THE CREATORS: Written by Frank Tieri, pencilled by Sean Chen and inked by Norm Rapmund

THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT: Four, all during the Matt Nixon fill-in run.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2002: The end of "Stay Alive"; the Logan Files storyline; the Matt Nixon fill-in issues with evil cardinals and Alpha Flight; and the new crime direction.

Frank Tieri's been the regular writer on Wolverine since December 2000, and the year began with him sticking firmly to the template of previous issues.  The "Stay Alive" storyline was pretty bad, a rather pointless fight which had started off with vague designs on parodying Survivor before losing sight of that and just wandering around for a few issues until the villain was beaten.

The Logan Files arc, which took the book up through issue #175, gave more space to Tieri's new version of Weapon X, who weren't any more interesting here than they are in their own title.  It rounded off with a lengthy dream scene in which a woman patiently explained the plot to Wolverine and mentioned Origin in passing. 

All pretty dull.  Tieri writes the lead character reasonably enough, but generally his characterisation tends to be weak and his plots simplistic.  In both ambition and achievement, Wolverine was notably below most of Marvel's output.

Halfway through the year, an attempt was made to shake things up with a new direction for the book.  Before the handover, however, there were four fill-in issues in a row, from Matt Nixon and assorted artists.  In the first two issues, Wolverine fought a mad cardinal who schemed to convert New York to Catholicism with mind control waves.  A risible story made worse by some terrible art from Dan Fraga, this was easily the worst thing the X-office produced all year.  In fairness to Nixon, however, his other two fill-ins weren't too bad.  The final one, essentially a lengthy lecture on Zen, was arguably better than most of the Tieri issues.

With that out of the way, the new direction began, featuring the same old creative team but turning the title into something approaching a crime book.  This really isn't all that new for Wolverine, a book which has never made much use of the character's superhero trappings.  Still, it's a fair enough idea.  The resulting issues do show a dramatic improvement in writing, even if they show rather more similarity with the back catalogue of new editor Axel Alonso than with the rest of Tieri's work on this title or on Weapon X.  A rather awkward attempt to shoehorn in a Roman Empire-themed crimelord didn't help matters particularly, but the book has undoubtedly taken a step in the right direction.

Nonetheless, Tieri is finally moving on in the new year, to make way for a relaunch in the spring.  The new creative team will apparently be Greg Rucka and Darick Robertson, which practically guarantees a quantum leap in quality that should make this an unmissable title in 2003.  I'm certainly looking forward to Wolverine more than I have in years.

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