Old Man Logan - Cheap Thoughts

Old Man Logan is considered one of the best Wolverine storylines out there, so good that it now has it's own story in Marvel's on going Battleworld series. The story follows Logan, former X-Man 50 years after the apocalypse when all supervillains teamed up and killed the majority of the world's heroes, leaving America now in ruins (we're never told what the rest of the world is like) and is split off into the ruling of several supervillains known as landlords. In the present, Logan is now a pacifist living in a farming village in California trying to raise a family, struggling with money, the landlords of California are the Hulk family, who tell Logan he has a month to find the money he owes them or they'll kill his family. Logan then goes on a road trip with a blind Hawkeye to deliver a package and get paid.

*Spoilers Ahead*

So the key factor of this story is obviously Logan, seeing as it is a character study and is putting him in a scenario we've never seen him before, he's an older man and refuses to fight anyone, it's not that he doesn't have the temptation, but as it turns out, he was tricked into slaughtering his fellow X-Men and was scarred for life because of it and now refuses to fight anyone and now doesn't even go by the name Wolverine. Interesting idea, though I doubt Wolverine would be able to kill all of the X-Men single-handedly, even if the others did hesitate and hold back, that's still a lot of X-Men for him to kill on his own. Throughout the story Logan is tempted time and time again to begin fighting, but because of his healing factor, he's never put in enough danger to need to fight. That is until the end, where the cause of his aggression comes from Hawkeye being betrayed and murdered by Red Skull's men. What bothers me about this is Logan knows the world is terrible, a blind old man being killed by a villain shouldn't be so shocking to him, you could argue that he's upset that his last friend and fellow hero has been killed, but i don't buy that it would be enough to set him over the edge. It was nice to see him fight using his fallen heroes weapons and tools, but i feel it would have been preferable if he uses them to defend himself without fighting back and then once he finally makes it home, after all that stress and time he discovers the Hulks killed his family anyway, and then he goes on the rampage would have been better earned and more impactful.

Let's actually talk about Hawkeye and the Hulk, they're just dumb. Firstly the fact that Hawkeye is driving the Spider-Mobile across country...the Spider-Mobile is dumb as hell, everyone knows that, but how about the fact that the blind guy is driving the car! Also setting a story in the future and having the archer of the team be seriously disabled in someway (Can you say Green Arrow from Dark Knight Returns). Then there's making Bruce Banner a redneck...whaaaaat. Bruce Banner is one of the most intelligent minds on the planet, yet they completely alter his character here by making him a dumbass redneck, they claim it was due to the radiation altering his brain but i call bullshit on that doing this much to him, there are no similarities between Bruce Banner and this hillbilly. Then the fact that he's now okay with incest and slept with his cousin Jennifer (She-Hulk) because she was the only person who could sleep with him without being crushed by it...again, that is stupid as hell for multiple reasons. One: Bruce wouldn't be that desperate to have sex that he's sleep with his own cousin. Two: She-Hulk wouldn't be stupid enough to do that either! It's an odd and ridiculous change to two great characters for the sake of the story.

Then there's the actual story progression, a fair portion of the middle bit goes nowhere including Hawkeye rescuing his daughter, Dr Doom's land and the macguffin of the super soldier serum that Hawkeye is trying to transport in the first place (Never explained where he got that from). It does help for some world building and shows the distress that Logan goes through on this mission, but from a story aspect it goes nowhere. Then at the end where Logan's family have been killed because apparently that refrigerator is big enough to store a son and daughter as well as a wife (Google it). Then in the end, Logan kills all the Hulks except for a baby Hulk and adopts him to raise him as his own fighter and plans to kill all the remaining supervillains there are...well the problem is quite clear, this is where the story should have started! Have the first issue be about explaining Logan's situation, but the entire story should have been about Logan getting revenge for his family and going on a mission to kill all the supervillains! Yes that is the story in Battleworld right now, but this story was written 7 years ago, they weren't planning on a sequel all the way back then! And if they were then it should have come out a lot sooner!

As for the artwork, i've said before i'm not an expert but i think it looks great, the environments especially look excellent for how desolate and awful the world looks, from a visual stand point above all else is where the world building really shines. The graphic content might throw some people off but it didn't really bother me and i do appreciate the extra detailing. Also while I may complain about the inclusion of the Hulk in the story, I do love his redesign in this story, he looks more like a monster than ever before.

This story has a lot of problems with characterisation and narrative focus, i appreciate them telling a different story, but they chose the wrong story to tell with this setting and they screw the Hulk over royally. The artwork is awesome though and the action scenes were really well done. 4/10.

-Danny