It's an exceptionally quiet week for the X-books, with only Wolverine #64 reaching the shelves.  For once, this isn't the schedulers' fault.  They had X-Factor and Uncanny X-Men down to ship this week too.  But neither book has come out, so we're left with Wolverine.

This is the penultimate chapter of "Get Mystique", a storyline built around Wolverine chasing Mystique around the Middle East - or at least, the bits where Americans are.  At first glance, it's a slightly odd choice of setting.  Neither character has any particular connection with the area.  Granted, the story has one of those "Ah, Logan, my old friend" scenes, where Wolverine turns out to have a tremendously close friendship with a local guy we've never heard of.  But that happens wherever he goes.

But this works very well.  By way of illustration, compare the Deadpool storyline currently running in Wolverine: Origins.  That's also basically an extended chase scene, and yet it's rather flat.  What is this book doing right, in comparison?

Well, for one thing, there's a sense of epic conflict between these two, which Aaron has largely manufactured from scratch over the last few months.  This is where the setting turns out to have been a smart choice by Jason Aaron.  It works partly because Wolverine has pursued Mystique to the end of the earth; and partly because, by putting them, in a vaguely alien and barren landscape, the emphasis is firmly on the two of them.   

That lack of familiarity also allows plenty of opportunities for Mystique to do her shape-changing tricks.  It makes the most of her gimmick: she can be anyone, and anyone could be her.  It's an odd coincidence that Aaron is doing this at the same time as Secret Invasion, which has plenty of shape-changing impostors running around, but has yet to produce the sort of clever set-pieces that we're seeing here.

Aside from that, the story allows artist Ron Garney to cut loose with some over-the-top explosions and fight scenes.  Some of this stuff is, technically, very silly, but the story gets away with it through sheer bravado.  Garney is doing some of his best work on this arc.

Alongside all this, there's a running series of flashbacks setting up a previous relationship between Wolverine and Mystique back in the 1920s.  On one level, this is an attempt - somewhat successful - to manufacture a relationship that the characters didn't actually have until now.  But it also breaks up the desert scenes, and illustrates other sides of the characters in a more low-key environment.  Aaron isn't seriously inviting us to see Wolverine and Mystique as opposite sides of the same coin, but he's certainly keen to stress their similarities, as characters for whom the game has almost become an end in itself.

It's a shame that Aaron and Garney are only contributing a single storyline to the series.  But this is a very strong contribution, well up to the standards that both creators have established for themselves.

Rating: A

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