Who is Wolverine’s daughter?
The most obvious answer would be: Laura Kinney AKA X-23. Technically she is a clone, but Marvel has retconned her to also be Logan’s daughter. It’s a comic book. They can’t keep their canonical background straight. The X-Men are consistently time traveling and changing their own history by accident – and that is exactly where we are headed with this graphic novel.
Wolverine: Daughter of Wolverine comes from a series of short stories that had been released alongside Captain America and other famous Marvel heroes, including Wolverine. His stories have been collected and compiled into this graphic novel — and honestly, it is for the best. I had read this short run when it was first released, but it was tough to follow as it had spanned over several issues in short sections. It was much easier for me to absorb the content that the story was telling as I am able to read it in one sitting.
Written by Charles Soule, and illustrated beautifully by Paulo Siqueira, we are introduced to an alternate timeline for Logan. Given that this is a X-Men story, the time travel is incorporated into its canonical universe and in classic fashion, Logan ensures to tell Logan not to live the life he just had lived. This is a thing we are doing now since Old Man Logan. But that’s toward the end of this book.
The story revolves around a family of sorceresses, specifically the bloodline of Agatha Harkness, who had been forced by Nazis to summon a demon known as “The Truth.” As you can imagine, this story is riddled with several “truth” euphemisms, many of which remain poetic without grinding on the readers nerves.
Due to Logan fighting in World War 2 and his close proximity to the summoning ritual, he is pulled in to fight the demon. This demon cannot be killed, as we are told several times “You cannot kill the Truth. It will always exist.” So Logan aids the sorceress, Marie, in pushing the Truth into a portal to trap it. Logan is then bound by magic to assist in protecting the Harkness’ every 10 years as they would re-cast the spell to trap the demon once again.
The duty of fighting this demon is passed off by blood to Marie’s daughter, Sylvie, after the Truth kills Marie by sucking her into a portal to Hell. Logan and Sylvie start a flirtatious relationship as they continue to battle the Truth for the next couple of decades. As everyone in the Marvel universe does, she brings Wolverine to get drunk on wine in Paris, and then quickly hops into bed with him. She then teleports out of the room while Logan is asleep, like a bad OK Cupid date, and reports back to Agatha that “it [had] been done.”
In classic online dating fashion, Sylvie ghosts on Logan and he never hears from her again. Being someone who can’t deal with his own past, and is incredibly insecure about his past relationships, Logan grabs all of the X-Men to go looking for Sylvie and the Truth. This process gets Storm and Cyclops killed. At that point, I knew we were wandering into the territory of an alternate timeline.
As time passes on, Logan eventually finds the Harkness clan in France (going by the last name “D’Arqueness) and discovers that Sylvie had his daughter – Riene du Rien. She is a beautiful blonde bombshell who can pop her claws like Wolverine, cast spells like the Scarlet Witch, and can wear armor like she is Thor. She had been bred to be a warrior to continually fight the Truth throughout time, constantly pushing the demon back into a portal by utilizing the powers she had gained genetically from Sylvie and Logan.
The father-daughter duo team up, go to Hell, and reconnect with Sylvie who had been killed by the Truth. She sends them back in time to the day she had met Logan, per his request. As they appear in the correct timeline, the Truth follows them and fights a younger version of itself. Yes, the Truth is forced to face itself. The symbolism is not lost on me.
In the story’s final pages, Rien introduces herself to the Logan we all know and love in the comic books. Will she stay and show up in future stories? Well, it’s hard to guess which time-traveling dimension-hopping characters will ever stick around in the Marvel Universe. We had been lucky enough to have Rachel Grey stick around, but generally, these characters peter off and we never hear from them again.
Considering its bonkers set up of a story, this book is actually pretty good. Rien is a believable character, and the way she is sewn into the Marvel Universe works for the potential of revisiting her in future stories. I would love to see a team up of Rien and Laura, both dawning different variations of the Wolverine costume.
This, of course, spawns a slew of questions: Where is Rien now? How has Wolverine never mentioned her before, especially after being a father to Amiko and Laura? And where is the Truth if it never dies?
There is also a moment in which Sylvie pulls Logan in to fight the Truth and notices that his claws had turned to adamantium, which is post his amnesia phase at Weapon X, yet he still remembered Sylvie. The best I can put together is that this other version of Wolverine somehow didn’t retain amnesia from the Weapon X program. We’ll go with that.
I would like to see more of Rien in the Marvel Universe. It further confirms my idea that we need a solid series titled “The Wolverines” featuring Logan, Laura, Daken, Gabby, and Rien. I am giving you a gold here, Marvel!
If you pick this graphic novel up, keep reading. It may seem a little absurd at first, but it is a good alternate universe time-traveling story. Also, Rien is really cool and deserves to fight alongside Logan and Laura as Wolverine.
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