Wolverine: Get Mystique by Jason Aaron and Ron Garney

Since the whole "House of M" moment, only one new mutant baby has been born. The remainder of the X-men tried to protect it, but Mystique sold them and the baby out, which led to the baby getting abducted by Mr. Sinister for his own devious plans. With the X-men's failure, Team Leader Cyclops sends Wolverine on a mission- find and kill Mystique. For once, the two are in complete agreement on the need for Mystique to die.

But as Wolverine travels through the world's trouble spots to track down Mystique and get revenge on her, or bring her to justice for what she has done, we get to see that she and Logan have known each other for a very long time, and some of their past history, from when they met each other on the wrong end of a firing squad, her for having blue skin, him for being a horse thief.

Having survived the firing squad, Mystique finds Logan's healing factor amazing, and tries to link up with him, but they remain reluctant allies. When he comes to San Francisco later to link up with her, she tries to recruit him as part of her gang, consisting mostly of former circus performers, who she uses to fleece, bilk and steal from the people around them. She wants Logan to join them, claiming that they could be his family, since he has none of his own.

But when she sells them out on a Bank heist, we find that Logan has already done the same, though he was hoping that she would also get caught by the cops. Apparently, Logan was already working on the side of Law and Order (so to speak). And in the present day, it comes down to a fight mano a mano between Logan and Mystique to find out who will triumph in the sands of Afghanistan.

This isn't a bad graphic novel, though I'm not sure if the background posited between Logan and Mystique was ever mentioned or even hinted at before this particular story. But that's a minor niggle in what is a truly exciting chase and battle.

The tension is kept up throughout the story between Logan and Mystique, as he tries to find her. Though sometimes his actions are reprehensible... killing an Afghani woman who he thinks is Mystique because he smells her on the woman, Mystique lies, steals and abandons people left and right after they are no longer useful to her. This leads you to wonder which character's actions are more distasteful.

And its this that caused me to feel less than interested in the graphic novel. Yes, Mystique is a villainous character. She does horrible things in the name of her own self-interest. But is Logan any better, willing to kill people who are nominally innocent simply to bring her down? I wasn't sure, and reading this graphic novel left me with a bad taste in my mouth. By the end, I simply couldn't bring myself to care who won the battle. And that made this book a failure for me.