What a great start.
This is the first issue of the X-23 ongoing and my first X-Men related book and no Deadpool doesn't count.
The Story:We start the series with Laura running on a road,followed by wolfes,on the side we see a bunch of skeletons and also a giant wave behind her.Then she enters a cave were we see Logan saying that if she can become his right hand in Hell if she simply accepts.Then we see that it was just a dream and that most of the other mutants from the New X-Men are having a party but she isn't interested in going,we even see her borfriend Hellion coping with losing his hands by being an ass.Laura finds Storm sitting by herself trying not to make herself cry since Marvel decided to kill one of the most joyfull and fun loving mutants ever Nightcrawler.Storm invites Laura to play some chess but leaves when Logan appears and she falls asleep in the woods and someone appears at the last panel of the page.We also see Emma yelling at Scott that he forced Laura to be in X-Force and forced to kill instead of being a regular kid.The next morning we learn that Laura hasn't been sleeping in her room for a while,we also have a nice scene between Hellion and Laura were it seems that Laura might start opening up more to him and Surge was yelling at her since she didn't tell her friends that she was on X-Force but Cyclops steps in and sends Laura to a half-way house to help former mutants that lost there powers after M-Day.But she falls asleep and when she wakes up the house is on fire and people are dead.
The Good:Marjorie Liu really gets Lauras character really well and writes her sad enouogh without it being really emo wich is a good thing since it could have easily gone over that fragile line.I really did like the scenes with Hellion and Laura when he tried to get a leaf out of her hair but can't since he has no hands and i hope we will see more of their relationship.Also i loved the art by Will Conrad and how it's really dark wich works for this book.
The Bad:I found it pointless that we got her origin at the end of the issue when we already got it in the free comic book some time ago.
The Verdict:This series is starting extremely well and this series a lot of potential and will deliver.If you need some more X-Men books in your collection this is a good place to start and all the background you need is all in the issue.This is a definite buy.