Old Man Logan #8
Following from the “Bordertown” three-parter, Old Man Logan gives us a one-shot story. And it’s time, yet once more, to contemplate the imminent collapse of society.
Now, these are apocalyptic times indeed. Pop culture – hell, culture generally – is not exactly going through one of its optimistic phases. Not that it particularly should be. And so sure, there ought to be something to work with in the hook of Old Man Logan, the thing that makes him different from the original Wolverine – which is not so much that he’s old, or even specifically that he was tricked into killing his version of the X-Men, but that he’s already lived through the collapse of the society around him.
What seems like a rather abstract pessimism to everyone else is a much more concrete possibility for him, even a likelihood, because he’s seen it happen before. This, potentially at least, is what distinguishes him from Cable, who also came back in time with a vague agenda of making sure that his awful future never came to pass. Cable’s apocalypse was way, way in the future and he was trying to nip it in the bud. But (this) Logan is in what he regards as the final days of a world that’s about to die. Even though he seems to accept that this isn’t actually his past, he still assumes that something equally horrible is presumably coming down the pipe in the near future, and he expects to lose again – emotionally, if not rationally – because that’s just the general course of history that he’s come to accept. All things die, and these things die roughly here and now. There ought to be something in that.
But it’s one thing to have that idea, and another to develop it into an actual story. This issue consists of flashbacks to the night the villains attacked in Logan’s timeline and wiped out all the heroes, intercut with teen Jean Grey taking Logan to visit the various locations where, of course, nothing is happening. The idea, I guess, is to have the violent OTT chaos of the flashbacks alternating with placid scenes in the present day, although that doesn’t come across as well as it might – there’s something a bit muted and distant about Andrea Sorrentino’s art even when he’s doing the big stuff, and while a few of the flashback panels have highly stylised lighting effects, most go for an autumnal palette not a million miles from the present day stuff.
Beyond that contrast, taking Logan to these locations doesn’t really seem to serve any definable point as such. It’s just Logan being very sad about what happened and Jean offering moral support while reassuring him that it might never happen. The pay-off is that she takes him to a bar in Madripoor to reunite him with some of his (well, Logan’s) friends – Jubilee, Steve Rogers, Clint Barton and Puck – so that they can have some drinks. Everyone here pretty much treats him as the real Wolverine back from the dead, because the scene works better that way, and if you’re willing to run with that then there’s some good stuff with Jubilee.
Loosely, the idea seems to be that he’s been distancing himself from everyone because he expects everything to come crashing down soon enough anyway, and Jean is encouraging him to reach out to people and start to reintegrate into the world. But there are a couple of problems with that.
For one, the closing page with Jean and Logan is ungodly heavy handed – not only are they watching the sun come up, but the story ends with Logan saying that “I think you finally made me realise I don’t have to face it alone”. It’s not, I suppose, that heavy handedness is necessarily a deal breaker in superhero comics – much of this story is flashbacks expanding on an idea by Mark Millar, after all, and Millar is very much a this-goes-to-eleven kind of writer. And Jeff Lemire is certainly trying to write the sort of lunatic chaos that Millar had in mind; there’s a neat idea of having Giant-Man swarmed by Moloids as if he was being consumed by ants. But it all sits a bit weirdly with the hangdog, sorrowful, muted Logan of the art.
More to the point, though, we only just finished a three-parter of Logan trying to reach out to the modern-day counterpart of his future wife, bringing the Reavers down on her head, and reaching the conclusion that trying to track down his old friends is only causing them trouble, so he ought to keep to himself. Sure, you can argue that that doesn’t really apply to friends who are actually superheroes. But it continues the pattern of this series where the character keeps learning, unlearning and re-learning the same things over and over again. He’s gone from broken retiree to renewed hero (twice), to vicious vigilante, to broken retiree again, to renewed hero again, to trying to reach out to his family, to learning to steer clear of his family, to deciding he needs to reach out to people again. Individually, these arcs largely make sense – as a whole, they suggest a book with no clear direction.
Where is any of this going? How do you pay this off? I guess you could have him discover our version of the villain uprising in the planning stages and unequivocally avert it – and kill him off in the process, because once you’ve done that story, he’s just a spare Wolverine. But even if there is an end goal in mind, the book is taking a tremendously meandering route to get there.
There’s a nice idea here for a character, and something that could make him properly distinct from the original Wolverine, but expanding it into an ongoing series is seeming like a struggle.
It might be nice to have a supervillain get into an old-fashioned brawl with Logan, be proud that he’s actually winning, then realise he’s actually just beating up an old man and kind of awkwardly leave. I mean, the rest of the world is used to him being the endlessly vital Wolverine, and this guy just isn’t. I mean, the guy’s always been a bit of a homage to Clint Eastwood, and Eastwood himself is old and a bit feeble now, so why not explore that angle?
Other than that, I don’t know what else you can do with the character as a focus. He doesn’t seem very interesting to me.
Does anyone know if this title is continuing through Marvel Now 2.0? Seems like its absence in the lists could indicate it is coming to an end, so perhaps he will be killed off.
Haven’t seen anything on Extraordinary X-Men either, though, which sucks. Storm appears in the new Black Panther series, but (while I haven’t read much about 2.0) it looks a bit grim for the X-Men. Maybe it’s an April Fools joke (in July).
By appearances, the X-books simply aren’t being relaunched as part of Marvel Now 2.0, which is why they aren’t in the preview thing. We’ll see when the October solicitations come out, which shouldn’t be long.
I was thinking (hoping) that they might just be on hiatus until the Death of X is over.
Yeah, Death of X might be an event leading in to a relaunch of the X-titles, or Marvel might be deciding to actually eviscerate the X-titles.
I guess it depends on how the current X-line ends this Autumn.
I would guess that Marvel probably won’t bother to relaunch Old Man Logan with the next Marvel NOW event, regardless.
> By appearances, the X-books simply aren’t being relaunched as part of Marvel Now 2.0, which is why they aren’t in the preview thing. We’ll see when the October solicitations come out, which shouldn’t be long.
The “preview thing” includes Uncanny Avengers, Squadron Supreme, Thunderbolts, both Captain America books, Silver Surfer, Black Panther, Dr Strange, Mighty Thor, Hellcat, Black Widow, Moon Knight, Squirrel Girl, Punisher, Daredevil, Power Man/Iron Fist, Gwenpool, TA Hulk, Uncanny Inhumans, Ms Marvel, Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Spider-Man 2099, Deadpool and DP & the Mercs for Money. None of which are getting #1’d.
Maybe the X-Men books are simply getting put on hold for Death of X, but I would expect that to be weekly if so (four months would be a long hiatus), and it doesn’t look like it.
However, it doesn’t include Amazing Spider-Man, and Dan Slott has confirmed that that book isn’t going on hold. So it’s not a complete list.
There’s Amazing Spider Man: Renew Your Vows listed.
Meanwhile, Slott is writing The Clone Conspiracy, with Spider Man.
The Clone Conspiracy does sound like an event, that is going to lead in to a relaunch for Spider Man though, rather than an ongoing book.
Jeff Lemire, in a now-deleted tweet, confirmed his X-books were continuing.
I did not even _know_ there would be yet another line-wide renumbering.
Marvel seems to have given up on ongoings for all practical purposes, and to be now working with a business model of effective limited series meant to last two years or so, to be published between events.
That is probably wise from a marketing and management perspective, but it comes with a cost of the sense of shared continuity. Today’s books do not share continuity with their previous volumes, let alone each other.
“That is probably wise from a marketing and management perspective,”
Is it, though? By having so many numbering restarts they’re effectively training their audience to not bother with checking out a series until the next one.
And by restarting/kicking off so many series at the same time, it’s more difficult for retailers to push any individual title and it means Marvel’s competing with themselves for buyers looking to try something new (or “new” as the case may be).
It seems more foolish than wise to me.
Fair points. I am not at all sure they have better choices by now, though. For better or worse the market is primed not to get too attached to any book for more than a year or so.
Probably a wise strategy for readers either way in a market where a Big Two book being able to hold the line at around 30K a month is considered a strong performer.
Also, more confirmation that the X-Books haven’t been axed via Dan Slott’s Twitter:
https://twitter.com/DanSlott/status/753213109670666240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Oh FFS, another line-wide relaunch?
I’ve got no problem with line-wide relaunches if Marvel actually stick to a proper season format.
Imagine if every title was guaranteed 6-12 issues and they all knew in advance what universe-wide event or line-specific event they had to tie into/remain consistent with a year later.
Event books would no longer be something that interrupts stories, but something that offers a natural conclusion to a character arc. No more situations where character X changes the world in Book Y but this not acknowledge outside of Book Y. No more Banner is happy in The TA Hulk, but struggling to manage the Hulk for the purposes of advancing the story in CW2.
And as far as Marvel is concerned, they get a lot more #1s to sell. They can make new properties feel important by allowing them a role in the meta-narrative.
As an example, at the culmination of The Event Summer 2017, as Teen Grey dies having used the Phoenix Force to stop Thanos, she gives one of the Infinity Gems to Molly Hayes but tells her not to let the other heroes have it because of a vision she has of the future, so Molly re-unites with the other Runaways and goes on the run from villains, heroes etc.
Meanwhile, during the Phoenix/Thanos battle, Namor, Hulk, Dr Strange are sent into spiraling through time or the multi-verse. Everybody thinks they are dead. Some multi-verse ambiguous god-figure, promises to send them home if they help him defend the multi-verse from a terrible but vaguely defined threat.
The Silver Surfer senses the other Defenders are alive and sets out to find them. Some new character is empowered by the Surfer to take over guarding earth or whatever in his absence etc.
Scarlet Witch or some new magician takes over as Sorcerer Supreme and struggles with the new responsibilities.
The threads from Event Summer 2017 mean that people are actually interested in the new titles – even though the Defenders and Runaways are effectively defunct titls. All of the new status quos last approximately 9 issues and the resolution of the arcs sets up the new event. You have arcs with a direction that have consequences beyond the story.
It’s not that Marvel has not tried to do this (or DC for that matter), it’s that they’ve done it badly. Some writers have no long game for a title while others have a long game that they never get to play. Give people seasons to work with and they know what they’re working with, while audiences also know that there’s a payoff.