THE CREATORS: Daniel Way and Javier Saltares start off the year, before Way is shunted over to Wolverine: Origins.  Marc Guggenheim and Humberto Ramos contribute a seven-month arc, and there are a couple of fill-in issues along the way too.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2006: More set-up for Wolverine: Origins, a lengthy Civil War tie-in, and a couple of fill-ins.

Almost unnoticed, Wolverine appears to have slid back to its old format of having a different creative team for every storyline, and no overall direction.  The first chunk of the year saw Daniel Way handling the first act of the story that he's now continuing over in Wolverine: Origins - we'll come back to that title later.  Then Marc Guggenheim and Humberto Ramos did the Civil War tie-in, and next we're getting Jeph Loeb.  There's little sense that anyone knows what this book is actually for; it seems to be a hole on the schedule left behind when Way's story was spun off into a separate title, and filled with whatever happens to be going.

Personally, I rather enjoyed the Guggenheim/Ramos arc.  It was a good use of the crossover format, taking a stray plot thread from the core title and tying it up, while still delivering a story in its own right.  Unlike a lot of creators, Guggenheim was sufficiently concerned about making his story self-contained that he repeated wholesale several scenes from Civil War #1, and I think that was the right call.

The reason Guggenheim's story worked was because it was silly, over the top, and allowed Wolverine to run around fighting things.  The nonsense about Wolverine regenerating from a skeleton was ridiculous if you took it seriously, but fine for a cartoon story in the exaggerated style of Ramos.

Unfortunately, in his epilogue issue, Guggenheim seemed to be trying to take it all seriously, which was a bit of a miscalculation.  The story won't stand up to that kind of weight.  But nonetheless, there was plenty to enjoy here.

Next year we're getting Jeph Loeb and the umpteenth retread of Wolverine and Sabretooth.  I know Loeb's had some huge successes at DC, but I've never been blown away by him, and the Wolverine/Sabretooth feud is utterly stale.  I'll give it a chance, but I have to say, I'm not particularly excited about the direction of this book.

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