X-23 has a pretty complicated genetic makeup and family background. Not only was she cloned from a man whom she later came to see as her father and who more or less officially adopted her, but the head scientist behind the cloning process also became her surrogate mother and the closest thing she had to a parent growing up. She got her name Laura Kinney from that woman just after she’d been forced to fatally wound her under the effect of a chemical trigger scent.
As you can tell, Laura Kinney has a weird family tree.
Here’s what we know from the comics: Laura was cloned from the DNA of Logan (Wolverine). The genetic sample from Wolverine that the cloners had access to was damaged, leading to 22 failed cloning attempts. Male humans have two distinct sex chromosomes (XY) while females have two of the same kind (XX). By essentially dropping the Y chromosome and doubling the X chromosome from Logan’s damaged genetic sample, the cloners were able to bypass the damaged parts of the DNA and so the 23rd attempt was successful by creating a female clone instead of a male one. And that also explains the origins of Laura’s X-23 designation.
Seems to make sense so far, right? Well, things get a little bit complicated from there because, as I mentioned earlier, Laura was not grown in a vat, she was carried to term by a surrogate mother, Sarah Kinney, the lead scientist on the cloning project. The fact that Laura looks a lot like Sarah, including having her striking green eyes rather than Logan’s blue eyes, has led many fans to speculate that Sarah, in addition to manipulating the chromosomes, perhaps used some of her own DNA to replace broken parts of Logan’s DNA. I have liked this theory myself, because it would explain why Laura looks so much like Sarah and also any differences between Laura and Logan.
However, I recently had a chance to talk to X-23′s creator, Craig Kyle, and he delivered the final word on this discussion:
“As
for Sarah’s DNA being blended into Laura’s, the answer is “no.” That
said, Sarah was her incubator. Sarah’s blood and bio-electricity flowed
into Laura, feeding and growing her into a fully formed being, as all
mothers do. So, while they may not be genetically linked, they are
biologically. We reverse engineered Sarah’s design to match X-23’s in an
effort to reveal this connection.”
So there you have it. Laura is “all Logan” genetically speaking.
While we were on the subject of Laura’s origins, I mentioned to Kyle how I had seen some people listing Laura as an example of “whitewashing”, referring to instances of characters of color being turned caucasian. The “evidence” in this case is that when X-23 first showed up in the X-Men Evolution cartoon, she appeared to have a darker, almost brown, complexion, while when she was introduced in the comic universe shortly after, she had a pale white look. Kyle’s answer was pretty emphatic:
“The
“whitewashing” thing is 1000% bullshit. As for
X-23’s coloring in X-Men Evolution, her design was based on an 11 year
old girl my wife was nannying at the time. I made a set of four small
claws for the girl and did a photoshoot to create a visual guide for the
character designer of the series. The coloring of X-23’s character in
the show matches the real little girl’s coloring, as a nod to her from
me. I wasn’t involved in X-23’s visual design for NYX but I love it!
Middleton did an amazing job translating her look into one that better
matched Wolverine, which is exactly what I wanted for the comics.“
So, in essence, X-23′s design in the Evolution cartoon, at least in terms of skin color, was based on a real girl. When they made the transition to the comics, they based her design around the fact that she was a clone of Logan and should look similar to him. Her “mother”, the scientist that cloned her, was also changed as a result, because they wanted a physical resemblance to illustrate their biological connection.
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