When Dakken was first introduced, I found him to a whiney, useless, marketing device.  Can’t get enough Wolverine?  Is X-23 too complicated for you?  Sabretooth too old school?  Wildechilde too crazy?  Wolfsbane and Feral too wolfy and feral?  That’s cool, Quesada and Daniel Way present Another Wolverine!  The backstory isn’t too convuluted, and, like early Wolverine appearances, you’re never really sure whose side he’s on!

When Dakken was introduced as part of the Dark Avengers, I suspected crap, but Bendis and others added some new dimensions to the character, and I found myself loving how much I disliked him.  I even enjoyed that Dakken killed the Punisher.  But, in this issue, it seems that Way hasn’t been reading, or been informed about, what any of the other writers have been doing with Dakken.  He also hasn’t been paying attention to his relationship with Osborne, which is, admittedly, hard to do, what with no one in the Marvel board room talking to each other about what’s going on in Dark Reign.

Continuity points aside (and I wouldn’t mind continuity problems if the current Marvel Universe wasn’t centered on continuity), this issue just didn’t feel fun, artistic, or interesting.  Having Land do the cover is almost a metaphor: this is an old Wolverine story that Way found, traced over, and slapped his name on.