I've been skeptical of this "new direction" for Wolverine, because it's the same creative team, the one that has been turning in largely forgettable and sometimes unforgettably bad stories over the past couple of years. And to be sure, this issue has its flaws, including an element of pointlessness that has me scratching my head wondering what we were supposed to take away from the story other than "Wolverine's a badass," but it's a damn sight more coherent than the title has been in some time, and it looks great. Of course, I've been of a mind that Wolverine really can't support a good ongoing title for some time, but his sales remain high, so it may just be that I'm not in the target audience, no matter who's writing and drawing the book.
So these three mob guys walk into a bar... and wind up dead, cut to pieces by Wolverine. I'm not spoiling the story, by the way... Tieri reveals this on the first page of the story, basically robbing it of a lot of its tension. He seems to be aiming for the Hitchcock school of suspense, showing us the end results and then building towards it, but it doesn't work because there's really no emotional fallout. We don't care about the mob guys, and we know Wolverine isn't in any kind of danger. In addition, because of the way the story is told, Tieri doesn't reveal what's at stake until it's pretty much too late to have any impact.
Mind you, the dialogue isn't bad. Much of this story revolves around some mob goons talking about their business, ala The Sopranos or Goodfellas, where we're invited to see these guys when they're not putting on their intimidating faces. The stories they tell, and the casual cruelty they possess, is made perfectly clear. If one thing is true about this story, it's that Tieri sets up a situation where we're perfectly happy to see these guys destroyed. And Wolverine's speech to them, reminiscent of Schwarzennegger in True Lies or Steve Buscemi in Desperado, predicting the mayhem that's about to be unleashed, is quite funny and a nice stylistic touch.
In addition, Sean Chen and Tom Palmer turn in a beautiful job on artwork, with Edgar Tadeo providing some atmospheric coloring work. Tieri's script calls for a dark and dingy bar, and the art team really delivers. This is largely a talking-heads story, with all the action taking place off-panel, but the artists manage to build the tension as Wolverine talks, even though we all know the outcome already.
I like the tone that this issue strikes, and I like a lot about the issue, stylistically. If Tieri can marry this tone to stronger plotting, Wolverine could suddenly become a lot more interesting. As is, it remains a book for fans of the character no matter what, but not for those who are just looking for good stories.
