The character of Wolverine is handicapped by his surroundings.

Ferociously tempered, clawed and for the most part indestructible, Wolverine is a killing machine. However, he exists mostly in the kid-friendly environment of the X-Men, hampering writers from taking full advantage of his basic feral nature.

The obvious solution in comics is, of course, to clone him.

Before you run for the door, this isn't the scientifically improbable cloning of various Spider-Man storylines, in which clones exist at the same age and with the same memories as their source. No, the scientists of Weapon X, the secret organization that first made the mutant Logan into the homicidal Wolverine, have taken a bit of genetic material, replaced the Y chromosome with a duplicate X to correct certain degradations, and birthed X-23, a baby girl with tiny bone claws and a mutated healing gene. Several years and surgical procedures later, she is a young, unstoppable assassin.

This is not your X-Men world. X-23 has been raised without benefit of a family or the familiar comforts of a home. She lives in a cell and a science laboratory, and she is schooled in the arts of stealth and murder from a very early age. Now, she's ready to go to work. But one thing her creators forgot to include in her upbringing -- perhaps intentionally, if mistakenly -- is a conscience.

X-23: Innocence Lost is far more realistic, grittier and bloodier than its X-counterparts. It carries a parental advisory, and rightly so -- this is not a book for the young and impressionable. And yet, it's superior in many ways to the fluff that smothers the comic-book market. In fact, borrowing a page from TV's short-lived Dark Angel series, this could be a fantastic film -- although, again, children would not be its target audience.

The Marvel Universe still holds wonders and, although my interest in the mainstream X-Men saga waned years ago, X-23 has snatched my full attention. Let's hope the Marvel team doesn't waste her potential. At least they're off to a fantastic start.