While it has seemingly been established in both the live action film landscape and within the world of Marvel Comics that Laura Kinney (or X-23) is X-Men’s darkest era reveals that’s actually not the case as there is another mutant hero who proved to fit the bill even better than Laura.
James “Logan” Howlett aka Wolverine is a mutant with heightened animalistic senses, a healing factor that makes him practically untouchable, and claws that protrude and retract from his knuckles. Laura Kinney aka Wolverine is a mutant who was artificially engineered from Logan’s DNA. This doesn’t mean Laura is a clone by any means as the circumstances of her birth weren’t too far off from the natural process of having a child, and since she is Logan’s ‘daughter’, she inherited his mutation which allowed Laura to pick up the mantle of Wolverine (which is currently her title in the comics). However, despite that connection, it seems another X-Men hero already beat Laura to the punch.
In Generation Next #1 by Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo, a new team of X-Men are training under the tutelage of Colossus and Shadowcat (aka Kate Pryde) who are much more hardcore than they’ve ever been portrayed in the past. The reason for that is due to the world in which they live–the world of the Age of Apocalypse. During the Age of Apocalypse, the Darwinistic mutant villain, Apocalypse, took control over a large part of the world following Charles Xavier’s timeline-splitting death. Apocalypse’s rise to power made the entire planet a dark and distrusting place, one filled with violence and bloodshed–something that wasn’t lost on the X-Men. During these new mutants’ training session, they were pushed to the brink of death by their trainers–especially Shadowcat, who picked up some new weapons in this ultra-violent reality: retractable claws exactly like Wolverine’s.
Kate Pryde is Wolverine’s True Successor, Not Laura Kinney
Kate Pryde is introduced in the Age of Apocalypse sporting attachable razor-sharp claws–three on each hand–that act exactly like those of Wolverine, with seemingly equal efficiency given the evidence presented in this training session. However, it isn’t just these new claws that make Shadowcat the perfect Wolverine successor, but also Kate’s own mutant ability. Kate Pryde has the power to phase through objects (or have them phase through her) meaning that she takes no damage in battle. Any attack an enemy throws at Kate will just go right through her, which makes it very similar to the almost instantaneous healing ability exhibited by Logan and Laura. In fact, Kate’s ability to have attacks phase through her is actually better than Logan and Laura’s healing factor as she is never injured to begin with.
When Laura Kinney took the title of Wolverine, she perfectly filled the role as her powers are exactly the same as Logan’s. When Kate Pryde adopted razor-sharp claws after already mastering her baseline phasing ability, however, she became an even better version of ‘Wolverine’ as her claws were the same, but her ‘healing factor’ was far superior–which, in turn, makes her better than X-23. So, with her phasing power and the addition of her six claws, Kate Pryde proves to be a superior successor to Wolverine than Laura Kinney by simultaneously proving to arguably be a more badass and untouchable X-Men hero than even Wolverine himself.
