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

  Night was fast approaching, and Angel was closing up the bar. All the customers were shuttled out, with the exception of Cassie, who refused to leave the bar. Angel is sent home by Nestor, who grabs two shot glasses and a bottle of liquor. He joins Cassie at her table. Nestor asks why she was still here, even though she knew Logan was in Mexico. She figures that Logan would eventually have to return to Nestor's bar, and expects to wait there until he returned. The two continue with their drinking.

  Meanwhile, back in Mexico, Logan was confronting Rojas. Rojas walks back into her mansion, with Logan following behind, claws extended. Rojas asks Logan why he didn't just kill her right there on the spot. She doesn't deny killing those ninteen victims, saying that it was nothing more than an accident which cost her time, money, and resources. She admits that she's killed far more than that, and that she traffics all kind of drugs across the border, whatever makes her money. She claims that those nineteen people weren't even worth more than the ten pounds of heroin that they had been transporting across the border to sell. As Logan picks up a figurine of a pregnant woman, Rojas again questions why Logan didn't just kill her right now. She questions him whether it was because of her unborn baby. She tells Logan that even an unborn child is not without sin, life is cheap, and death doesn't care about the innocent or guilty. She accuses Logan of being soft, that he had no problem about killing her armed guards, yet a simple woman like her could stop him dead in his track from his relentless killing. Furthermore, she accuses him of being nothing but a rabid dog, and for him to kill a villian would make him feel more of a man than a beast, but only an animal would murder an innocent unborn child. Furious at her accusation, he unsheathes one set of his claws, and with his other hand, grabs a hold of Rojas' neck. She dares him to kill her.

  A tense moment, where Logan is rearing his right claw, ready to punch it through her head. At the last moment, he rams his claws through the recliner that she was sitting in. He falls into a feral rage, destroying most everything around him. He tells her to shut up as she once again accuses him of being a rabid dog. He tries hard to surpress the beast within him. Eventually, he controls his anger enough to resheath his claws, and with one final stare at Rojas, leaves the mansion. Rojas stares unbelievingly at the now-empty room. Suddenly, she feels contractions, as the stress she had just experienced induced her into labor. With no one around, she crawls her way to the telephone.

  Much later, as dawn approached, Logan returned to Nestor's bar, where Cassie was still awake, waiting for Logan, with another can of beer in her hand. Logan tells her to get out. Cassie, obviously very drunk by now, asks Logan whether he found Rojas. Logan tells her that he did, and that Rojas was actually a woman who was pregnant. Once again, Logan tells her to get out, but she refused, wanting to stay instead. Logan tired and needing to think about the day's event, tells her to sleep on the couch.

  A few hours pass, and the bar is busy again with customers. Cassie wakes up from the couch, and as she was about to call out Logan's name, she notices that he was gone already. She heads downstairs, where Nestor tells her that Logan had already left early before the bar opened to swim across the river again. Cassie realizes that Logan was going to back over there to kill Rojas. As she gets her coat and opens the door, Logan was already there, asking for help. In his arm was a baby girl whom he was trying to get to stop crying.

Summary

  Finally for this week's X-books, Wolverine.

  This title is shortly to be reassigned to the Marvel Knights imprint. As we all know, Marvel Knights is the imprint for edgy, new comics aimed at the more mature reader. This is why it's being dumped with four existing comics which won't be changing their style at all, and if anything will be watering themselves down by starting their Marvel Knights runs with conventional tie-ins to continuity.

  Wolverine will be fighting Sabretooth and doing something connected to Weapon X! Talk about edgy! Meanwhile, X-Statix will fight the Avengers, in a riff on the Avengers/Defenders War. God knows nothing says "edgy" like a riff on a hugely overrated superhero crossover from a quarter of a century ago. It's the future!

  I suppose I can see the point in trying to shift some of those books over into a more clearly demarcated Marvel Knights imprint, given that that imprint has almost totally lost meaning. The wider significance, of course, is that Marvel Knights lost meaning because that ethos permeated the entire line. So what do we expect from the non-Marvel Knights books? I have a sinking feeling that the word "hackneyed" is going to feature prominently.

  Anyway, Wolverine #10 is the penultimate part of "Coyote Crossing." Regular readers will have guessed that I've just spent several paragraphs rambling about the Marvel Knights imprint in an attempt to distract attention from the fact that I have relatively little to say about this comic.

  That's not because it's bad, or even particularly because it's decompressed, but because by this point we've already covered most of the things that can be said about this book. Nice back-to-basics approach on the character, interesting subplot with Cassie, really nice art from Leandro Fernandez, etc.

  Rucka gets more mileage than I'd expected out of last issue's revelation that Rojas, the villain, is a heavily pregnant woman. Obviously, we get the point that Wolverine doesn't want to kill her because she's got an unborn child who hasn't done anything wrong. But Rojas gets a nice little speech flagging up the question of why - is Wolverine after her because he's a basically good man, or is he after her because it's a moral justification for taking out his violent urges? More to the point, perhaps, is that Wolverine doesn't seem entirely sure of the answer himself. Given the cliffhanger, I assume he resolves the problem with the use of an impromptu caesarean, but we're still left with the question.

  Quite a good issue, although it still leaves you with the feeling that it could be doing more.

  Rating: B+