#craig kyle

[theforswornelite]

ITSSSSSSMAHHHHHHHGURLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

[rei-ismyname]

I don't know if it's known that X-23 had been planned as a lesbian character before her appearance in the comics. She started in the 2000s series and the idea was that she preferred women. And while she still has chemistry with other women now that she's the Laura Kinney of the comics, I still think it's a shame that so much of her first version was discarded.

Hey there!

I hadn't heard this before your ask so I did some digging to see if I could find some primary sources for this. Marvel loves queerbaiting and as best I can remember her only confirmed relationships are with men - which doesn't preclude her from being a lesbian ofc (or bi/pan/queer/not 💯 straight etc) - but that's what we've got. Putting her intersex coding aside (I'll touch on this another time but it's a different kettle of fish to her orientation) the source I found that's closest to your ask is a tweet from Craig Kyle.

There we go.

Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost created Laura for X-Men Evolution. Kyle 'would reveal' she's gay 'if the story was mine to tell.' I could only find second hand Reddit comments alleging Yost 'ships her with Hellion' - I flicked through maybe 30 Yost interviews but came up with nothing. It IS a shame that this didn't pan out, or hasn't yet. That might be naively optimistic considering The Mouse and Marvel's disappointing queer history. Granted, the show is not the comics but a character migrating from animation to comics is pretty rare here, whereas it's the opposite pretty much everywhere else.

I wrote a lengthy piece breaking down the Jubilee/Laura blood drinking scene a while back. It's truly one of the most sapphic things in existence to the point it's like come on! Having Jubes loudly declare 'no homo' afterwards was just obnoxious. We get it, you're cowards, no need to be crass.

Laura was REALLY focused on Kiden Nixon and only Kiden in the last issue of NYX. It feels like a wink, especially when she's saying it to Julian, one of her most popular ships. Okay, Kiden is the most important person to her - that can be platonic, but it's stretching credulity and genre conventions to breaking point. I feel like if it were a het pairing, they'd kiss or hug, or even non-physically but verbally express queerplatonic love.

I really shouldn't get going on Marvel heteronormative bullshit. I'll be going all day. Definitely a shame, but sadly not even a little bit surprising. Thanks for the ask!

[newx-menfan]

Things may change… but Hellion/Laura covers are eternal 🤣🤣

(Even Liu couldn’t KILL it 🤣🤣🤣😭!)

[kryptonbabe]

One of my favorite splash pages from this series, a fight scene between X-23, Mercury, Hellion, Prodigy, Surge, Dust and Rockslide against Nimrod bots

From New X-Men #30 (2006) by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost Penciler & Paco Medina

[bringbackwendellvaughn]

[marcovaleyeah]

24.07.24

#Mira-Marathon | MCU

Film Name: Thor: Ragnarok (2017); Production Studios: Walt Disney Pictures, Marvel Studios; Director by: Taika Waititi; Screenwriter: Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher L. Yost, Walter Simonson; Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum; Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Action, Adventure; Running Time: 2 hours 10 minutes;

"Thor: Ragnarok" is a Marvel superhero film where Chris Hemsworth plays Thor, who after losing his powers ends up on the planet Sakaar and is forced to fight the Hulk in an arena. They must escape and stop Hela, the goddess of death, who plans to destroy Asgard. Pros: Incredible visual effects, Exciting and dynamic plot, Lots of humor, Excellent performance by Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, Introduction to the cosmic side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Cons: Some characters like Hela and Valkyrie are not very well written, Some plot twists are predictable. Overall, this is a visually impressive, dynamic and fun film with an interesting plot and charismatic characters.

My rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[ikindamaybewanthertositonmyface]

Okay but something that will always sadden me regarding Laura Kinney is that her creators Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, who created her in both X-Men Evolution and the original 2 miniseries' that featured her origins, X-23 and X-23 Target X, originally intended to reveal that she was gay in a planned third miniseries but then never got a chance to do so because Marvel cancelled it...

Laura Kinney was meant to be so so gay.. And instead she's completely hetero despite the original intention for her character to be otherwise and that just disappoints me so much... I mean I know a character evolving past what they were originally intended to be is just what happens. But when she was meant to be gay and just never got the chance to be... Well, as a lesbian fan of hers who always wished she was gay, and who learned this only a few years ago, well it just upsets me so much....

[burningexeter]

[WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN]

Not only was Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes supposed to run for three seasons but the S2 finale was to be a two-parter that was an entire solo Susan Storm episode where she's abducted by a race of female aliens who want to use her as a soldier.

No seriously.

[movie-titlecards]

Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow (2008)

My rating: 7/10

f I had a nickel for every time Tom Kane voiced an eccentric inventor type who, due to one of his inventions turning out in an unexpected way, ended up as a father figure to a group of superpowered children... I would have at least two nickels. Possibly more.

Anyway, this is pretty good fun for what it is. I remember enjoying it as a kid, and still enjoyed it this time.

[laurakinneylance]

BEHOLD: YOUR EVIDENCE!!!! Here is one of the original creators of Laura replying to my comment about Laura being pansexual on Twitter!!

Day 28 of Characters That Are Definitely Queer but Comics Won’t Let Them Be:

Laura Kinney

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Flashback Fridays: X-23: Innocence Lost

Series: X-23 (2005 1-6)Writer: Craig KyleArtists: Christopher Yost, Billy TanPublisher: Marvel ComicsReleased: January 1, 2006Find it on Goodreads | More Graphic Novels Summary: Laura Kinney, aka X-23, has not led the best life. Her childhood was stolen from her, as she was designed as part of a scientific experiment (with even darker end goals). Her story unfolds on these pages, partially…

[paperorhardback]

The origin of X-23! Cloned from Wolverine's cells and raised to be the perfect killer, young Laura Kinney never knew a life free from the harsh masters at the Facility. But now she's broken loose at last and must forge her own path in the world! Free of her chains and determined to live, Laura will write the next chapter of her story herself. But can X-23 escape her training and her instincts, or will the gallons of blood spilled in her violent past drag her down? And can she truly begin a new life until she faces the man whose shadow has loomed over her for years? The Wolverine!

[newx-menfan]

Laura Kinney isn’t the “Goodie Two Shoes” fans make her out to be…and other thoughts… 

Part 1: “The CRINGE”

Let’s be honest- we all KNEW I would eventually get here…after doing write-ups on Surge, Hellion, AND Prodigy…since X-23 is one of my all time favorite characters…

If there is one thing that drives me totally NUTS about X-23 fandom though (and fandoms, in general)… it is this weird fan attitude that Laura Kinney…aka “X-23”…aka “Wolverine”… can essentially “Do No Wrong”….

She’s the “BETTER” Wolverine. The less “TOXIC” version. The PERFECT Wolverine.

You see it in comic clickbait articles ALL the time- Laura is, essentially, the PERFECT answer to all the problems of the original character….

If you happen to mention ANY sort of criticism against X-23, textually or just about the character ingeneral - “She’s a bad friend”… “She can be kind of selfish”… “she is objectively a derivative character that is based off of a more popular X-Men”…people will look at you like you just kicked their puppy or said something really cruel…

And what’s interesting to me about all of this is… X-Men is KIND OF a book essentially about very flawed people, all trying to survive. That was, after all, Marvel’s WHOLE sell for years- they had the “relatable”, “real” characters…. where DC comics had “Gods”.

You would think, with characters EATING another planet, living out problematic “antebellum” Dark Phoenix fantasies, having psychic affairs, saying the “N-word” repeatedly, starting out as villains… it’s kind of accepted that ALL OF THE OTHER X-MEN have made terrible choices at some point or have been written BADLY….

Yet if you go on X-Men twitter… you will regularly see fans yelling that Jean Grey “is the most powerful X-Men” ever, Gambit or Logan are just these perfect “girl-dad’s”, or Storm can essentially NEVER be wrong…

And the PROBLEM with this is…it’s made writing these characters ALMOST LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE…

When Jean, for example, is at GOD LEVELS and ALWAYS morally right… what can you feasibly DO with her character anymore? If you create a villain to match her insane power levels… fans will be upset and complain that the fight wasn’t “fair” and inevitably pull up some vague comic panel to argue just why Jean really should have won …If a writer decides to de-power her OR makes her go evil, fans often will inevitably view it as sexist… so how can you write Jean Grey as still relatable? 

New relationships or Scott Summers dying?- Fans often get upset when writers break up the iconic Scott/Jean or Logan/Jean ships…or accuse writers of romanticizing toxic relationships…

Put her in a teaching/mentor/Headmaster role?- we saw what happened when writers tried it with Kitty, Storm, and Logan…they just became pretty boring….

Often writers solution seems to be… just killing Jean off…

This isn’t to shoot down criticisms like “Women in the Refrigerator Syndrome”, “plot armor”, ect…but I do think it’s important to talk about how… possibly… fandom has gone too far the other way… that fandom is basically guaranteeing characters will inevitably become obsolete or unusable… or cause writers to inevitably just repeat the same five stories for nostalgia sake, because they can’t do anything “new”…

This isn’t JUST female characters either- I would say characters like Gambit, Wolverine, Cyclops, Batman, and several others have pretty much the same logistical problem…they’ve been hyped up SO MUCH…that you can’t really DO ANYTHING with them anymore, for fear of angering their large fanbases….

Laura has relatively quickly developed this problem, and it seems like the shelf life of comic book characters is burning out quicker and quicker…

What is it about Laura, that makes her immune to any real criticism within her fan base, in a comic book series where it’s kind of accepted that every character is in some way…horribly flawed?

I am going to go through in these posts talking about why Laura really isn’t the perfect character readers constantly make her out to be… that she actually IS pretty similar TO Logan and a lot of the complaints against him CAN be tied to her as well… and that the biggest problem currently facing Laura AND COMICS in general right now, I would argue, is that writers are not able to admit that Laura or any of the other characters ARE sometimes wrong…or to quote Kitty Pryde…sometimes kind of a “jerk”…

———————————————————————

Part of the reason no one criticizes Laura, is because of her tremendously tragic backstory.

Essentially a modern version of “Frankenstein”; Laura is created to be a replication of the “Weapon X” experiment in miniseries “Innocence Lost”. (I know people tend to focus more on the “Pinocchio” allusions from the book, but I find the  “Frankenstein” allusions more relevant…)

Sarah Kinney opts into this program, because, like Victor Frankenstein: she desires scientific exploration without ethical scrutiny. 

Focused more on pushing the realms of scientific discovery instead of considering the consequences, Sarah manages to create a viable clone, with the caveat that it is female, because the “Y” gene from the sample is too damaged. It’s only when Rice, another scientist with a Wolverine-vendetta, forces Sarah to be a surrogate to Laura as punishment for her insubordination, that the ethical considerations truly start to come into play for Sarah…

Laura experiences extreme torture, radiation poisoning to activate her mutant powers, coating her claws without anesthetic, creation of the trigger scent (a pavlovian odor that causes her to black out and go berserk), forcing her to kill her Sensei and other targets (and her puppy, according to Liu…), and many other horrors while there.

Sarah, after seeing Laura’s potential for good after Laura spares Rice’s illegitimate kid from being murdered and Laura helping  track down Sarah’s kidnapped niece; tries to free Laura and destroy the facility…

Which leads to Rice coating Sarah with the trigger scent and having Laura murder her.

While Laura DOES manage to escape…she now has to live with the fact that she killed her own mother for the rest of her life…

This is pretty much the bare bones summary (I ignored Sarah’s own history of childhood trauma and abuse and the Rice subplots)….

Laura then goes to track down Sarah’s relatives in “Target X”, bonding with Megan, the angsty traumatized niece that had been kidnapped previously and develops her first real human connection.

It’s hard NOT to like Kyle’s adorable version of Laura; watching her riding on roller coasters with Megan, peeping in on people in windows, accidentally getting Megan into trouble by mimicking teachers, hanging out at the boardwalks in San Fran…. Laura is socially inept…but in a relatable way…

Things go to hell however, when it’s discovered that Debbie’s boyfriend is actually a facility agent and spying on them…

Laura fights the Sabertooth-like Kimura, saves Debbie and Megan, helps them go into hiding, and then attacks Logan with the plan to kill them both…only to get captured by Shield….and then is freed by Captain America…

Again a bare bones summary and nothing to really criticize, since Laura has little engagement with people in these situations and is the victim, despite doing some really horrible things. It’s a pretty reasonable storyline and it is, again, a modern comic retelling of “Frankenstein”…similar to “the Incredible Hulk”….

Laura is the monster of modern science, desperately seeking the answers of what it means to be human…

Sure…she kind of/sort of tries to kill Logan…but it’s understandable considering the situation…(and it’s not like Logan doesn’t have a history of trying to kill his own family members in comics…)

“NYX”…good and bad…is kind of the story that PUSHES the TRAUMA NARRATIVE to a ridiculous degree…

I get why on multiple levels…people, including Craig Kyle himself (writer of “Innocence Lost” AND ”Target X”) …HATE NYX.

And truthfully… I personally remember rolling my eyes, the first time I heard about it when it came out…

“NYX”, written by Editor Joe Quesada, was the first introduction of Laura, and technically came out BEFORE “Innocence Lost”/“Target X” but after Laura’s appearance on the tv show “X-Men Evolution”. Canonically…it’s a little more challenging but most fans AGREE NYX comes AFTER “Target X”….

Laura is in NYC and being trafficked by Zebra Daddy (yes…that IS HIS NAME IN THE BOOK…); becoming mute and withdrawn. 

When a john kills himself she meets another mutant, Kiden Nixon, and joins a ragtag group of homeless mutants…there’s a whole subplot about Kiden’s dead dad…Zebra Daddy comes after Laura and she kills him to save her friends…

In the end, Laura abandons her friends (because Laura has to be a “lone wolf”); but bumps into them years later after joining the X-Men…

While I will fully admit there are parts of Laura’s story that ARE handled pretty well…there’s also A LOT of voyeuristic panty shots in the art….a ridiculous amount of hand waving…and constant over-theatrics…

———————————————————————

Laura really is that character that teeters on an edge of cringe….

“Female Clone of Wolverine”- admittedly sounds cringeworthy to a non-comic book reader… (and people who remember HOW BAD “the Clone Saga” was…)

“Dating and obsessed with a ‘Draco Malfoy-esque’ sorta toxic copy of Jean Grey”- soundscringeworthy…right?

“Tortured weapon who is forced to become a teenage sex worker out on the streets of NYC and is goth and self harms…”- 100% sounds like an over the top show on CW….

I DO OBJECTIVELY GET why, when Laura first popped up into comics, a lot of male Wolverine fans saw her as just this “edgy CW-like attempt at new readership”… (technically she was CREATED on Warner Brothers “X-Men Evo”…so that’s not totally an inaccurate summary either…)

A teenage Wolverine…with boobs…

Hell…the director of “Logan”, James Mangold, didn’t want to feature her as a teenager…because he thought it sounded like a “CW show”….

“NYX” did feel like something out of a Frank Miller, “Batman: Year One” hallucination. That’s not to say it’s a BAD comic…but it definitely reflects the era of the 2000’s where everything had to be “gritty”….female characters were all heavily sexualized…it was at a time where “Skins”, “Misfits”, and “Gossip Girl” hyped up underage teenagers doing drugs, partying, and having risky sex….

One of the covers of “NYX” literally features Kiden with a pacifier…heavily hinting at “rave culture” and “ecstasy” usage…

I know a lot of modern readers take offense to this book and Quesada…but I do see the other side of it. A big part of Millennial early counter culture WAS indie sleeze….it WAS very hedonistic…it did fit the time period it was created….

“NYX” is a as much of a product of Millennial culture as “Academy X”, “the Ultimate verse”, or Grant Morrison’s “New X-Men” was… it was the same as how “Generation X” or “Jim Lee’s X-Men” was for the 90’s…how all of Claremont’s “Uncanny” and the spinoff books were products of the 80’s culture…and how Kirby’s “X-Men” was for the 60’s…ectera, ecetera…

And the common trend with all of them? They all have some PRETTY CRINGY MOMENTS.

I’m 100% sure, in ten or twenty years, we will look back and criticize how this era of comics incorporated embarrassing parts of youth culture…or writing styles…or counter culture…

But at the same time…her backstory… DOES start to feel a bit ridiculous. It does start to feel like this manufactured, over the top modern “Oliver Twist” or “Great Expectations” to get fans to essentially accept and sympathize with this fairly new character…Like someone just took a bunch of random origin stories and dumped them together in blender, to make the ultimate “SAD” character…

Is Laura really ALL that different from ridiculous characters like Adam the X-treme? Or Birdbrain? the lost Summer brother…Vulcan?

Yet we don’t take any of those characters overly seriously…

It’s moments like watching fans debate whether it’s right or wrong to use the Codename “X-23” for example, screaming at fans who are fine with it because they realize she’s ultimately a fictional character and Marvel on some level needs “brand recognition”…that even if her backstory does deal with real topics and issues…. do you remember that Laura’s backstory is pretty comicbook-y and absurd. 

As “cringy” as Laura SOUNDS on PAPER…she works because the writing ultimately did what it was supposed to do. Laura has objectively some of the BEST MODERN COMICS and even books like NYX, are pretty decently written, even if the subject matter and handling and culture are outdated from it.

Laura IS a great character…but she’s also kind of on edge of “cringy”…

And where we can kind of ACCEPT that cringe with Logan and his weird nose-less era…or Gambit referring to himself in third person… or pretty much EVERYTHING about Kitty (ninja…pirate…teenage prodigy…weird waifu for literally every male writer); Laura is this one character that you can’t criticize…or if you DO, it has to be solely around the sexualization of the character…and not the character itself…

I do understand fans getting attached to certain characters…in seeing their OWN trauma represented IN the character and reflected back…but at some point…I do think you have to see the humor of it all too…

That Laura isn’t ALL that DIFFERENT from other products of their time- like clone Superboy…FantomeX…Quentin Quire….Bloodstorm…Maggott…Adam the X-treme…

She just had better writing.

[kryptonbabe]

Sooraya Qadir in New X-Men #39 (2007)

[bringbackwendellvaughn]

[jaylee-is-here]

south park stuff. :p