Coyote Crossing

• Writer - Greg Rucka
• Penciler - Leandro Fernandez
• Colorist - Studio F
• Lettering - Virtual Calligraphy
• Lettering - Rus Wooton
• Ass't Editor - Axel Alonso
• Editor - Warren Simons
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  Special Agent Aguinaga is seen interrogating Lake. Lake, again, is proclaiming his innocence in the whole matter: how he was just tagging along with Merrick, another coyote, to keep Merrick company and act as his eyes as they transported the illegal immigrants across the border. Aguinaga warns Lake that Lake was facing nineteen counts of murder (the illegal immigrants who perished in the back of the tractor-trailer), not including the death of Lake's partner and the gas station attendant. Once again, Lake proclaims that he wasn't guilty of the murder of his partner and the attendant. As Agent Cassie Lathrop looked on from behind the one-way glass window, Lake keeps telling Agent Aguinaga that it was the "guy with the knives, the one who locked me into the trailer" who had killed his partner. Agent Aguinaga reminds Lake that they are in the state of Texas, that it could be considered a capital crime for the murder of twenty people, punishable by death. Lake finally tells Agent Aguinaga the name Ian Ritter, saying that it was Ritter who had some contacts on the other side of the river.

  Afterwards, as Agent Aguinaga was telling one of his fellow agents, Len, to ensure that Lake didn't get bail and to get a warrant for Ritter's arrest, he was approached by Cassie, who wanted to talk with Aguinaga about the other man whom Lake kept talking about. She belived it was the same man that was in the sketch that she had (the sketch of Logan she had been flashing around last issue. As Agent Aguinaga looks over the sketch, he asks Cassie what connection the man in the sketch had with his investigation. Cassie tells him that this was what she was there to find out more about.

  Meanwhile, in a truck repair yard, Logan pulls in on his motorcycle. He asks the mechanic on duty, Mendes, where he could find Ritter, who directs him over to the main office. Inside, Logan sees Ritter behind the desk watching a comedy show on television. Logan grabs Ritter, and without warning, starts to beat up Ritter. Ritter begs Logan to stop his assault. Logan comments how he thought about being subtle to get answers from Ritter, but then figured that he would have to beat up Ritter for the answers anyway, so he would just go that route and save himself some time. Logan unsheathes one set of his claws, and, while poised to kill Ritter at any given moment, demands to know more names that he was working with. Before Ritter could answer, a gunshot could be heard, and Ritter falls limply to the floor, with a bullet embedded in his face. Logan turns around, and he too takes a gunshot into his face. Mendes is seen with a smoking gun in his face, and he quickly leaves the room. He douses the entire facility with cans of gasoline, and sets the entire place on fire. As he leaves, from the fiery inferno, Logan leaps out and lands on top of Mendes, threatening to kill him unless he talked. Before he could get more information, the border patrol units, with Agent Aguinaga and Cassie, pull up to the burning complex. Agent Aguinaga commands everyone to not enter until the firemen showed up to put the fire out. Cassie, however, doesn't listen to him and runs with her gun drawn into the burning building to look for Logan.

  Before long, however, Cassie becomes overwhelmed by the smoke and heat. As she leaned onto the ground, coughing, Logan appears behind her, and offers a hand to lead her out of the burning complex. In the rear, Logan tells Cassie everything he found out from Mendes, about how Mendes worked for a man across the river named Rojas. He reaches into Cassie's shirtpocket and grabs her badge. Logan finally finds out what her name is, and returns the badge to her. She calls out to Logan by his name as he was leaving. He tells her to stop following him, and that he was not who she thinks he was.

  Later that night, back at Nestor's place, Logan tells Nestor what he had learned and asks Nestor what he knew about Rojas. Nestor tells Logan that all he knew were rumors, about what the coyotes were after (smuggling people across the border was big business, especially those who had families across the border because they could extort the families for a lot of money). Nestor tells Logan that from what he hears about Rojas, Rojas goes after those who would do anything but didn't have the money nor families across the border to finance their trip. Nestor thinks that Rojas uses these people for drug trafficking since Rojas is rumored to be big with heroin. Rojas would use these people to smuggle in drugs into the U.S. in exchange for passage into the U.S. Logan gets up, and tells Nestor that what "burns [him]" was that Rojas was making people worth less than the drugs they were smuggling into the U.S. He tells Nestor he was going to go for a swim.

  Late into the wee hours of the morning, Logan makes his way to the Rio Grande river, and he proceeds to swim across the Rio Grande into Mexico in his pursuit of Rojas. Cassie, on night patrol with Agent Aguinaga, sees Logan swim across the river, but doesn't alert Agent Aguinaga about it. He tells Cassie that the information they got from Mendes would be relayed to the proper Mexican authority so that they could capture Rojas. As they get back into their patrol car, Cassie says quietly that she will see Logan when he gets back to find out what Logan had been up to.

Summary

  Back with this week's comics, Wolverine #8 is the only X-book actually scheduled for this week.

  This is part 2 of "Coyote Crossing", the second Greg Rucka storyline, and the formula is pretty well established by now. Wisely steering clear of superheroics in favour of working the character into his preferred genre, Rucka is essentially writing crime stories here.

  Of course, generally it's not a very good idea to just take a character and shoehorn him into the story you were planning to write anyway. But Wolverine fits just fine into the genre, at least once you get him out of costume. Rucka is focussing mainly on two of the classic aspects of the character. First up is the balance between his moral and animal sides. That ties into Cassie Lathrop's subplot and makes this specifically a Wolverine story.

  Second, though, is the repeated emphasis that Wolverine is really very hard indeed. Rucka is clearly keen to stress the exceptional hardness of Wolverine. Fine by me - that's the character's gimmick, and it's one of the things that makes him at home in this sort of story. You can shoot the guy, set him on fire, and he keeps on going. That's Wolverine. It's simple, and it's worked for going on thirty years.

  Alright, if I'm being picky, I have my doubts about having Wolverine swim the Rio after we've been told that it's suicidal. Maybe I'm overanalysing this, but surely the hundred-odd pounds of metal in his body would make him a worse than average swimmer. (In much the same way that an anvil makes a worse than average boat.) It's a nice little scene, but when you stop to think about it, it doesn't really make sense.

  Still, all things considered, Rucka and artist Leandro Fernandez are doing a solid job on re-establishing the core ideas of the character. The downfall of this series so far has been in failing to work a sufficiently compelling story around them. In particular, in the first arc the villains never posed much of a threat at all, which didn't do much to build tension. This time round the bad guys appear to be putting up a little bit more of a fight, but we do seem to be in the same basic formula - Wolverine stumbles upon victims of baddies, Wolverine hunts down the baddies and sorts them out. It's perfectly solid, but it's a bit short on surprise.

  Cassie's subplot holds a little more interest, though, and at worst this storyline's problem is a tendency towards formula. There's nothing wrong with the formula in itself, and Rucka and Fernandez are doing it pretty well here. It's something that can be held up as a good solid example of a Wolverine story playing to all the character's traditional strengths. It feels like it's sticking a little too rigidly to the path, that's all.

  Rating: B+