"Coyote Crossing" concludes in Wolverine #11, with a rather odd ending.  Logan has returned to Mexico to deal with Rojas, only to find that after he scared away (or killed) all of her guards, she's died in childbirth.  So he takes the kid and proceeds to angst about the whole thing.

There seems to be some suggestion that Wolverine is okay with killing people in combat, where he can rationalise it as death in the heat of action, but that he's much less comfortable with the idea of having caused  somebody a slow and lingering death through indirect means.  If that's the idea, then I can see where Rucka is coming from.  It plays into the idea Rucka's trying to explore, that Wolverine rationalises his animal kills away but can't deal with this in quite the same manner.

Somehow, though, it doesn't quite ring true.  The whole set-up seems a little too contrived, with the air of a particularly artificial ethics problem.  And then there's the damn newborn, which finds itself cast as the obvious metaphor for untainted innocence.  There are interesting ideas in here, but the story misses the mark.

On the plus side, though, there's the usual excellent artwork from Leandro Fernandez, and I'm still enjoying the Cassie Lathrop subplot.  The ideas in this series are good, but somehow they're not quite translating into a stand-out plot.

Rating: B-

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