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!

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: All-New Wolverine (Vol. 1), Issue #1!

What makes Wolverine “all-new”? Did he get a fresh manicure? Has he been preserved in carbonite? Did someone shove an ice pick in his forehead and now he’s all nice and warm and fuzzy? I “can’t wait to see”.

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

Oh snap! It’s something I never expected!

“SNIKT! X-23 was created to be a weapon. For a time, that’s all she was. But Laura Kinney escaped that life with the help of the man she was cloned from, the man who became her mentor: The Wolverine. Tragically, the original Wolverine has fallen, and the mantle has been left empty. Laura will live as Logan’s legacy, and she will fight for her brighter future. She will leave behind her old life and make a new one. She is the ALL-NEW WOLVERINE.”

In short, Wolverine now has titties! If she’s even a fraction as grumpy as her predecessor then I’m in for a real treat!

We begin in Paris, France. I can tell because all the action is happening directly under the Eiffel Tower. I don’t know what’s going on other than there’s a lot of foot traffic, it’s raining, and an obviously terrified woman keeps kicking the faces of men in suits who want to point their guns at her. When a pedestrian stops, stares, and says “No! You’re one of them, aren’t you?”, the woman is like “no, it’s not what you think, I’m not an assassin, at least I’m not anymore, who said anything about me being an assassin now or ever??”. Then the woman tells the man to GET DOWN while someone has the woman in his sniper scope.

“Where are you?” she glares, looking around for her assailant. Then she pushes the man inside an armored car and tells her men to take him to a bomb-proof bunker. Then man thanks her, then she gets sniped right through the middle of the forehead!

This is the prologue. Strap in, because it’s just going to get even more hectic and tense. I predict many bullets flying into areas where many other bullets are also flying.

“Hey, Laura,” says the gruff mouth from the hazy face of Large Adult Wolverine. “Laura? Kid? You with us?” This part is actually from the past. “Turns out, that drug runner had a bazooka.”

Laura winces as she gets up off the ground. They’re in a meadow surrounded by burning fire. “I’m sorry,” she says, brow crinkled in an expression of sorrow and worry. “I had a chance to take him out. I had a chance to kill him.”

Wolverine tells her to shut the fuck up! Don’t apologize for anything! Especially not to him! Sure, the two of them were designed in a lab. Sure, the two of them were meant to be killing weapons. As in, weapons for killing. Not “killing the weapons”. You can’t kill weapons, can you? Anyway, Wolverine assures Laura that killing is easy! “I’ve killed loads of people. So have you. You know what’s hard? FIGHTING it. Fighting what they programmed us to be. Fighting against all the hate they beat into us.” Yadda yadda, no shame in letting someone go.

Laura sniffs the air. She still has Bazooka Man’s scent, and even though all her internal organs are spilling out of her anus as we speak, she still wants to get up and chase the guy down.

She learned from the best, Logan. If she wants to run around with 17 broken ankles, so be it.

“I’m sorry you weren’t cloned from someone with more sense,” Wolverine says. “Hell, I’m sorry for all the bits of me you were born with.”

Laura looks cross-eyed with her stupid ask. “I’m not,” she rebuts. She has all the good bits: regeneration powers, watchful eyes, a formidable penis. Wolverine doesn’t argue with her any further, because why should he? Stubborn, right? He instead smiles and assures her that they’ll find this guy and torture him a bit. How does that sound? Laura snikts in response. Good lass.

“I’m not disappointed you didn’t kill him, kid,” says Logan. Wolverine. Logan Wolverine. “You’re the best there is at what you do. But that doesn’t mean you have to do it.” Yeah yeah yeah, overflowing with wisdom this guy.

Fast-forward back to Paris where Laura is yelling on the ground, in the ray, without a single scratch or visible bullet wound. The public surrounds her, taking pictures. She slowly gets up, remembers where she is, and gets on the phone asking the individual on the other end if they have eyes on the shooter. The answer is no. So she’ll keep looking.

While the crowd surrounds her, she starts donning her Wolverine uniform. The voice at the other end is like “don’t cause a scene, ya ninny”, but she causes a scene anyway. She becomes Wolverine – the all-new Wolverine, as it were – and snikts out some dangerously sharp claws! “I want them to see the Wolverine coming,” she says, standing majestically in the rain. Everyone is taking photos and videos with their phones. I would be too if I ever even thought about setting foot in Paris for any reason whatsoever. Maybe the food. But not the art! Fuck the Louvre! Burn it down!

Nothing like foiling a little Eiffel Tower snipin’ to feel productive.

The assailant pops out from behind a rail and tries shooting at Wolverine, but he misses. Wolverine SNIKTS the gun in half, but then gets punched in the face by the masked man. Or woman, as it appears.

Wolverine tells her to stop this crazy fighting! “You — you of all people – should be helping us. You don’t have to do this! I just want to help you!”

The masked woman gets punched and gutted and maimed and thrown around and dismembered and murdered, but she appears to be unfettered. “That doesn’t hurt?” Wolverine asks, gripping her hand. “Nothing hurts,” the masked woman responds. By now, the Parisian police have arrived to “help”, so the masked woman gives up. “I failed,” she says to what I presume is some sort of radio. “He’s in the car. Call in the drone.”

“You will never stop us. You will never hurt us. No one can ever hurt us again,” she says as she climbs through a hole in the chain link fence at the top of the Eiffel Tower and drops to her death. Wolverine is like “Stop it! Rrrraaagghhh!! Stop killing yourself!!”

Before the police can gun down Wolverine like the pesky little worm she is, she leaps out of the Tower and tells Angel (you know, Angel. That guy. Not the one on Buffy. I’m talking about Angel. The Marvel Angel) to be ready at the count of three. After three, he swoops in and grabs her in mid-air.

“Just counting to three when I don’t know exactly where you are and gravity is involved, is a terrible idea,” he scolds while STUBBORN LAURA “WOLVERINE” KINNEY grits her teeth with a face that says “no it isn’t.”

Wolverine worries that they lost the drone. Angel is not as worried!

No one Hiroshimas the capital of France on my watch!

Wolverine demands that Angel carries her above the explosion, an action that Angel is more than hesitant to carry out for her. Plus… he wants to discuss “the plan”. It sounds very relationship-y, but Wolverine is not at all in the mood to indulge Warren “Angel “ “Buffet” McDougle’s need to talk about “the plan” until after she gets killed! Now move!

So Angel drops her on top of the explosion-causing drone. She snikts to the side and almost falls off, but she eventually gets the correct footing and stands on top of it as it flies around crazily. “ANGEL — CLEAR THE STREET. GET EVERYONE OUT OF THE WAY. I’M BRINGING IT DOWN.”

Angel picks up two people at a time from the street and carries them off to safety, a procedure that would take a normal flying man in real life approximately forty hours to complete. Not Angel! He clears the area in seventeen seconds while Wolverine, using only the power of a fierce glower and nothing else, is able to bring a drone down. Who said comics had to be entertaining or good?

The drone lands on the street and explodes, sending Wolverine thudding across the cobblestones. Angel is worried for about two panels, but she’s fine. Of course she’s fine. She’s Wolverine. The All-New Wolverine.

“I just rode an exploding predator drone. You think I’m afraid of a public display of affection? I just… hngg… have a dislocated shoulder, some third-degree burns, and three to six cracked ribs. So, squeezing me before I have time to heal might not end well,” she says.

Love is a tricky bitch.

After a few minutes of rest and recovery, Angel hoists Laura’s bulk and carries her over to the dead masked assassin, who is already getting crowded by people with cameras and phones and cameraphones. Laura moves through the crowd, approaches the dead woman, lifts the masks off her face, and reveals…

Laura Kinney.

No one seems surprised that the dead woman is also the alive woman.

“She couldn’t feel pain. Some bastard took feeling away from her. Angel. Get us out of here.”

Angel lifts Laura out of the scene while the fat police run fatly to the dead woman. “There are more out there. I have to stop them. And I have to save them.”

Final Thoughts

Yeah, ok, she’s X-23 and she was made in a lab, so there are other X-23s running around and cavorting. I get it. That’s why she doesn’t want them to kill themselves. Well, I for one hope that each one dies spectacularly in each ensuing issue! Only then will I have any fun.