitly evil, and he comes across as somebody who's tormenting X-23 for the sake of doing so, rather than as someone who regards it as a happy side-effect.  When he starts performing operations on her without anaesthetic, for no discernible reason, it makes him more of a cartoon villain, and a less interesting character for it.  I buy abuse from characters who think they're doing something worthwhile or who just don't care, but when you get into this level of sadism, the character might as well be twirling his handlebar moustache.

We've also got a nice kindly sensei who teaches X-23 the martial arts.  This guy is so nice and reasonable that it begs the obvious question - why is he allowed to hang around with for so long when he's breaking the rules at every turn?  And for that matter, why is he willing to associate himself with this project in the first place?  We never really get a satisfactory answer to this point.

There's still some good strong emotion in here.  It's just rather less subtle than in the previous issue.  X-23 is rather impassive, but then that's kind of the point.  Billy Tan's art still gives her enough humanity and fragility to make us care about the battering she takes for most of the issue.

Sarah Kinney is left to carry the weight of the story as the de facto lead, and she's being handled nicely - somebody who's deeply alarmed by what's being done to the kid, but is so far involved with the project that she no longer has the moral authority to really do anything to stop it.

It hasn't yet done anything to interest me in X-23 as a character - who, so far, is just a retread of Weapon X.  But as a story in its own right, the series is holding up better than I'd expected.

Rating: B+

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