{"id":4157,"date":"2018-05-29T21:49:31","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T20:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4157"},"modified":"2018-05-29T21:49:31","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T20:49:31","slug":"old-man-logan-39-40-glob-loves-man-kills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4157","title":{"rendered":"Old Man Logan #39-40 – “Glob Loves, Man Kills”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Old Man Logan<\/em> must surely be on its way to publishing graveyard, most likely by killing off its imminently redundant lead character. \u00a0From this book’s point of view, you might have thought it would make sense to tie him into the real Wolverine’s return; but in the bigger picture, the spare Wolverine is better kept to the margins, so that the return of Wolverine can feel a bit more returnish.<\/p>\n

So we’re getting time-marking stories like this, in which Logan returns to the Xavier Institute to have his health problems checked out, and happens to be around for a two-part Glob Herman story. \u00a0Glob is one of those students who’s been around for years because the visual is so strong, but rarely gets much to do besides being a recognisable background figure. \u00a0Here, he’s going on a date.<\/p>\n

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where this is going. \u00a0Glob has met a girl called Sasha on a dating site for mutants called Mutant Mingle. \u00a0He is very nervous and doesn’t think she’ll really like him, what with him being a largely translucent man and all. \u00a0And there’s a whole issue of build-up, plus a bit of Logan talking with Dr Reyes, before Glob nervously arrives at Sasha’s house and what do you know, the Purifiers are waiting.<\/p>\n

So their big idea is to strap a bomb to Glob and get him to blow up the Institute. \u00a0This is a pretty feeble plan, because although he doesn’t have the nerve to say no, he simply wanders in and sets off the bomb harmlessly when nobody’s around, which suggests it can’t have been much of a bomb, even given that the Institute’s probably reinforced. \u00a0The Purifiers show up, with Sasha, who was a Purifier all the time, and naturally they get quickly hammered by a bunch of students. \u00a0Glob thinks nobody will ever love him, but hey, his friends do.<\/p>\n

This isn’t a Logan story; the title character gets almost nothing to do in the second part. \u00a0It\u00a0is<\/em> a decent idea for a Glob Herman story, since it makes sense that the big dumb guy would have understandable hang-ups about how people are going to see him, and you can play that quite happily as an exaggerated version of normal worries.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the plot depends on a hopelessly obvious twist. \u00a0Let’s leave aside the odd idea that there are enough mutants out there to sustain their own dating site – Marvel never seem to have very clear ideas about how many mutants there actually are. \u00a0This is the sort of thing that could work in the Grant Morrison-era set-up where mutants are suddenly a highly visible minority, but that’s not how it’s generally played, and it seems a bit odd even on that level.<\/p>\n

On any view, though, this is meant to be a world where loads of people hate mutants, and some of them want to kill mutants or do terrible things to them, and Glob’s plan is to wander off alone and meet a complete stranger that he found on DefinitelyNotATrap.com. \u00a0And if it was just Glob, that might work. \u00a0He’s kind of desperate. \u00a0He’s willing to convince himself that this could work.<\/p>\n

But it’s not just Glob; it’s all his friends and Logan too. \u00a0And there’s your problem. \u00a0Nobody thinks this sounds a bit dodgy? \u00a0Nobody is taking the “I’m not sure meeting strange people from the internet on your own is a good idea” line? \u00a0Really? \u00a0This ought to be ringing all sorts of alarm bells, but everyone has to be an idiot so that the plot can work. \u00a0In fact, I was vaguely surprised at the end of part one when there turned out to be a real Sasha at all… but that’s just a set-up for her to turn out to be a fake after all in part two.<\/p>\n

This is a shame, because Glob himself comes across very well in this story. \u00a0Ibraim Roberson’s art does a fantastic job of making him look hangdog and emotional despite the fact that his head is a skull and a couple of eyeballs surrounded by pink goo. \u00a0On that level, the art really impresses, and it does a lot of the hard work to sell the story. \u00a0It’s a little unfortunate that where the plot calls for all the kids to take shelter in the Danger Room during the fight, Roberson seems to have gone with a random selection of established students regardless of whether they’re the right ones for the plot – what’s Quentin Quire doing there, when Anole and Shark-Girl are out fighting the Purifiers? – but at least everyone looks good.<\/p>\n

There’s a sound idea in here trying to get out, even if it’s more of a Glob Herman one-shot than a Logan story. \u00a0But when you have this many people all failing to spot the blindingly obvious, it’s not going to quite work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Old Man Logan must surely be on its way to publishing graveyard, most likely by killing off its imminently redundant lead character. \u00a0From this book’s point of view, you might have thought it would make sense to tie him into the real Wolverine’s return; but in the bigger picture, the spare Wolverine is better kept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4158,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4157\/revisions\/4158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}