X-Men #10
Wolverine goes on a rescue mission in X-Men #10, by writer Gerry Duggan, artist Javier Pina, colorist Marte Gracia, and letterer Clayton Cowles. This issue is the best this book has been in a while, but the ending makes sure to make things worse again.
After starting with a flashback to a time when Wolverine was resurrected, and Proteus gave her adamantium, the issue sees Rogue uses a special weapon to spy on the Orchis outpost on Phobos, and the X-Men are able to get their first readings on the base. They pick up an adamantium signature in a box, and it isn't one of Logan's skeletons, so Wolverine, believing it may be one of her clones, volunteers to go on a rescue mission. She gets aboard, finds the box, and opens it, revealing Lady Deathstrike. After a little fight and the revelation Deathstrike can't heal, they try and escape, but Feilong stops them and vents them into space. Rogue, using several gates, is able to retrieve them by flying as fast as she can. Later, after an argument with Destiny over Gambit, Rogue puts in a call to a friend about finding Gameworld.
Saying this is the best issue in a long time may seem like praise, but the book is really only good during the middle section, with Wolverine infiltrating the Orchis base. This has as much to do with Pina's art as Duggan's writing; this section of the book is pretty light on dialogue. Pina's art is at his best in this section of the book, although there are some places where the detail flags, and it helps this part of the issue stand out over the rest. What little actual writing Duggan has to do doesn't ruin the scenes, and Pina does a great job of capturing the atmosphere of the secret mission. Elsewhere in the issue, the art can get a little sketchy, especially in the first couple of main plot pages after the flashback. However, it's still overall pretty good, with Gracia's colors giving the whole thing the visual pop this book has become known for.
Of course, the parts where Duggan does the heavy lifting are the worst parts of the book, but that's to be expected. For example, the flashback page at the beginning literally just exists to explain how Polaris was able to use her magnetic powers to marionette Wolverine around a few issues before. It's basically a wasted page and mostly feels like Duggan is trying to show all of the people on the Internet that he didn't make a mistake, which he probably did in reality, but that it was part of the story he was telling. The problem is that this page has nothing to do with anything else in the issue. It's just a flashback meant to patch up a book's continuity hole from a few earlier issues.
Another problem with the book comes in the ending section. It's strange that Duggan writes the relationship between Destiny and Rogue so adversarial; Destiny helped raise Rogue, and yet readers have never actually seen them tender towards each other in this book, just yelling at each other about Gambit. Does this happen in real life when someone marries a person their family doesn't like? Sure, but one would imagine Rogue would be happy to see her adoptive mother and that Destiny wouldn't stalk her just to tell her how bad Gambit is. It bogs the end of the book down, which plays into the Gameworld plot and isn't that great anyway; it's poor dialogue dragging the whole thing down.
X-Men #10 is pretty good when Duggan isn't doing too much, so the Wolverine scenes work very well. It's nice that he finally remembered to do something with her after ten issues of her barely doing anything worthwhile, but that's a deficiency of how he plots the book in general. Pina's art is weak in a few places but is overall very good, pairing wonderfully with Gracia's colors. Any issue of X-Men that's above mediocre is rare, so this one is a pleasant surprise.
