I haven't yet taken the time to go back and count but I suspect I have written a disproportionate number of reviews on Jason Aaron books. Certainly if I think back on my favourite single issues of the last couple of years A large number of them are Aaron books.

A little over a year ago, in Wolverine: Weapon X #10, Aaron had a great in-between-arcs issue dealing with Logan's, then new, relationship with girlfriend Melita. Through some sharp, quick dialogue pages, Logan sought out the women in his life to make sense of the change in his life. Aaron got some genuinely funny and insightful moments out of playing with the idea of Wolverine having a relatively normal and healthy romantic relationship. This #5.1 issue plays out as something of a companion piece to that issue.

Here Melita is throwing Logan a surprise birthday party out at a remote, snowy, Canadian cabin, complete with decorations, grilled steaks and superheroes ready to jump out from behind the couch. Naturally, things do not go as planned and Wolverine is sidetracked on his way to the cabin in a way only Wolverine could. The idea of Logan doing something as normal as having a birthday party is innately funny and Aaron does achieve some truly funny moments here. Particularly funny are Spider-Man's one-panel appearance and a darkly humourous juxtaposition between a scene of canabalism and the serving of grilled steaks (this is the guy who writes Scalped and Punishermax after all).

More importantly and more seriously there is some really interesting character work going on here. First, Aaron's take on how Wolverine's instinctual, animal side takes over and both allows and drives him to acts of violence is far more compelling than the usual allusions to "berserker rages". Second, while on their face Melita's attempts at normalcy seem absurd we see in the final pages where her intentions may not, in fact, be misplaced. Through this relationship Aaron is managing to explore an aspect of Wolverine's character that we rarely see or think about, his simple, normal humanity.

As a book to bring new readers to the title I have my doubts. It may bring in comic readers who are new to this title but I can't see it convincing new comic readers to start reading monthlies any time soon. A particularly odd choice for a book aimed at new readers is the art. I am not familiar with Jete Palo's work but I did like what I saw here (with the possible exception of the take on Wolvie's hair). That said it is a fairly sketchy style and his facial work definitely has a unique style to it. The faces have strong lines and are more than a little cartoony. This makes for great emotion and expressiveness but it isn;t the kind of style I would have expected in a book like this.

Whenever he is done with this character, Jason Aaron seems likely to go down as having done the best character work with Wolverine since Claremont and Miller.