It’s Old Man Logan versus Old Man Rogers in this weeks Old Man Logan #4. Some thoughts, including spoilers, after the break.
I’m not sure what to make of Old Man Logan. He’s got the classic pedigree from the original story by Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven. But also has on him the stank of the Secret Wars series by Brian Michael Bendis that started strongly but turned into Logan’s Pointless Tour of Battleworld. And now he’s transitioned to the Marvel Universe proper under the guidance of writer Jeff Lemire.
I like Lemire. As a fellow Canadian I’ll give him his props. His Animal Man run at DC Comics was one of the few highlights for me from the New 52 relaunch (RIP). With issue number one of the current OML series he set an interesting stage. Logan, realizing he is in the past, decides to prevent his dark future by taking out everyone that would cause it.
A very intriguing concept, but how far could he take it? He kills someone no one cares about or probably heard of, but then what? Will Marvel let him kill Mysterio? Possibly. Bruce Banner? Probably not. (The Red Skull is really irrelevant given the number of times he has died and come back.)
And then the series seemed to start to fall into the same trap as the Secret Wars book. With Logan just bouncing around from place to place, with a new guest star each issue. Issue #4 not being an exception to the rule as it continues directly from last month with guest stars Steve Rogers (Old Man Rogers, so pre-Avengers Standoff) and Kate Bishop.
I haven’t been reading Lemire’s Extraordinary X-Men run, but the end of this issue just seems to set up Logan’s participation there. The book ends with him…you guessed it…bouncing around from place to place and running into some guest stars, this time the X-Men.
But more importantly, before the story transitions from Old Man Rogers to the Extraordinary X-Men, Logan is shown the body of the true 616 (I know Marvel, you don’t want to call it that anymore, but I’ve read two Spider-Women books in the past day that say differently) Wolverine, still encased in adamantium. With that Logan realizes that he is not in his past, but an alternate past. And thus the whole “kill bucket list” concept that was such a cool hook to start with was immediately thrown away after just 3.5 issues.
I don’t know where the solo Old Man Logan book goes from here without the hooks to the future/original story. Will it become just another Wolverine book that confuses continuity running side by side with Extraordinary X-Men? I’ll stick around for now to find out, but my interest is no longer peaked.
Gabbing Geek 