What's wrong with X-23 being in the movies? Hugh is done. He has no interest in continuing with the role. Considering the overwhelming popularity of X-23 is and the coolness of her story, I don't see a reason why they wouldn't want to have X-23 in the movies. It would allow them time to find a suitable replacement for Wolverine and it would let a new movie character take the lead spot in the franchise. There really is no downside since we are losing Hugh anyway.

X-23 doesn't have an overwhelming popularity. She never sold books in big numbers. She's c-lister. There's nothing wrong with that but she's not a great seller and changing her name to Wolverine is not going to turn her into one, just like that.

As for finding a replacement for Hugh, there's time for that between movies.

we can blame jerry seinfield for this.

What do you mean doesn't have overwhelming popularity? Popularity does not require record-shattering sales. The debut of her 2010 series outsold The Walking Dead, Thor, Batman Beyond, X-Factor, several Bat-family books, and was about equal to Deadpool sales. This trend was held for a few months before the decline. The reason her series was cancelled was because the writing for her book was poorly received. Her sales showed that people wanted to read about her. Her decline in sales that ultimately resulted in the book's cancellation show that people did not want to read the stories that Marvel was coming up with at the time. Matching and surpassing publications that contain other characters with overwhelming popularity shows that X-23 also enjoys popularity.

Changing her name to Wolverine might just help her sales swell, actually. After all, Thor's sales are doing just fine and all they did was swap genders. People love that kind of thing these days.

Just to add this, she was popular enough to become a comic book character despite originating from a high school themed version of X-Men and appearing in a total of two episodes. Popularity has NEVER been a problem for her.

@teerack: Is it a confirmed fact that Old Man Logan will join the main universe?

@makhai: Sorry for the late reply. I was away on vacation and wasnt sure if I should reply after so much time but here it goes:

Yes, popularity does mean sales. That's how you measure it.

X-23 never sold in big numbers. Not on her 2 minis and not on her solo. Her numbers weren't bad for a new character, but they were never impressive.

Now, let's look at the character she's suposed to replace:

Wolverine is the most popular and iconic x-man by a huge margin! He was a central character on the X-Men books. He managed to suport a solo book for more than twenty years, something that no other x-man was even close to achieve. That book as outsold X-Men books several times, it reached the top ten in sales, sometimes, and even got number one, at least one time.

He was a central character on most of the X-Men movies and, by 2016, he'll have 3 solo movies.

By 2014, after Marvel gutted the character out of everything that made him cool and interesting, Paul Cornell's run, wich had the literay quality of toilet paper, still outsold books like Captain America, a central character of Marvel's movies!

That's overwhelming popularity!

Laura is not even close.

Also, by giving her the Wolverine name, there's a good chance she'll get his haters but not his fans, who want Logan. This move has the potencial to be a huge failure that will ruin Marvel's faith on Laura as a character that can sell books. Just be warned about that!

Except the post you are currently replying to showed that she sold in large numbers. You don't need to be selling top 10 to be 'big'. She outsold what are considered major books and one was a flagship book, arguably two were. To say that she is not popular is simply ignorant and stubborn. What you mean to say is that you personally do not like her. The sales figures however, certainly speak to an opposing consensus.

Wolverine also suffers from over-saturation. His popularity is overwhelmed by his own rate of appearances. That and his often terrible depiction have sent Wolverine down a path that many choose not to follow. This isn't reflected in the movies but Hugh said he is done anyway, so this handing-of-the-mantle to a new character makes perfect sense. I see no reason why X-23 cannot be the new face of X-Men movies when Hugh has decided to hang up the claws. Sure they could get a new Wolverine but this new guy will ALWAYS be compared to Hugh and it's a comparison that he will likely fall short of every time. So instead of complaining about how they have some girl clone playing him in a movie, you would be pissed off that he is played by some actor that isn't measuring up to the bar that Hugh had cemented.

Besides that, trying to defeat the point of X-23's popularity by bringing up Wolverine's comic sales and fandom is kind of silly. Superboy never had the following that Superman had but he is very much a popular character and filled Superman's shoes just fine during Superman's absence. Nightwing also shares in this. He is nowhere near Batman's level of popularity but Nightwing still enjoys overwhelming popularity on his own and was a suitable replacement for Batman. You don't need to use a character that has the same established fanbase to replace them. That's deeply flawed logic. If that were the case, SpOck would never have happened, nor would it have been well-received. Thor would not have replaced Thor. Young Avengers would never have been a thing at all. The list goes on.

How would using the Wolverine name get her only the haters and not the fans? That makes no sense. Did Thor get all the haters when they replaced Odinson? Hell no. There are quite a few angry threads but since when has 3 or 4 hate threads been a decent representation of a book's reception? Your complaints are extremely trivial (basically being limited to 'she isn't as popular as Wolverine') and you lump yourself in with all the other squeaky wheels when you dismiss a new direction out of hand before even seeing what it's even about.

I'm a fan of Wolverine, I hate X 23. Because her fans spit on the memory of Logan, they are like vultures. You got a wolverine with tits in the comics, but leave at least a movie - Wolverine with balls.

@jota23: This!

There is no need for female versions of every comic book character. Female comic characters are as viable as male characters, but it's an insult to X-23 (and her fans) to make her the "new Wolverine". She isn't Wolverine; she's a literal and figurative clone of Wolverine. Just give her a book and title it "X-23". That's the character's superhero identity when she was introduced, and that's how she's been established, as X-23, not Wolverine. Just like Carol Danvers isn't Captain Marvel and Jane Foster isn't Thor. They are the characters that they were established to be from their inception.