This was no where near as bad a story as I had read it was. Linking all the lupine mutants isn't completely ridiculous and it's left vague enough that it could be dismissed altogether. Loeb's writing was more tolerable in this collection than it has been in years. It's not great by any means but it doesn't offend the senses like his other recent Marvel work. I'll be interested to see if the big, climatic, character impacting ending sticks.
And then there's Marvel's new "superstar artist" Simone Bianchi. I'm at a complete loss as to what Marvel (and DC where he's done a bunch of covers) sees in his art. It's not particularly good pencil art and the gray tones and coloring make the book very, very muddy. And Bianchi has a really weird obsession with drawing the diamond patterns on Wolverine and Sabretooth's costumes whenever possible, even if that means a terrible camera angle on the characters. Maybe the black and white editions of the book look better because the coloring really is bad, but he does laughable faces at times and is definitely style over substance with the panel to panel work.