Old Man Logan (Marvel) Review

This doesn't come close to the amount
of blood in this book.

Old Man Logan
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Steve McNiven

 

So is this an argument to get rid of the X-Men or to keep them?

Either Old Man Logan shows what awesome stories can be told when all of the X-Men are killed off, or it’s a testament to the awesome stories that can come out of what is, ostensibly, an X-Men book. Either way, I’m surprised that I’m actually writing a review, because if you haven’t read this WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!?

It’s sometime in the future and everything has gone to hell. The villains have taken over the world, the world is a post-apocalyptic nightmare and every hero in the Marvel universe is either dead or broken.

Wolverine is broken; he hasn’t popped his claws in years, preferring life on a family homestead with the name Logan. When his family find themselves in trouble with the Hulk’s redneck kids (yep, you read that right), Logan puts his hopes on a smuggling run across the US with a blind Hawkeye.

Okay, let’s get the one criticism out of the way: this doesn’t really need to be a Wolverine book. I could picture a Captain America or even a Hulk book being done to this plot without too many major changes. Nobody that is particularly important to Wolverine’s history makes an appearance here (aside from Hulk). We get only a passing reference to other mutants. Jubilee has, what, three lines in the whole book? The supporting cast for the story are otherwise almost entirely new characters save Hawkeye, who, again, could have worked with anyone and nobody would tell the difference.

It gets THIS bloody...

Luckily, Logan isn’t really the star of this book; the world that he inhabits is. It’s a little bit Mad Max, a little bit The Magnificent Seven, a little bit 1984. Villainous America (which, for once, isn’t a new name for the Trump administration… well… not explicitly…) is a bleak and barren landscape. I’ve only ever spent a short amount of time in the USA, but from what I saw, today’s America is geographically diverse and has just as many green places as desert. Not so for this future. Both the east and west coasts are almost indistinguishable from the Nevada. It makes you wonder what on earth these villains did to make the world the way it is. Trying to interpret old Westerns into the modern age doesn’t quite work the way that writer Mark Millar wants it to; everyone but Logan and his family end up coming off as more redneck than homesteader; but the sense of tension throughout in perfectly indicative of a gunfight in a dusty, one-street town. The whole world becomes the most enjoyable part of this book and I’m livid that the All-New-All-Different Old Man Logan ongoing has left that world behind.

... and THIS bloody

That’s not to say that Logan and other characters aren’t well developed. Millar really runs with the idea that the Marvel heroes are completely and utterly defeated. Logan’s reasons for not popping his claws are highly believable. Just as interesting is Hawkeye’s character. He suffers from survivor’s guilt after the supervillains ignore him completely (because, y’know… Hawkeye). In fact, there’s an argument to be made that Hawkeye’s life affects the story of Old Man Logan to a greater extent than Logan’s.

The art here is done by Steve McNiven who also worked on Civil War. McNiven has a way of drawing action scenes that somehow make you feel every punch to the gut. Every stab, slash and puncture comes across with painful kinetic impact. Being the bloody, violent book that Old Man Logan is, this makes the whole story’s emotional impact stronger, honestly, than any other artist would be capable of.

Overall, though, Old Man Logan is an absolute classic. Not to bang out a cliché, but if you only ever read one Wolverine story, make it this one. Nothing else starring the character comes close to this story that gets four and a half out of five redneck Hulk children.

The Death of Wolverine (Marvel) Review

The Death of Wolverine

DOUBLE WOLVERINE!!!

Writer: Charles Soule

Artist: Steve McNiven

Collects: Death of Wolverine #1-4

Background information:

Wolverine has always been a killer. The adjective that has described his stories over the years has almost always been "stabby". The "snikt" sound when his made-for-stabbing claws come out is iconic. He's grim, he's angry, and most importantly; he's violent.

He's always gotten away with this, though, because his healing factor makes him virtually unstoppable. Or, at least, it did until Marvel NOW! hit the shelves. Wolverine found himself stripped of his healing powers and what followed was one of the best studies of the character we've had since Old Man Logan. Wolverine decided that he was going to really enjoy life; the fact that life was finite now made it worth something. It was strange to see a Wolverine book that felt so positive, and it was fantastic.

Review:

... And now, Marvel is killing him off.

One side of me says "fair enough." Wolverine has been in upwards of all of Marvel's books to date. It has been getting to the point where Marvel only had two options; kill Wolverine or put him in a DC book, because that's the only place he hasn't been.

Everything the world thinks about Canada vs. everything the
world thinks about America.

Another side of me rolls my eyes and grits my teeth. Since the MCU finally became popular, MarvelThe Filthy Stinkin' Muties.
has been trying as hard as possible to pretend that the X-Men don't exist; replacing them with the Inhumans, retconning Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's origins so they have nothing to do with Mutants and doing everything but changing the name of every X-Men book to

So Death of Wolverine seems to fix both perceived "problems". Someone has put a hit out on Wolverine, and now the guy has to stab everything and everyone; Viper, Sabretooth, Lady Deathstrike, Ogun and a muscled skinhead with the American flag tattooed on his face.

Okay, the first thing to note about this one is that it's a characteristically violent book. There's lots of blood, exploding hands, removed layers of skin and everything designed to make you feel slightly ill. That's not a bad thing though, you don't read a Wolverine book to see Logan talk about his feelings. It's also great to see Wolverine go through a gauntlet of old foes, each one that little bit different from the other.

Soule also does a great job at giving us real character moments. Wolverine does a lot of pondering here. That would seem out of place normally, but somehow, this introspection gets pretty even  balanced with Wolverine's thoughts of sheer savagery. Dialogue full of Wolverine's human nature get juxtaposed against prose boxes showing one to four word thoughts. On the exterior, Wolverine's getting deep and meaningful about how he doesn't want to die, but on the inside, we see that he's really just an animal who pretends at humanity. That's about as deep an assessment of Wolverine's character as we're every likely to get.

But these two points are fairly moot, because they're wrapped up in this plot that's just, well, lame.

The entire story structure in each issue is summed up by saying "go here, fight this enemy from your past, find a reason to go somewhere else." It looses it's appeal in a much shorter time than it takes for you to read that summary. What's worse, though, is that there's no feeling of raising tension here. It doesn't invest you in what happens next. I would have been happier just reading one issue than I think I would have been reading the whole book.

The best scene in the book, and it's only in issue 2.

Then there's the ending. Which by all accounts, should have been highly climatic. The reveal is a big enough surprise, but somehow Soule writes it as though he doesn't actually care. By the time that Wolverine has died, instead of thinking "there goes one of the greatest characters in the Marvel universe," what you're more likely to say is "oh... that's it... okay then."

When you kill off a character, there should be a sense of remorse. You should find yourself thinking about how great a hero he/she is. Death of Wolverine doesn't do that, and therefore only earns a two and a half out of five filthy stinkin' muties.

** 1/2

+ Nice comparison of man vs. animal.
+ About as violent as you'd want a Wolverine book to be.
- Plot structure endorses apathy.
- Ending fails to inspire.

Alternate Option: Wolverine: Three Months to Die, Book 1 and 2

More likely to inspire awe in the character, while acknowledging that Logan's going to die.

Wolverine Vol. 1: Hunting Season (Marvel NOW!) Review

Wolverine Vol. 1: Hunting Season (Marvel NOW!)

Quick, Logan, catch that runaway logo!

Writer: Paul Cornell

Artists: Alan Davis and Mirco Pierfedrici

Collects: Wolverine #1-6

Background Information:

Seriously, you don’t know who Wolverine is? Well, you should know he’s the comic industry’s equivalent of a shoe with a hole in it. His problems have nothing to do with the quality of the character, rather, years of overuse have worn him out as someone that you’re likely to care about. Every Marvel series since the character’s debut in X-Men have seen him as a cameo. He has two ongoings currently and his flagship title has been renumbered to fit with the All-New Marvel NOW He’s on at least two teams of Avengers, leads a group of X-men and has appeared in every X-book that’s currently in print.

And because there has been so much Wolverine over the past few years, following the character has become difficult to say the least. His origin story for example, goes back many, many years and in its various iterations has seen him take part in every historical battle since the 1700s. I’m writing this to say, in the simplest terms that I can, that as a character, Wolverine’s a bit of a mess.

Review:

The fact that Wolverine’s character is so overused doesn’t change the fact that Wolveirne oozes awesomeness. He’s fun to watch in action and has a commanding presence on the page. Because of this, I really wanted to love Hunting Season. Unfortunately, though all the elements of an interesting story are there, Hunting Season lacks the impact of other Marvel NOW! titles.

No... not 90s weapons... my... one...
weakness!

Here, Wolverine is hunting down a race of microbes that are making people become obsessed with being assimilated by these tiny little borg. The microbes take the minds of all kinds of people- from small children (which actually forms the best part of the book) to members of SHIELD. Wolverine finds himself getting torn between his desire to go all stabby-stabby on bad guys and his desire to protect innocents. It’s a moment of character development that writer Paul Cornell could and should have taken advantage of, but instead, it just gets left hanging. Wolverine doesn’t seem particularly challenged by these competing desires, and as such, the story feels fairly hollow.

There’s some interesting status quo here, though. Wolverine apparently does his solo-work by gathering information from a group of quasi-experts. These aren’t professors or SHIELD agents, though. Wolverine’s informants are oddsmakers, profilers, and even a comic writer. It’s a fun little team and it’s nice to see this very ordinary team become very useful to a superhero. Unfortunately, Cornell again doesn’t utilise them nearly enough. The group gets an introduction and one moment where they actually do something.

The Emperor's New Superhero Costume

But the major problem with Cornell’s book is the structure of the story. Firstly, the best parts of the book occur right at the beginning, so reading the rest of the story feels pretty vanilla by comparison. But an even bigger problem is how intent Cornell seems to be on dragging what should have been a three-issue story arc out into six. Hunting Season is a quick read because there’s too little in it. Characters don’t develop, tension never really mounts and what makes it worse is that Cornell seems to jump ahead without actually giving us any backfill to the story he’s making.

Despite all of this though, it’s hard for me to say that this book is bad. When I was studying, my screenwriting professor told us that it was really hard to write a bad movie. What it was really easy to do was write one that was instantly forgettable. I think, if anything, Hunting Season proves that you can apply that thinking to comics. Hunting Season isn’t bad; it just leaves you feeling like you’ve read nothing. It gets a two and a half out of five stabby-stabbies.

+ Story is great early on

+ Good supporting cast

- Once the “early on” stage is over, story is pretty average

- A lot of missed opportunities.

Alternate Option: Any other Marvel book

Wolverine appears in so many other books, that you’re bound to see him sometime or another.