Wolverine: Old Man Logan

If you're looking at this book, chances are you know who Mark Millar is, and you know all about Wolverine. I didn't read this elsewhere, so I felt inclined to praise the packaging of this title. It has your standard dust-jacket, but undernearth is a pearly-white hardcover, with ice-blue lettering. Truly, this is the most beautifully packaged book Marvel has put out to date. Typically, when you remove the dust jacket, you're greeted with the plain-black cover, with plain-white/silver lettering. Some exceptions are the Daredevil omnibus (black with shiny-red outlined letters) and the Ultimate books (colored covers with black lettering)... Yet, this book stands out with elegance.

I didn't want to finish this book, it was so much fun reading. This is what the "Dark Knight" was to Batman. They set it up to a possible sequel....would love to see old man logan take back the rest of America. Millar is a great writer and keeps a great pace to the book. The artwork is fantastic!

Much to like - but also a few things to make you go "Wait... what?" - in the eight-issue arc WOLVERINE: OLD MAN LOGAN. There's no doubt at all that Wolverine is one of the most overexposed characters out there, having been affiliated with a boatload of teams (Weapon X, Alpha Flight, Dept. H., the X-Men, X-Force, S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, and soon probably the New Brighton Archeological Society, the Yancy Street Gang and the PTA). But, admittedly, there's something so very cool about the guy and that vicious thing that he's the best at doing. I don't know that OLD MAN LOGAN is the best Wolverine story ever told. I certainly don't believe that it's the most relevant. But it's certainly one of the most fun and wild and memorable. Set roughly fifty years in the future, and to spoiler readers of Marvel comic books, the bad guys finally win the whole shebang. The story begins with "Nobody knows what happened on the night the heroes fell." and one of the things which bug me about this arc is that writer Mark Millar never does give us the score on just what went down with the cataclysmic fighty fight between the Marvel heroes and villains. We don't get the juicy details, even though we learn that, finally, finally, the bad guys got wise and realized that, together, they outnumber the good guys by a ratio of huge. Some of the most brilliant villain heavy hitters got together and coordinated simultaneous strikes on the Marvel heroes and pretty much eradicated them from the face of the planet. Fifty years ago. Something truly horrific happened to Wolverine, and it scarred him so badly that he turned pacifist. Decades later, grizzled and white-haired, he's a struggling farmer trying to support his family, and nowadays he prefers to be called Logan. He's still tormented and so committed is he to not popping his claws that, when he can't make rent, he voluntarily takes a vicious beating from his landlords, who happen to be the rat-crazy, deformed grandchildren of Bruce Banner. Yeah, Logan's dirt poor farm lies in Hulkland (what used to be California). If you thought Mr. Furley was a horrible landlord... Desperate for rent money, Logan reluctantly leaves his family and signs on for a sprawling cross-country trek with his old and now blind friend Hawkeye on a mysterious courier mission. So what we get for most of these issues is this hybrid of gritty buddy adventure and dystopian travelogue. Issue #66 presents us with a map of America as currently carved up among the supervillains. We note that the most significant demesnes fall to Hulkland, the Kingdom of The Kingpin, Doom's Lair, and The President's Quarter - and, right away, I started wondering who is this President. It turns out, whoever he is, he was the one who masterminded the heroes' downfall fifty years ago. It's also interesting that the villains only cared about ruling the good ol' U.S.A. and didn't give an eff about taking over the rest of the world. WOLVERINE: OLD MAN LOGAN collects issues #66

The last time that Mark Millar (Wanted, Ultimates, Civil War) took the reigns on Wolverine, he crafted Enemy of the State, a year-long arc that was by and far the best Wolverine story to come along in years. Now, he returns with Old Man Logan, which finds a future world that has been rendered desolate and devoid of hope thanks to the destruction of the superheroes from decades before. Former X-Man Wolverine, who no longer goes by that moniker and lives a simple farm life with his family, vowed never to pop his claws again, and is submitted to frequent beatings by the landowning Hulk Gang family. Broke and seeking to save his family, Logan becomes wingman to his former ally Hawkeye (now blind and driving Spider-Man's old car) as they go on a cross country trek to deliver a package, and naturally, end up getting into more than they bargained for. As Old Man Logan goes on and Millar gives us glimpses into this post-apocalyptic Marvel universe, one can't help but wonder whether or not they've seen all this before. True, Old Man Logan doesn't feature any story elements that haven't been seen in say, Peter David's Last Avengers Story or Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, but Millar manages to keep you enthralled regardless, and by the time the big reveal comes and we learn just why Logan vowed to never pop his claws again, you will be floored. And despite the fact that its conclusion is somewhat predictable, one cannot deny that Old Man Logan ends up being a surprisingly powerful superhero endeavor. Millar's Civil War partner Steve McNiven is on board as well, and his artwork is as effective and gorgeous as ever. All in all, whether you're a die hard Wolverine fan or not, Old Man Logan is simply not to be missed.

Mark Millar is a writer I very much enjoy, but he often seems to have trouble sticking endings. That has changed in this story as, from start to stop, it's massively well paced, enormously twisting, and ultimately satisfying. Bringing the sensibility of Clint Eastwood's magnum opus Unforgiven to the plot of the comic Wanted (which Millar also wrote), Wolverine treks across a land where almost every superhero has been killed and America divided amongst the remaining villains. Steve McNiven, teaming up with Millar again after Civil War, brings his A-game in every single panel, be it the ultra-violent battles or the gut-wrenching emotional moments, the Marvel universe has rarely looked so well drawn. I found myself reading it again the moment I finished it and catching all sorts of background references and hints, so it reads well the second, and I'm sure third, time. Absolute highest recommendation.