If there's one thing I love the most about Wikipedia, it's that it's run by geeks for geeks. That means that they have huge entries on superheroes. It's great for when you want to know more about some obscure character who's suddenly become very important on Justice League Unlimited.
Anyway, as I spend a lot of my evenings reading up on superheroes, I've noticed a trend. When a superhero becomes very popular, he'll be ripped off in three ways; three ways designed to make the superhero's comic more popular. I've also noticed this was more popular in what's now known as "the Silver Age of Comics." (The 60's) Once a superhero becomes popular, you can expect these three characters to pop up:
- a teen sidekick
- a female counterpart
- an evil twin
And, in a great sign of history repeating itself, did you know that, in the X-Men comics, Wolverine now has a female counterpart? She doesn't have a name yet, going only by the code X-23. X-23 is a clone of Wolverine, but there was a bit of a flaw in the cloning process. As you know, Wolverine has 3 claws coming from the back of his hands. X-23 only has two...and one in each foot. But, she did inherit Wolverine's healing factor and inner rage. Oh, and she's younger too; still a teenager.
X-23 was originally created for the X-Men Evolution cartoon, and soon got promoted to official Marvel continuity.
Now, you're probably wondering how Wolverine's clone is female. We've got the animated version and the comic version.
The Animated Version - They used "Jurassic Park" science. As you may recall, in Jurassic Park, one of the scientists said that all embryos are inherently female, and it's the addition of a hormone at a certain state that turns it male. No hormone means it's a girl. So, in the cartoon, the evil cloners denied that hormone and made X-23 female, using the sexist logic that a girl would be easier to control.
The comics - The sample of Wolverine's DNA was impure, resulting in a damaged Y-chromosome. So, the evil cloners just doubled-up the X-chromosome.
Anyway, in both renditions, X-23 eventually crosses paths with the X-Men, where Wolverine takes her under his wing.
Huh. Guess she qualifies as "teen sidekick," too.
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