Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s Old Man Logan idea was a great concept when it was released in 2008, giving age, wisdom, and regret to Marvel’s mouthy side character-turned-headliner. It was a breath of fresh air for Wolverine that has managed to age quite well in the decade since its release. The book remains a beautiful page-turner, but the idea, and the character of Old Man Logan have spent the last few years being driven into the ground, slowly becoming a placeholder for creators that had a thirst for sharp claws in their team-up books. The overused character’s tale was supposed to come to an end this week in Old Man Logan #50, but the publisher can’t leave well enough alone, and manages to put a damper on an otherwise decent issue.
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Ever since Old Man Logan returned with a new solo series in 2015, the title has been on a slow and steady decline. Jeff Lemire’s initial arc, while not quite the caliber of Millar and McNiven’s original, was still a bold adventure with plenty of fun to be had. However, in the years that followed, the character’s book became less and less about his story and more about which big name Marvel characters could be inserted into this wonky title. There were a couple of solid arcs along the way, like the two-issue showdown between Logan and Kraven, but overall, the series has simply been a mess.
All of this led up to Old Man Logan‘s final issue, a continuation of his fight with Maestro and the last chance for the titular character to find some sort of way back home to his own timeline where he could attempt to bring back his family. Of course, nothing good happens to Logan, so those dreams are shattered in the final pages. Maestro crushes the machine, freezing both characters in the current timeline. Logan uses the last of his power to cut off Maestro’s head before collapsing face-down in the snow, in the middle of a blizzard.
Regardless of what happened in earlier issues, this serves as a pretty good finale for Old Man Logan, wrapping up his story in the sort of tragic, symbolic beauty that the character deserves. He didn’t make it home to his family, but he used every ounce of life he had to kill his rival, ensuring that Maestro could never hurt others again. He also managed to accomplish the one goal that has always been just shy of his reach: ending his own life. Logan has long believed that he hurt anyone he was close to, and that he just wanted his difficult, painful life to come to a close. He finally got what he wanted in the title’s very last frame.
It’s a great conclusion to Logan’s story, until it isn’t.
The problem is that ending a series with a popular character just doesn’t seem to be enough for Marvel. Alongside the Return of Wolverine series, which will restart the entire Logan cycle, the publisher is set to run a Dead Man Logan limited series. The violent cover of the first installment of the 12-issue title features a bloody, screaming Old Man Logan surrounded by the dead bodies of his former X-Men cohorts. While covers are always deceiving, it still feels like a complete and total turnaround from the finale that Ed Brisson just completed. Instead of trying to bring peace and closure with his final days, Logan is somehow back on his bloody grind, ready to slash and stab his way through a horde of bodies for another year on the comic book shelves.
If Dead Man Logan wasn’t already on the way next month, Old Man Logan #50 would be a fairly enjoyable read with a fitting end to a character who needed to go. But enough apparently just isn’t enough, and “The End” no longer means a damn thing.
Published by Marvel Comics
On October 31, 2018
Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Ibraim Roberson and Neil Edwards
