X-23's miniseries reaches the halfway point. 

We're now up to her brief career in running around killing people.  So most of the issue is her running around killing people, leading up to Zander betraying her at the end and apparently trying to get her killed by leaving her to her fate.

It's perfectly good for what it is - a third straight issue of X-23 being horribly abused so that we all want her to come back and kill the baddies.  It's also got some very good art from Billy Tan who, beneath the fashionable surface, also provides some great layouts in the slow-motion sequences and action set-pieces.

On the other hand, the same problems as before leave me slightly underwhelmed.  The project is just a bit too moustache-twirlingly evil; we've gone way beyond the banality of evil in the name of science, and we're now into the realms of killing random celebrities just to prove you can do it.  It's all a bit cartoony, and it stops me really buying into the villains as people. 

Also, we're still getting the whole story from Sarah's perspective, while X-23 continues to be written as a plot device rather than a character.  It's a good enough series, but it doesn't do anything to build my interest in X-23 herself.  Sure, you root for her to escape the bad guys, but her personality hasn't been developed much beyond "brainwashed victim."  There's almost nothing there to identify with.  In the context of this particular story, that's not really a problem, but if Marvel want to make X-23 into a major character, we're going to need a little more to work with.

Overall, it's still a largely successful book, at least so far as telling this particular story is concerned.

Rating: B+

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