Exclusive First Look: ALL-NEW WOLVERINE ANNUAL #1

Marcio Takara is back and drawing the annual for All-New Wolverine (with color by Mat Lopes). Not only do we have Laura and Gabby in the issue, Spider-Gwen makes a guest appearance.

Marvel gave us an exclusive first look at the annual. Check out the pages and Vanesa Del Rey's variant cover.

ALL-NEW WOLVERINE ANNUAL #1

(W) Tom Taylor (A) Marcio Takara (CA) Vanesa R. Del Rey

An All-New Story featuring YOUR FAVORITE SURVIVING CLAW-POPPING CHARACTERS!

• ALL-NEW WOLVERINE + SPIDER-GWEN = ALL-NEW WOLVERGWEN AND SPIDERINE!

• GABBY THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS LITTLE SISTER!

• PLUS: JONATHAN THE WOLVERINE!

Rated T+

JUN160894 In Shops: Aug 31, 2016 SRP: $4.99

Cover concept is interesting with a look at X's past costumes, but not a fan of the artwork itself. I'm waiting for Skottie Young's cover.

And can I just say it's only been one issue, but DAMN I've missed Takara's artwork. Such a shame this is the last time he'll be drawing All-New Wolverine.

Why does Laura look absolutely terrified in every panel you have a close up of her face?

Yeah, I noticed that, too. Maybe dialogue will put it in better context.

lol

Hey @ambaryerno, did you get banned over at CBR?

Every month she's wondering how much longer 'till the REAL Wolverine comes back... :D

I don't have any faith in Marvel to think he would even come back.

Man, I don't know what to expect from them anymore. Maybe that's the point? Shake things up, confuse people a bit, and see what happens? This gender-flipping and mantle-swapping has become pretty predictable, though, and I hope an end will soon be put to it. Promote X as her own thing. I know her old outfit was WAY cooler than what I consider Wolvie's worst outfit ever. They could have at least given her an updated version of the brown and tan! :)

He is back, but he is old, grumpy and frequently suffers from constipation.

I've been reading OML and it's been pretty good. More like the old Wolvie than what I was reading before his demise... :)

X-23 from the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game:

Nice sketchbook.

new Hornet?

Well Nik Virella does some very good art too and he is on the book started with #13 so that's OK. Ig Guaras art is decent too IMO. It's the colorist that could use some improvements.

why she looking chunky?

Maybe, and I am not really knocking that, just making an 'old folk' joke :)

It is pretty good. And I agree, the ole Logan "flavor" from the 80's seeps through just a tad. Though, I still expect to see 616 Wolverine return. Someday. With OML in full play I won't be holding my breath. I reckon we've a good handful of years left before that happens.

She's not. She's just looking like a woman that's actually athletic, and not a heroin-chic model fashion model stuffed into latex.

Yeah...because that is such a common design for female super heroes these days. I remember reading the latest Wonder Woman and thinking "god she is so stick thin, it's disgusting".

Actually Taylor has pointed out that he has talked with Takara about making Laura look more stocky than slim due to her genetic heritage... to counter all the people asking why a clone of Logan looks almost nothing like him.

Truth be told, she SHOULD look like Logan's mother since that's where all of her genetic material comes from. And TBH I rarely heard anyone ask "Why doesn't she look like Logan." I think most people assumed Sarah used her own genetic material to repair the damaged samples, thus why she almost always looks like her.

I think Tom Taylor has been doing a fine job in characterizing Laura. I have enjoyed this series quite a bit. Jonathan and Gabby are a great little duo too.

Maybe she's shocked that Gwen is putting herself in so much danger, not knowing about her Spider-Sense which triggers a couple of times in this scene. Don't forget, Gwen isn't native to 616 (probably got diverted while visiting Jess or Silk) so Laura probably doesn't know much if anything about her.

Which is FAR more than can be said of Hopeless. I just saw the preview for ANXM 12 and threw up in my mouth.

For the love of God someone needs to take X-23 away before he does any more damage. He actually makes me miss BENDIS.

@ambaryerno: Yeah, I agree. Hopeless has missed the mark with that series. I will tentatively say that I like his work on Spider-Woman though. I feel that book is getting dragged through event hell, and the main reason why it has been fairly mediocre over the past few issues.

@super_soldierxii: I don't know if there currently is any need to bring 616 Wolverine back the current set up is fine and if they really want Logan as Wolverine again they could just de-age OML and give him the Wolverine title kind of like Captain America.

Actually she wouldn't since the sample is taken off Logan, a 50/50 mix of his mom and pop (you can't tell which part of him is is which... especially not since they have been dead for 200 years), mixed with basically the 50/50 blend of Logan and Laura's birth-mother.

But you are right, it isn't that strange Laura physically looks more like her mother than Logan since kids often has that 'looks like more like X than Y' thing in certain area's. The first theory would make alot more sense if Laura had been entirely grown in a tube... which begs the question of not making her male since Logan was what they were aiming for.

Which shouldn't be any kind of surprise or shock to Laura, who is A) emotionally stunted, meaning she is ice cold under fire where she almost seem to 'switch off' that part of her B) she has met Spiderman before... even tried to gut him once or twice C) Unlikely to think someone in the Marvel Universe would call herself 'Spider-something' without somehow being connected to Spiderman. (What is this Gwen actually known as within the MU? Spider-Girl?)

Keep in mind how human genetics work:

Females have two X chromosomes, one from their mother, one from their father. Males, however, have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. The X chromosome in a male is always provided by his mother, while the Y chromosome is provided by the father.

Laura was created by duplicating Logan's X chromosome. The reason they did this rather than making an exact clone (male) was because Sarah Kinney determined the Y chromosome was too badly damaged to salvage. Because Logan's X chromosome came from his mother, this means all of Laura's genetic material comes from Elizabeth Howlett.

Canonically and according to comments by Craig Kyle, Laura received NO genetic material from Sarah at all (excluding her mtDNA, which is irrelevant).

Now, there ARE ways to explain why Laura DOESN'T look like Elizabeth Howlett without having genetic material from another source, but that's getting into recombination and gene expression. A potentially fascinating topic for geneticists, but not so much for a comicbook site comments section.

BTW, where did Taylor mention that about his notes to Takara about her appearance?

She heard about the new Wolverine and the death of the old.

I am starting to feel like there's been too many team ups in too short a period. It's Laura's book, it needs to be more about Laura.

I'm not opposed to team ups, I just think they need to he used more sparingly.

Wouldn't have the same continuity or history. Alternate reality characters are just not the same as the real deal. Guess I'm a bit of a purist that way.

"De-age" OML and he still comes with OML baggage and history as opposed to 616 Wolverine.

@super_soldierxii: I imagine OML shares most of 616 Wolverine's history up in till about 2008 or so and then it's 50 years of alternate history in the wasteland plus it would be kind of like the Superman situation at DC where they killed of Superman but replaced him with an alternate Superman who doesn't share most of his history.

Well, I imagine they had to repair the damaged cromosones with something, and I kinda believe it's also part of the reason why the Facility Big Wigs thought Sarah had to actually had to give brith to Laura rather than growing her in a tube. (I know they are evil and stupid, but it would be a new sub-basement level if it was just for giggles)

Think it was in a recent CBR interview... possibly Comicvine :S

Thing is, we really don't know what he shares insofar as continuity is concerned. It's already been established that he does not come from the same timeline as regular 616 continuity.

With Superman, they killed off the New 52 version IIRC and replaced him with regular continuity Superman ... so it's the OML thing in reverse really.

And it's seriously disturbing me how Wolverine got so old so quickly. Have they bothered addressing that issue yet? Dude was supposed to be pretty much immortal. Very least, he was never supposed to age as quickly as everyone else ...

Except what you're imagining is strictly fanon. It was never stated anywhere in the books, and Kyle himself outright dismissed (though acknowledged it was a fascinating idea) that Sarah used any other genetic material — especially her own — in creating her. It would be cool if it were to become canon, but that would still be a retcon.

Also, a womb is ultimately a womb. Sarah's compatibility would have nothing to do with genetics, otherwise the entire surrogate process would never work in real life. She really WAS forced to be the surrogate just because Rice was a colossal dick, and was punishing her both for upstaging him (it's established early that Rice hates her and was envious of her abilities) and going behind his and Sutter's backs to create the female clone.

@super_soldierxii: Yeah but we've seen enough of his past to see that there a similarities between Old Man Logan and 616 Wolverine's history, we saw Old Man Logan wearing the first Wolverine costume which he wore in his fight with the Hulk, we see Mariko and Old Man Logan talks about bringing chaos to her which means he killed her in his timeline as well since we see him standing over her sword in samurai armor, we see him and Jean Grey in their New X-Men costumes in Asteroid 5 after he stabbed her, we've seen Daken we've also seen Cyclops in his New X-Men costume and he also knew X-23 in his world so there are some similarities between the world OML comes from and 616. And he knows everyone in 616 because he knew a version of them in his world so he's not like a complete outsider who knows nobody.

And yeah they haven't really explained why he aged so quickly after he killed the X-Men it was only fifty years after he killed them so he would have looked close to the same and maybe have some grey hair but not completely old, maybe it's because he did't use his claws and did't get into fights so he did't need to heal like he used to so his healing factor slowed down.

I was thinking the same thing, and ultimately, it lead to me making this:

@vvknight2:

Won't dispute there are similarities ... still, different timelines all the same so there are definitely differences. To what extent, impossible to know so I guess we can assume most is relatively the same.

As to him aging, I think if I had to write in a reason, I would try to explain it as his healing factor having gone dormant through the decades due to trauma / disuse (combination of both) or some such thing, which led to him to age faster. Could be a way to see the aging process reduced some too moving forward. It's already been established that his healing factor is not what it used to be. Maybe as it returns to its old efficiency, we'll see him rejuvenate some of his lost vitality / youth.

@super_soldierxii: Let's just say his world is a lot closer to 616's than other universes, and I could see your healing factor theory it works and could be used in a way to bring him back to his youth maybe give him the Days of Future Past look and all that should definitely be what happens if they decide to de-age him.

I love the casual universe hopping Gwen does. Given the tech that these characters have to begin with and the alternate universe hijinks they get into, it's weird that heroes don't do it more ofte

Wth is spider-gwen doing with wolverine?

@2cool4fun said:

I suppose we'll find out when the book is released. ;-P

I miss you Logan

I feel like these characters including Amadadious Cho, Laura Kinney, Kamala Kahn, the New Younger Nova are really set for a younger audience. I have checked some out at the library and some on Marvel Unlimited. Let the kids have their fun.

@ambaryerno: I think perhaps you're confusing the concept of the sex chromosome contributing to the gender of an organism with the idea that chromosomes determine appearance. Laura's entire genetic makeup is identical to Logan's with the exception of her sex chromosomes. In place of the Y chromosome inherited from his father, she has a replication of the X chromosome inherited from his mother. While that does mean that both of her sex chromosomes are from her grandmother/mother, that does not mean she would be identical to Logan's mother. The sex chromosomes do not control phenotype largely beyond sexual organs. Laura still has 22 chromosomes from Logan's father that will affect her phenotype and, beyond that, she only has half of the genetic data that Logan's mother had. She would look VERY similar to Logan with the primary differences being the way certain features are affected by hormonal influences since her hormones would obviously be those of a female and not those of a male. That would affect the way her phenotype developed. If Logan largely favored his mother than Laura would as well, likely more so because if the hormonal factors, but the recessive genes inherited from her would still remain recessive to the dominate genes inherited from Logan's father.