Wolverine is dressed in all black (thank God he didn't wear his bright yellow costume while attempting to sneak up on Raven) and she still manages to fire a few shots into him before trying to talk him out of his antics, out of his blood thirst.

I just have to ask this: why don't characters stop trying to talk people out of things? My biggest issue with this book will come from this, promise.

Flashback to the bank robbery in 1921 in Kansas (the land of my birth) and we see the group get taken out by the local fuzz and Wolverine is none the wiser. He was set up by Raven. Or was he? The best thing about this short stint has been the history set up between the characters. It has always gone unspoken that Wolverine and Mystique knew each other previously, we never really were made aware of how or why, but we finally received a glimpse into their first meeting and how horribly bad it all finished.

Wolverine tracks her down in the present and she questions his motive. She questions his actions for her turning her back on the X-Men and exploiting their trust, and she pinpoints it: it isn't her fault that they're still naive in trusting her. It's not her fault they didn't learn their lesson the first 4 times she betrayed them. She never wanted to play dress-up and fight the good fight and be on the reservation (my favorite metaphor for what the X-camp has become). It's the X-Men's fault.

And she doesn't understand why Wolverine wants to kill her for this. His answer: because he may have made mistakes. But he's worked to make up for them as time has gone on. And then we learn the kicker: Wolverine set up the group for cash and to miss out on jail time from the cops. Raven had nothing to do with it.

Aaron gets the characterization right. Wolverine has to learn from his mistakes. Has to live with the knowledge that they will always haunt him for what he has done. And Raven doesn't care about anybody but herself. And Garney does a magnificent job drawing the battered and broken Logan who has spent years learning from his mistakes. The small one man army who is pure muscle and anger in about a 5 ft tall frame. And the fight scenes are amazing.

My only issue is characters trying to speak before they fight. Trying to stop their attacker with hard-thought words instead of blows against the dome. He's Wolverine. She's Mystique. Both are soldiers. Both are killers. And both talk to each other.

But I will say this: The arc was called Get Mystique. Not Kill Mystique. Not Murder Mystique. Get Mystique. And those last few pages show that Wolverine did. He got her exactly where he wanted her. And she just might die stuck out in the desert. I have a feeling she won't, but Wolverine gave her the means to kill herself and the opportunity and left her to perish. This could be it for Mystique.

Let's just hope that it is.