Four X-books this week, including three of the core titles.  But first up is NYX, which is still in the process of introducing the cast.

This time around it's a taciturn goth hooker with a habit of cutting herself.  The solicitations promised a character with a connection to one of the X-Men, and she does indeed show off her own set of Wolverine-style claws.  She's not named anywhere in the story, but the recap page helpfully confirms (by crediting her creator, Craig Kyle) that this is meant to be X-23.

X-23 is a character from the X-Men: Evolution animated show.  It's not unknown for characters created in spin-off shows to make their way back into the mainstream continuity.  There's something of a precedent already in the X-books with Morph of the Exiles, although that character was meant to be a revival of the 1960s character Changeling.  The Batman books have done it more explicitly with Harley Quinn.

It seems, though, that X-23 has been given a bit of an overhaul.  I don't actually watch X-Men: Evolution, but a quick search throws up the information that X-23 was apparently cloned from Wolverine.  (Yes, the word "cloned" keeps turning up.  Yes, I know that's obvious nonsense.)  There are some pictures of a kind of female Wolverine with claws.  Pretty much entirely different from what we're seeing here, save for the claws and some elements of the character design.  It'll be interesting to see whether this is simply an exercise in reusing a cute character design or whether there actually is some element to the character that Quesada wants to make use of.

Anyway, for present purposes X-23 is introduced as one of those nobly suffering hooker types, who stands on street corners looking miserably dignified and waif-like.  She barely talks, and spends much of the issue not reacting to anything but crying gently.  She comes across as somewhat autistic, and I'm not entirely sure the impression was meant to go that far - the concept of autistic fetish hookers is certainly a rather unsettling one.  On the other hand, while this at least takes her somewhat out of the run of goth stereotype characters, it does mean that we don't really get much development of her character.  Characters who are this unresponsive and uncommunicative usually turn out to be a nightmare in terms of getting them into the story, so we'll have to see whether Quesada is really going to keep the character on that level.

Obviously, the character is ideally suited for Joshua Middleton's art.  Vulnerable waifs are his signature character design, and she works particularly well with the smeared watercolours on the cover.  I'm still a little concerned that his characters stick a bit too rigidly to that model (Cameron just doesn't look like she's older than the other characters), but it certainly looks great.  Aesthetically pleasing misery is where Middleton excels.

The series still seems woefully confused about its target audience.  Ridiculously, the comic has a PSR+ rating but then qualifies it with a "Mature Content" warning.  The result is a comic about clawed, autistic fetish prostitutes where characters slash their arms and take drugs on panel, but the word "shit" is rendered as "$#!@!".  I find it hard to imagine that there are readers out there who are capable of dealing with the plot content of this comic, yet would be alarmed and horrified by the word "fuck".  As with the Ultimate comics, there seems to be an effort to shoehorn this comic into a younger age-classification on the most tenuous and technical of language-related grounds.  Just make the damn thing a Max book, guys - there's no point having an age classification system if you're going to stretch it to this degree.  The categories have to mean something.

Anyway, the issue looks lovely, and we're now starting to see some sort of direction emerging (based around Kiden's attempts to save people following prompts in her dreams).   I'm not sold on X-23 at this stage, and to be honest, I'm waiting somewhat for the content underneath her pristine surface of goth misery.  But it's an interesting enough start for the character, and I'm intrigued to see where Quesada is going with her.  Which is the main thing.

Rating: B+

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