Wolverine #180 is the fourth and final fill-in issue by Matt Nixon, in which Wolverine attempts to explain zen to Nixon's new character Chuck Moss.  Well, points for ambition, certainly.

This is certainly the strongest of Nixon's four fill-in issues.  You may recall that the first two were simply terrible, and the last one was a pretty but inconsequential Alpha Flight story.  This time Nixon actually has a point that he's trying to make, and that's always good for a few extra marks.

The downside is that the issue is effectively a two-hander between Wolverine and the unfortunately named Chuck Moss, who sounds like some sort of horticultural vandalism.  While Nixon has made reasonably successful efforts to keep up the visual interest and give artist Jorge Lucas something to work with, Moss isn't a strong enough character to hold up his side of things.  The story calls for him to adopt the "confused neophyte" role so that Wolverine can educate him, but he never shows much personality beyond that.  That's the main flaw with this issue, which otherwise is generally okay.  (It's actually better than most of Tieri's stories, come to think of it, which may leave Nixon in the interesting position of having written both the best and worst Wolverine issues of 2002.)

This month's guest artist is Jorge Lucas, whose previous X-office work consisted of a few issues of X-Force at the very tail end of the Counter-X run.  He seems to be drawing this issue in a more conventionally North American style, but he makes the most of the landscapes and settings that he's given.  It's a nice enough looking story.

Really not bad, in all fairness.

Rating: B

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