Wolverine kicks off the second Greg Rucka storyline, "Coyote Crossing."  According to the solicitations, this is another five-parter, so presumably decompression is still going to be the order of the day.

As with the first arc, Rucka is sticking to realistic antagonists.  This time round it's the "coyotes" who smuggle illegal immigrants across the Mexican border, frequently asphyxiating them all in the process.  In theory, these sort of people make ideal villains for Wolverine solo stories; he works best with relatively low-key opponents.  The previous arc went a bit awry because the opposition never seemed in any danger of posing a threat to Wolverine, making it all a bit of a foregone conclusion (even by the standards of the genre).  We'll have to see whether Rucka can avoid the same problem this time around; it's a bit early to tell.

Meanwhile, in the subplot, Cassie Lathrop is still hunting for Logan.  Rucka's certainly done a fabulous job of rounding her out as a supporting character.  I still have a degree of difficulty with the idea that she can't identify the man with the distinctive hairstyles and the claws as the world-famous superhero Wolverine, which you would thought only called for an elementary level of detective skills.  But evidently the book has decided to act as if it's semi-detached from continuity in this regard, and once you allow it to make that jump, Cassie's arc works just fine.  She's certainly the strongest new element Rucka has brought into the book.

With Darick Robertson off working on a Deathlok miniseries, we have Leandro Fernandez on art for this arc.  Rucka and Fernandez have worked together before on the excellent Queen & Country.  I wasn't entirely convinced by Fernandez' art on that story, largely because he over-sexualised the lead character.  He doesn't make the same error with Cassie (and in fairness, he doesn't generally - I have no clue what came over him with Q&C).

Fernandez does stylised figures who retain their three-dimensionality even while they're edging into caricature.  In fact, this issue is somewhat underplayed compared to some of this work.  It's a style that works quite neatly for Wolverine, a character who works best in a heightened reality with the emphasis more on "reality."

There's a definite possibility that this arc could repeat the same problems that dragged down the previous storyline.  But for all that, it's a strong start.

Rating: B+

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