Editor's Note: Wolverine #68 arrives in stores tomorrow, August 27.

"Old Man Logan: Part 3"

Ariel Carmona Jr.: 4 Bullets
Dave Wallace: 3.5 Bullets

---

Ariel Carmona Jr. 4 Bullets

The heroes fell. Fifty years ago super villains carved up America amongst themselves, creating a lifeless empire. Seems Mark Millar has told this story once before when he wrote his six issue masterpiece Wanted.

Like this apocalyptic Marvel universe in which the heroes have been subdued, Wanted was about a world without superheroes where the villains had their day of victory. Unlike the cheesy Hollywood adaptation which featured Matrix-like special effects but was devoid of any superhero references, the Wanted miniseries focused on what a spineless Joe would do if he inherited a legacy as the son of the world's greatest super villain.

Similarly, Millar makes use of familial ties in this inventive re-imagining of the 616 Marvel universe and the strangest thing about it is that Wolverine is a pacifist. This issue continues this great story arc and finds Hawkeye and Logan on the track of Hawkeye's daughter Ashely whose grandfather was Peter Parker.

Millar and penciler Steve McNiven proved a great working duo during Civil War and are reunited again here with fantastic results. McNiven’s expressive style suits the book well as he draws some remarkable panels, making use of shadow and light to match the gloomy tone of Millar's story. McNiven excels at drawing the hero's expressions without having to sketch out static faces. Instead, panels are often reduced to shots of a character's eyes and extreme close ups that focus on a character's expression from a slightly skewed angle, thereby giving the reader different points of reference. Many times in the comic, scenes are rendered from the point of view of the characters; sometimes the reader gets a glimpse of an object and then the object is made larger as we "pan out" or zoom in. Simply put, McNiven's style has a great cinematic feel to it which works extremely well.

Once we arrive in Kingpin's territory, things get very violent. This is a comic book which features a lot of gore and violence for a book whose titular character refuses to fight. Without taking away from the enjoyment of the comic, I would have to postulate that Wolverine's refusal for "popping his claws" once more must be due to some horrific or tragic event which has left him gun shy all these years. It is always a traumatic or significant event which leads to a character's extreme behavior, development or in this case, extreme role reversal. Millar doesn't offer any more clues to what this event might have been, save for one intense single panel flashback.

The pacing of the story also changes out of the need for the story to develop in an organic manner. The first few issues of the story arc had moved at a less brisk clip in order to lay out the environment in which our heroes now find themselves. With the exposition out of the way, Millar is free to rev up the action, and boy, does that happen here, especially in the latter parts of the comic. Ashley is an interesting character and not at all what we expect. Kudos to the creative team for coming up with such a compelling story and a few fascinating new characters.

Final word: This arc has been fantastic up to this point. It is more of an alternative reality story but if done well, these can be as much or more fun than those set in regular continuity. This month's comic picks up from last issue, grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until it finishes with the type of cliffhanger that leaves you drooling for the next issue.

---

Dave Wallace: 3.5 Bullets

I've enjoyed the first couple of issues of "Old Man Logan," but this third one was a little less satisfying for me. Unlike the previous issues, which took some established Marvel Universe concepts and "remixed" them in an unexpected and imaginative fashion, this issue feels slightly repetitive and not quite as inspired as the first two installments. There's plenty of action and spectacle here: (1) as Hawkeye and Logan journey to the Kingpin's territory to rescue Hawkeye's Spider-powered daughter, (2) we check in on another sunken town (the handiwork of the Moloids), (3) we see how would-be-superheroes are treated by the ruling criminal classes, and (4) we witness a slick attempted jailbreak by the two heroes. However, much of the issue feels like a reiteration of previously-established ideas (we're again told at length that Logan doesn't ever want to pop his claws again, and Hawkeye and Logan again seem surprised by the effect of the Moloids - despite having witnessed exactly the same thing last issue), and I don't get the sense that things have really moved forwards to any great extent by the issue's end.

As with much of Millar's output, there's a fairly heavily cynical and misanthropic vibe that runs throughout this issue. Whilst that's not always necessarily a bad thing, I do think that this story might benefit from at least a glimmer of lightness, as the appearances from the new Kingpin, Daredevil, and Punisher and the twist involving "Spider-Bitch" are so bleak that they border on depressing. The action scenes are also excessively violent, and whilst few readers would come to a Mark Millar comic expecting a subtle, understated approach, there's a point at which the over-the-top nature of the book becomes more of a distraction than it is a reason to keep reading.

Luckily, the quality of Steve McNiven's artwork elevates the story, making it worth checking out if only to enjoy some outstanding moments of purely visual storytelling - such as the X-insignia that triggers a disturbing flashback for Logan towards the start of the issue - and some great high-impact splash pages, with standout images of the Spider-Buggy crashing through the side of a building, and of the gory and violent clash between Hawkeye's daughter and the Kingpin. Unfortunately, this latter moment sets up a damp squib of a cliffhanger that might have been more effective if Millar had let the scene play out for just a few more seconds; as it is, the issue ends just before something important is about to happen, rather than just after it has happened, meaning that the moment of impact that normally forms the basis for a cliffhanger is absent.

I'm still interested in seeing what Millar has planned for Wolverine, and how he plans to explore the defining event that led him to give up the superhero life - but there's very little character examination of any depth in this particular issue, and I suspect that the plot developments that we do get are going to be fairly inconsequential in terms of the story's bigger picture. As with many paced-for-the-trade story arcs, I get the sense that some of the middle issues of "Old Man Logan" may turn out to be a little more padded than they need to be - although you could perhaps argue that my impatience for Millar to get to the meat of his story is a reflection of the strength of his central concept, the layers of which are gradually being peeled away rather than having all of its secrets revealed to us all at once.

---

What did you think of this book?
Have your say at the Line of Fire Forum!

---