Editor's Note: Wolverine: Weapon X #2 arrives in stores tomorrow, May 20.

"The Adamantium Men, Part 2 of 5"

Jason Aaron works this title like a road-worn honky tonk band working a Hank Sr. classic. It's intuitive, natural, and seemingly effortless. I don't think there's anyone who gets Wolverine like Aaron does, and this story is shaping up to be a perfectly executed Wolverine story, ideally suited to new readers and old fans alike.

So why can't I get more excited about it?

I suppose part of it could be Garney's art. His layouts and storytelling are excellent, and the art has a rough and ragged edge that captures the energy and feel that Aaron is going for. Some of the battle images in this issue are brutal and violent, as called for, and the way he designed and implemented the look of the Adamantium Men, especially with the way colorist Jason Keith incorporates the cold, green glow of their eyes, is pretty damn creepy and threatening.

But at the same time, some scenes, particularly those involving the reporter, Garner, don't quite hit the mark. She doesn't look like the same person from panel to panel and sometimes her head seems to be swollen like some sort of Future Woman. She goes from pretty to haggard and back again, and other supporting characters appear to have been drawn casually, inked directly with no, or only minimal, penciling for guidance. The sloppiness that works with the action sequences in the jungles of South America, doesn't really work for the newsroom and the quiet scenes.

I don't think that's it, though, after working through it. The art is mostly a pretty solid match for the story Aaron's telling, so what is it? Why can't I seem to care about a book by one of my favorite writers with high quality art?

I guess it's just Wolverine.

I was a seven year old kid and a burgeoning X-Men junkie when Wolverine "debuted" on the team in 1975 and he was immediately my favorite character. Later, I can remember being in the fifth or sixth grade and making the rational argument (to whom, I don't remember), based on Wolverine's argument, that sometimes lethal force is justified and killing being wrong isn't a moral absolute. At the time, this was a huge shift in comic book morality, and it was one I was apparently ready for.

When Claremont and Miller collaborated on the 4-issue Wolverine mini in 1982 I was right there, picking it up and loving it. However, by the time, two years later, when Wolverine teamed up with Kitty Pryde to teach her ninja skills, I was pretty much done. I'd reached saturation point, even though I apparently had no idea just how Wolverine-saturated Marvel's publication output could become.

By that point I pretty much gave up on mainstream superhero comics and in 1983 started reading the much more interesting output of First Comics. American Flagg!, Badger, Dreadstar, Jon Sable, Freelance, and Warp took that moral ambiguity that I found so refreshing years earlier in Wolverine and did much more creative things with the conceit.

I kept up with what was going on with Wolverine, not in the stalkerly way that one might Google old girlfriends' names or anything, but in a tired, sad way, just to see how my favorite childhood character was faring. Ultimately, it all just became so tedious and absurd that I stopped caring. This was especially true once writers figured out that with his healing factor, they could put Wolverine through the worst violence they could imagine, without ever really dealing with the consequences. I tried out the Rucka/Robertson relaunch in 2003 and enjoyed it for a while, but after only nine issues, I wandered away from even that.

Actually, my feelings about this new Aaron/Garney version are very similar to my feelings for that run: Quality art and good stories that capture the essence of the character. But he's just such a tired character. We know that essence intimately. Every aspect of Wolverine has been played out so thoroughly that when the wind blows it sounds like a flag fluttering.

There's no danger anymore. No thrill. The character is an industry of its own, which means nothing can really be done to change or develop the character in any new way, beyond Aaron's penchant for writing Logan as continuously drinking and fond of classic country (which, I admit, is a great variation and one of the reasons that I'm enjoying this so far).

The only thing that anyone can do with him, in the context of an in-continuity, ongoing series, is try to make the conflicts more extreme and over-the-top. A supporting cast has to develop in order to take up the slack so far as characterization and dramatic energy goes. The rest is going to just be Wolverine: Sniktety Snikt, Here Comes The Stabbin', which isn't bad, but just doesn't stay very interesting for very long.

Only stories that are fairly stand-alone, like Millar's "Old Man Logan" storyline, seem to be able to do anything really exciting and fresh with the character. And the whole thrust of that story is that Wolverine isn't Wolverine any more, which kind of validates my point to some extent. Add to that a setting that takes the Marvel Universe we know and turns everything on its head. It's not a story that can be done in current continuity, and it is far better for it.

Aaron and Garney's Wolverine: Weapon X is probably as good as it can possibly be, if you still care about this sort of thing, but I find it hard to believe that anything beyond "a little above average" is really possible with the character in this format.

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