Marvel Comics’ super-healing superhero Wolverine has a gruff outward demeanor due to the trauma he’s gone through in his long life-span, but Mark Millar‘s comic book tale Old Man Logan puts Wolverine through his greatest tragedy by far. Logan a.k.a. Wolverine is one of the most popular X-Men and Marvel characters around, with his powers including three deadly claws in each hand along with his famed healing factor, which enables him to survive virtually any injury or disease that would have easily killed a normal human. Wolverine’s healing factor not only regenerates his body to normal, but also slows his aging process to a crawl, enabling Logan to live for centuries. However, this also forces him to not only endure the pain of his many injuries, but witness and experience more tragedy than any other man ever has.
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Logan’s extended lifespan and the sheer degree of physical and mental trauma he has endured has contributed to his famously grizzled personality among the X-Men. Even with that being a staple of Wolverine as a character, the Old Man Logan mini-series of 2008 to 2009 gives Logan a level of tragedy to be truly bitter and destroyed about. At the same time, it also sets up Logan’s climb from despair to become a true hero again.
Old Man Logan Shows Wolverine At His Lowest Point
Old Man Logan takes place in a dystopian future on the alternate universe of Earth-807128, in which the Marvel superhero community has long since been defeated by the villains, who have divided the United States into a collection of territories ruled by different villains (with some also overtaken by other villains.) Logan lives with his wife and two children as a farmer in Sacramento, California in the territory known as Hulkland, before he is recruited by the elderly and blind Hawkeye to help him transport a package across the country (later revealed to be a batch of super-soldier serum, which Hawkeye and the surviving heroes hope to use to start a resistance against the ruling villains.)
Old Man Logan makes a point of emphasizing that Logan has not unsheathed his claws in decades, and he eventually reveals the reason why to Hawkeye and the reader. On the night that the villains brought the superhero community down, Wolverine single-handedly defended the X-Mansion from an assault by dozens of villains. However, Wolverine discovered too late that the attack was an illusion created by Mysterio, and that he had instead been slashing and clawing at his fellow X-Men the whole time, all of whom lay dead and strewn across the mansion in a massive pool of blood.
Wracked with trauma and guilt, Logan sought to punish himself by placing his neck on a railroad track in the path of an incoming train. Fully aware that he would not die due to his healing factor, Logan inside wanted to take the pain and bloodshed he inflicted upon his fellow X-Men (however unknowingly) upon himself. Since then, Logan has made a vow to never pop his claws again.
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Old Man Logan Tells The Ultimate Wolverine Redemption Story
Obviously, with Wolverine being tricked by Mysterio into slaughtering his fellow X-Men, Old Man Logan is not a redemption story in the sense of Logan going from villain to hero. However, the story’s Western-esque dystopian future setting brings Logan out of hiding for one more mission to re-awaken the hero that has laid dormant inside of him for decades. Logan only takes the job with Hawkeye reluctantly and with the promise that it won’t call upon to do anything but drive them across the country, but Logan nonetheless frequently finds himself forced to help Hawkeye out of tight spots and in fights against villains, including Hawkeye’s own treacherous and newly web-slinging daughter Ashley Barton. Old Man Logan also has a lot of fun with disgraced heroes turned villains Old Man Banner, driven insane by Gamma radiation poisoning, and the Ghost Riders, along with fresh villains like a symbiote-bonded T-Rex.
In the end, after Hawkeye is killed and Logan’s family is murdered by the Hulk Gang, Wolverine finally breaks his vow and pops his claws, fittingly coated in blood after their first unsheathing in decades. Logan was understandably repelled by the thought of inflicting pain or violence on another human being after being tricked into slaughtering the X-Men, but the deaths of Hawkeye and his family don’t just inspire feelings of vengeance within him, but make Logan remember the cost of doing nothing in the face of evil, as well.
In the end, after defeating the Hulk Gang (in quite graphic fashion, with Logan being eaten by Old Man Banner before clawing his way out of him), Logan adopts the infant Bruce Banner Jr. and makes a new vow to bring down the villains ruling over the land. Once destroyed by the tragic demise of the X-Men, Wolverine is re-born in Old Man Logan as a hero with a renewed sense of purpose and justice.
How 2017’s Logan Adapts The Story Of Old Man Logan
James Mangold’s Logan famously drew inspiration from Old Man Logan, though it is hardly a one-to-one adaptation. Like its source material, Logan is set in the future, specifically the year 2029, but the movie’s first big change is that the United States is not ruled over by villains, instead focusing on the fact of no new mutant being born in decades. Hugh Jackman’s Logan works as a limousine driver, tending to the ailing Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Caliban (Stephen Merchant). The older Logan also faces a major problem with his healing factor significantly weaker, and as a result, his adamantium skeleton beginning to cause metal poisoning inside of his body.
Logan and Xavier find themselves on the run from Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and mercenaries employed by Transigen Industries after a young, clawed mutant named Laura (Dafne Keen) comes into their care. It turns out, Laura is the genetically engineered “daughter” of Logan, determined to reach a mysterious safe haven for mutants known as Eden near Canada. In a nutshell, Logan takes the essence of an older Wolverine on one last cross country mission and shapes it into its own story, and it also reworks the tragedy of the X-Men in one major way. In Logan‘s version of events, the aging Professor Xavier experiences seizures that cause telepathic paralysis upon anyone in the immediate area, with one such seizure years ago leading to the tragic death of all of the X-Men save for Logan.
With Logan drawing inspiration from Old Man Logan, both show Wolverine put through extremely tragic circumstances. However, as dark as the backstory of the X-Men’s deaths in Logan is, it is a far greater tragedy for Wolverine himself in Old Man Logan since it all happened by his hand, and helped lead to the downfall of the superhero community and the United States. In the end though, Old Man Logan may put Wolverine through his greatest tragedy, but it also sends him a true hero’s redemption story with his return to finally being Wolverine once more.
