Better then Best

• Writer - Tom Defalco
• Artist - Bill Sienkiewicz
• Lettering - Comicraft
• Colorist - Jason Wright
• Editor - Mark Powers
• Editor in Chief - Bob Harras
• Artist - Denys Cowan

Summary

  Wolverine is found held in manacles, clothes torn, physically beat up. Cursing himself for being so easy to be captured by his captors and sarcastically thinking to himself how he thought he was the best there is, and yet, he'd get caught so easy like a rookie superhero, Roughouse and Bloodscream enters. Roughouse wallops Logan with a fist in the jaw, while Bloodscream brushes his hand across Logan's brow, leaving a bloody cut mark on Logan. Roughouse and Bloodscream leaves to return later on when Logan's healing factor has done its job.

  Wolverine does a lot of thinking about how in the past he had his adamantium, how as of late, he has been helping out rebuilding Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning after his apartment got trashed, and how he doesn't believe that there was any normal people anymore. While following a store robber who had just robbed a store of their money, Logan stumbles upon a warehouse where the crook had entered, stacked full of coffee and scents of exotic spices. There, Logan was ambushed by Roughouse, and was captured.

  Back to the present, as Roughouse returns and again, gives Logan quite a beating. And while he's getting beat up, he still recalls how ever since he had lost his adamantium, he's been "on a downard spiral ever since...", growing careless. Bloodscream reveals that he and Roughouse had been assisting an old client, the Black Tarantula, but without his knowledge of Logan being in the hands of these two. They leave once again, and Logan again begins to lament how he got careless against Marrow in the X-Mansion (see X-Men #72 to see what happened!). Finally, he knocks some sense into himself, telling himself how even though he's not the best, he can be the best if he wanted it bad enough. Logan starts to pull his arms out of the tight manacles that held his forearms tight. He twists and turns, breaking his wrist to try to escape (while noting to himself how if he still had his admantium skeleton, he wouldn't have been able to break his wrists to escape), and with his own blood lubricating the way, he manages to get one arm out of the manacle, and with his teeth and a lock-pick, he was able to pick the lock out of the other manacle.

  He attacks and take out two of Roughouse's associates, and, upstairs, he ambushes the unsuspecting Roughouse and Bloodscream with a warehouse truck. He and Roughouse gets into a brawl, but again, he still feels he's lost his edge that he once had in the past, about being undisciplined and careless. From behind, Bloodscream manages to grab him and began to suck out his blood, but Logan uses his claws and slices Bloodscream's stomach open. Bloodscream staggers off, while Logan gets back into the brawl with Roughouse. Dodging his blows, Logan uses Roughouse to his own advantages by ducking as Roughouse tried to leap towards Logan. Instead, Roughouse meets headon into a concrete barrier, which momentarily stuns him, but Logan, from behind, grabs a hold of him, and threatens to pop his claws through Roughouse's neck if he didn't give up. Roughouse surrenders, the police comes and hauls him away, while Logan walks off, arm healed by his healing factor, thinking to himself how how he began off the new year with the resolution "To be the best there is at what I do ... An' Figure out what that is!", and how it wasn't going to be easy.