Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: All-New Wolverine (Vol. 1), Issue #2! In the previous installment, Laura Kinney tries to fight and stop another version of Laura Kinney, but then that Laura Kinney commits suicide off of the Eiffel Tower (which is pretty badass). Then the first Laura Kinney knows that there are other Laura Kinneys out there who need to be stopped and saved. So expect five more issues of that.

There’s also a thing about a man in a bomb-proof bunker, which seems too important to be a throwaway but too inconsequential to mention it again outside of this very sentence!

Also, Wolverine is a girl now. That about sums everything up!

All-New Wolverine (Vol. 1), Issue #2 [January, 2016]
Written by: Tom Taylor

We begin in Alchemax Genetics in New York, two days after all the hooey in Paris. A handcuffed Laura Kinney is brought in by two burly men through the hallways of the restricted section. She is welcomed to the facility by a scalpel. “I trust you don’t object,” the security officer Captain man says as he slices into Kinney’s arm. It bleeds for about three seconds before the wound closes up on its own.

Kinney grumbles as if her convenience is being threatened. After proving that she is who she is, she is allowed out of the handcuffs and further led down the corridors. A huge screen shows security footage of four women — “experiments” — escaping the facility. The Captain calls them experiments, but Kinney warns that he should start calling them “people” or else she’s not lifting a finger to help.

“It’s all right, Captain Mooney,” says an effusive, happy, skinny, bald, professorial-looking garbage piece of shit. “I’ll take it from here.” The man thanks Kinney for agreeing to the terms and conditions of her less-than-cordial admittance into the facility. “My name is Robert Chandler, I’m the director of Alchemax Genetics.”

*Laura Kinney murders Robert Chandler with a cricket bat*

“I owe you everything,” Chandler continues. “You saved my son’s life in Paris. How did you know the Sisters were targeting him?”

They set up 45 fart bombs and farted everyone to oblivion. It would be horrible if it weren’t so funny!

Kinney tells him that is was obvious, sucka. Chandler has been in hiding since the incident. “These ‘people’ destroyed an Alchemax Genetics laboratory two weeks ago in an act of terrorism. Every single one of our scientists died in the blaze. As did a number of Captain Mooney’s security staff.”

Sounds like an act of war to me! Someone call the Alchemax Genetics laboratory and get them involved stat!

Chandler shows photos of the women. X23_3PAR. X23_2ZEL. X23_4GAB. X23_1BEL. “I realize they have your face, but there is no humanity in these creatures. They watched our people burn.” At first they were trained to kill, but they started using that training to kill! “They intend to kill everyone connected to our company,” he continues. So, Laura Kinney, are you up to the task of murdering yourself four times?

So we’re dealing with clones here, right? Alchemax acquired Kinney’s DNA and tried to make more copies, but none of them had healing powers or claws. Or a dang conscience. And it’s beyond what Alchemax can handle. So if you could, please, Ms. Kinney, can you snikt the hell out of them all?

Kinney agrees to help. Seacrest out. As Kinney leaves the facility, Captain Mooney orders a couple of his goons to follow her.

So they do.

And she gets halfway down a street before she suddenly dips into an alley, disappears, reappears as Wolverine, holds her claws up to these two goons, knocks them against the walls, and glowers at them. “Tell Captain Mooney I don’t like being followed. Now – run away.”

The goons run away with pants full of fetid diarrhea. It really is a sight to behold.

A wimpy little flying man descends from the sky into the alley. “Damn. You really can be quite scary.” He picks her up and they fly off.

“Are you scared of me?” Kinney asks Angel.

“I don’t think there’s any right way to answer that. I sense the whole question could be a trap.”

“Good instincts.”

*audience laughs and claps before a commercial break featuring Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat*

We now go to Laura Kinney’s apartment in the Bronx, where Angel drops her off on the balcony. She’s acting all weird and quiet, and asks the astonished Angel to pick things up tomorrow. He leaves looking like Fry from Futurama whenever he doesn’t understand what the hell is going on.

Laura Kinney stands alone in her ugly, run-down apartment… or is she alone? She can hear a heartbeat… She can smell a scent…

And it either smells like victory or it smells like old Cheetos and stale 7-Up. You decide.

One of Kinney’s clones – shorter and younger – is raiding the fridge. “Did you kill my sister?” the clone asks, holding up the mask the dead clone was wearing in Paris. Kinney denies killing her sister. “There are a lot of people hunting you,” Kinney tells the clone. She is unperturbed by this news. In fact, she pivots to calling the apartment “crappy” and tells her that she’s almost out of milk. Barely any fruit or vegetables. A lot of leftover pizza and ice cream.

“Why are you here?” Kinney asks.

“They’re going to kill us,” the clone responds. “I don’t want my sisters to die.”

“I know.”

“You know what it’s like to be created. To be used.”

“Yes.”

“You should be helping us.”

“I won’t help you to kill.”

“They took pain away from us. They took feeling away. They need to pay.”

“Whatever the company did to you, innocent people don’t need to die over it.”

“I agree.”

Kinney doesn’t believe her. She, after all, helped kill all those people at Alchemax. The clone denies that, saying that they didn’t burn the place down or anything like that. “There are people who need to die for what they did to us,” the clone says. “Two of my sisters think they should suffer first.”

Then the clone says she had set Kinney’s bedroom on fire. Kinney runs to check and sees a contained smoldering on a plate on her bed. When Kinney returns to the living room, the clone is gone…

*audience laughs and claps before a commercial break featuring Ozempic, where the side effects include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, constipation, upset stomach, heartburn, burping, gas, bloating, loss of appetite, runny nose, sore throat, stomach flu, headache, dizziness, tiredness, low blood sugar, herpes, and death*

Cloney returns to the sewers of New York, deep underground, where we find out her name is Gabby.

Don’t give me lip, Gabby. I will smack you so hard that I’ll feel it. We will all feel it!

Gabby gets chastised for breeching the surface of NYC because one of their own has already died, we don’t need another one of their own to die. Especially not by jumping off of the Eiffel Tower. Again. And Gabby thinks she’s slick, but the real Laura Kinney descends the stone steps into the sewer dressed as Wolverine.

The three sisters point their guns at Wolverine, who puts her hands up all “whoa, hey”, but that doesn’t work! The blonde one shoots her in the stomach a few times, much to Gabby’s alarm. Good thing the only actions that will kill Laura Kinney are a) direct sunlight, b) fire, c) decapitation, d) a wooden stake through the heart, and e) falling from the Eiffel Tower.

Wolverine had passed out, but she comes to quickly in a couple of panels. Gabby apologizes for Bellona’s itchy trigger finger, but Bellona has a knife to Wolverine’s face anyway.

“What happens now?” asks Wolverine.

“Now we talk,” responds Gabby.

“You know I wanted to talk before you shot me?”

“We need to live long enough to avenge what’s been done to us,” snarls Bellona. “We’re not taking chances.”

The third sister, Zelda, insists that they didn’t cause the explosion at Alchemax. They were just escaping when they were discovered, they swear it on their various gods.

Wolverine starts whispering. She hears bootsteps. She smells gunpowder. “Untie me,” she says. “There are people coming.”

Time to band together now! Wolverine suspects that it’s Captain Mooneypants. And she suspects this because Captain Mooneypants and his army are five feet in front of the women. “I want to thank you for leading us to them so quickly, Wolverine,” he says, betraying her in front of the others. Wolverine gibbers while the sisters are like “WHAT?!”

“Shoot the experiments,” orders Mooney. “We need our property back.”

The bullets go RAT-A-TAT-TAT while fighting occurs. Within a page, Mooney’s army is down completely. Bellona cocks her gun and aims it at the unconscious Mooney, but Wolverine tries to stop her. “This one was our jailer for years,” says Bellona. “Trust me. He deserves it.”

He doesn’t deserve it! No one else needs to die! Please! I’ll give you the best cunnilingus that–

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Three sisters down! Some douchebag named the Taskmaster with his stupid gun and his stupid skull face and his stupid shield has shown up suddenly in the sewers with no preamble.

“You’re right. No one else needs to die,” he booms.

Wolverine has officially pooed her pants.

Final Thoughts

Zany and all over the place! Now we have the Taskmaster to contend with! I’m at the edge of my seat! Now I’m at the edge of a cliff! Now I’m falling! Now I’m dead! See you next time!