The All-New Wolverine is a Woman

Source: Tumblr, Credit: Marvel

Okay, we’ve been behind Marvel’s movement to add diversity to its iconic superheroes for a long time. Spiderman as a black/Latino teenager? Awesome. Captain America as an African-American? Bring it on. Thor as a woman? Okay, we’ll buy that. Hulk as a Korean-American? Why not? But this shocked even us: Wolverine is now a woman.

In 2014, Marvel had a story arc called “Death of Wolverine” where Wolverine (also known as Logan) died. A virus burned out his healing factor, making him vulnerable. During a long battle with various enemies, he ended up being covered in adamantium and dying of suffocation (obviously, that’s the short version). While no one familiar with comics seriously believed Wolverine would die permanently, few expected his character to be recreated so radically. Marvel announced that the mantle of Wolverine will be adopted by Laura Kinney, better known as X-23.

For those unfamiliar with her, X-23 is Logan’s female clone with all of his abilities, including regeneration, heightened senses, and adamantium claws. She was created by a secret organization called the Facility to be a deadly assassin. Eventually, she was adopted by Logan as his surrogate daughter, and even joined X-Force. Now she’ll be officially taking on the name and costume of Wolverine.

Wolverine has always been an icon of machismo, which makes this change more surprising and controversial. But we think that’s exactly why it works. If Wolverine can be a woman, it opens the door to more non-stereotypical female heroes.

UPDATE: You can read the first few pages of All New Wolverine at comicbookresources.com.

What do you think of the change?

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