THE CREATORS: Greg Rucka and Darick Robertson through to issue #19, followed by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT: Nil.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2004: The tail end of "Coyote Crossing"; the lengthy Native storyline; and Wolverine gets brainwashed by evil ninja zombies and kills people.  Guess which one was written by Mark Millar!

Wolverine has gone through a particularly drastic change of style this year.  The book started off with Greg Rucka and Darick Robertson, continuing with the same low key approach as we'd seen in 2004.  Rucka's departure was always expected, because he'd signed an exclusive deal with DC almost immediately upon starting the book; Marvel had simply been working through scripts stockpiled before his exclusive period began.

The nineteen issue run contains three actual storylines, plus a thoroughly bizarre dream issue.  As you might expect, this means extreme decompression.  All three of these storylines read somewhat better in retrospect, if you sit down and plough through them in one go.  In other words, they're paced for the trade paperback.  In the monthly title, there was always something to enjoy, but no getting away from the glacial pace.  "Return of the Native" is at least twice as long as it ought to be, and suffers hugely as a result.

So when you're coming off a run that might perhaps be described as... well, a bit slow... it's understandable to swing to the other extreme.  And in this case, the other extreme is Mark Millar, a man who doesn't really do restrained or subtle.

The result is "Enemy of the State", based around a simple premise: the bad guys brainwash Wolverine, and make him go out and kill people.  All ludicrously over the top, of course, and Wolverine is put over as the most terrifyingly dangerous threat in the whole world.  John Romita Jr was a good choice of artist for this material; gritty enough to look dark, but cartoonish enough that the ridiculous violence remains mindlessly entertaining rather than depressing. 

In small doses, this is precisely what the book needs.  It's a back to basics approach, and since it's Wolverine, the basics happen to involve lots of slicing people up.  Of course, it would wear very thin after a while.  But to be fair, Millar's only planning a twelve issue run, and he may well be able to sustain the idea for that long.

There's always something about Millar's writing that niggles at me.  I can never quite shake the feeling that everything he produces is written with half an eye on the Mark Millar brandname, making sure that it's as "shocking" and "controversial" as it's supposed to be.  As a result, despite his obvious talent, his stories often feel contrived and insincere.  But then, this isn't a story about soul or heart.  It's a story about chopping people up with adamantium claws.  Sincerity isn't really the big issue.

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