THE CREATORS: Mark Millar and John Romita Jr through to issue #31; Millar and Kaare Andrews in issue #32; and Daniel Way, Javier Saltares and Mark Texeira after that.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2005: Enemy of the State; the one-off issue with the concentration camp; a House of M crossover; and the first two issues of "Origins and Endings."

This was Mark Millar and John Romita Jr's year on Wolverine, as they continued racing around the Marvel Universe in an unabashed twelve-issue fight scene.  Nobody would want to read that sort of story month in and month out - there's nothing to it besides the sugar rush. But after a long period of fairly staid Wolverine stories, and a tendency to take the character very seriously, it made a fun change to go back to ludicrous ultraviolence for a bit. 

Okay, so twelve months was probably a bit excessive.  And the story peaked too soon, leaving Millar with nowhere to go in the later issues.  And Wolverine and Elektra killing hundreds of ninjas was just stupid.   

Nonetheless, on its own hack-and-slash terms, "Enemy of the State" has to be judged a success.  It sold wonderfully, and it delivered exactly what it promised - shameless, over the top adrenalin-fuelled nonsense.  And I have no problem with that, as part of a balanced diet.

But where next?  This is where Marvel seem a touch uncertain.  They've handed the book over to Daniel Way, a writer who evidently blows them away, but who has yet to convince a wider audience.  His stories tend to be slow, ponderous and talky, and while the underlying ideas are often quite good, his sense of pacing seems questionable.  There are many, many reasons why his Venom series failed, but the glacial pace is a big one. 

Of course, art is subjective, and on some level I can understand what Marvel see in Way. But I can't for the life of me understand why they think he's a marketable talent, which ought to be every bit as important to them.  Everything I've seen from Way so far suggests a cult figure at best, and not somebody who's going to appeal to the audience Millar attracted with "Enemy of the State."

Thus far, we've had a pointless House of M crossover which seemed to serve no purpose at all other than to cash in on the event.  But it's perhaps unfair to judge Way on that.  The current arc, "Origins and Endings", is probably more indicative, but has problems of its own.  Two issues in, it's still only at the level of "Wolverine does some stuff, and you the reader must speculate about why."  I spy serious pacing problems, because there's nothing here that would allow you to guess what's going on.  You're just left to sit there patiently and wait for an explanation, while Wolverine goes about his inscrutable business.  This is not promising.

Wolverine is easily Way's highest-profile assignment to date.  As Marvel finally discover whether they can persuade the readers to like his stories, 2006 could be a make or break year for him.  With the best will in the world, from what we've seen so far, my money's on "break."

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