{"id":4303,"date":"2018-09-13T21:15:57","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T20:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4303"},"modified":"2018-09-13T21:15:57","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T20:15:57","slug":"old-man-logan-46-47-northern-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4303","title":{"rendered":"Old Man Logan #46-47 – “Northern Flight”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Old Man Logan<\/em> is, let’s be blunt, patchy. \u00a0The previous arc, with Bullseye, got by pretty well on its energy. \u00a0This two-parter, with Alpha Flight, just seems to be marking time as it waits for the series to end.<\/p>\n

After a pleasingly understated (and beautifully coloured) opening page of a meteor crashing off the coast of Nova Scotia, we establish that some tentacled monster thing is taking over other animals and crawling its way onto the shore in the little town of Shag Habour. \u00a0Shag Harbour is a real place, by the way – you’re hardly going to make up a name like that. \u00a0It’s best known for a supposed UFO crash in 1967, which is presumably what Ed Brisson is referencing here – but since our meteor landed a month ago, it’s basically an easter egg.<\/p>\n

Logan is in the area to meet up with Alpha Flight. \u00a0Again, artist Damian Couceiro does a solid job with these opening pages. \u00a0He’s in the minority camp of artists whose Logan actually looks old, and there’s plenty of scene-setting detail in his petrol station. \u00a0At the same time, his Alpha Flight vehicle and his other tech is inventive enough to avoid looking like a stock element. \u00a0I like this guy.<\/p>\n

Quite what Alpha Flight are doing flying around Canada, in a line-up comprised of Guardian, Puck, Snowbird and Shaman, when they’ve been hooked up with Captain Marvel in outer space in a completing different line-up for years, is, um, unclear. \u00a0It gets handwaved aside in a panel (“it’s a little complicated”), but it does seem a bit odd to just treat them as if they’re still a regularly-established Canadian team.<\/p>\n

To further the wider plot, Logan wants a second opinion from Shaman on his health. \u00a0Shaman confirms that, despite the fact it’s supposed to be completely indestructible, Logan’s adamantium is “breaking down” and it’s going to poison him. \u00a0And he’s too weak to survive having all the adamantium removed, so he’s going to die. \u00a0Shaman gives Logan a speech about the importance of finding his way back to his own home, so that “when the time comes, your spirit can find its way to where it belongs”. \u00a0 Presumably we’re meant to take that as Shaman’s personal beliefs, because if we take it literally it has some awkward implications for Rachel and Bishop.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Logan tags along as Alpha Flight investigate Shag Harbour, which is overrun with some sort of plant growth stuff from the monster. \u00a0Somewhat awkwardly, the one part of this story that doesn’t quite work, visually, is the central monster – there’s a nice sense of this stuff sprawling over an abandoned town, but the texture is more meaty than the vines described in the dialogue, and the bright purple colouring undercuts the sense of it as alive. \u00a0Still, the first part is not bad at all when it comes to building the tension and the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Part two, though, is mostly Logan and Alpha Flight fighting a giant tentacle\/vine monster for the better part of an issue, and that’s not so great. \u00a0The big twist is meant to be Shaman briefly connecting with the monster and learning that it got picked up by aliens who attacked its home world, and it’s just trying to defend itself. \u00a0But it’s still a giant be-tentacled space monster with a capacity for pain but no real intelligence, so they just kill it anyway, with “rabid dog” levels of appropriate regret.<\/p>\n

And as an A-plot, that’s really not much. \u00a0The first issue has plenty of promising build, but the second issue doesn’t follow through on that promise, settling into a fairly mundane monster of the week affair. \u00a0Now, there’s a little speech in the coda which tries to tie this back to the wider themes of the series. \u00a0“That thing found itself on a strange world and did what any of us would do to survive. \u00a0It fought… \u00a0Just projecting some of myself onto that damn thing, I guess.” \u00a0But that doesn’t really work, does it?<\/p>\n

Logan is a man from a different world, but it’s not one especially different from ours (they quite probably share a common past). \u00a0And aside from a bit of disorientation in the very early issues, he hasn’t been a danger to those around him through a misguided sense of self-preservation. \u00a0If he wants to go home to his own timeline, it’s because of a desire for closure. \u00a0So apart from the bit about not being from around here, Logan’s situation is about as unlike the space plant monster’s as you could get, I’d say.<\/p>\n

So the main plot turns out not so great, and its attempted link to the B-plot falls flat. \u00a0We’re left with a very skippable two-parter. \u00a0Which is a pity, since the first issue really did show some promise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Old Man Logan is, let’s be blunt, patchy. \u00a0The previous arc, with Bullseye, got by pretty well on its energy. \u00a0This two-parter, with Alpha Flight, just seems to be marking time as it waits for the series to end. After a pleasingly understated (and beautifully coloured) opening page of a meteor crashing off the coast […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4303","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\/4303","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=4303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4304,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303\/revisions\/4304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}