WOLVERINE HC OLD MAN LOGAN
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iFanboy
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Pulls
Size: pages
Price: 34.99
There always seem to be one comic out there that gets me angry. Last year it was Secret Invasion and we all know how I acted when the latter half of that event came out. Now for 2009 we have Old Man Logan; a title that I enjoyed a lot in the beginning stages; but the latter half was pretty bad. Now I have all the issues out in front of me, and I think one of the reasons that I started to hate this story was the lateness. McNiven just took way too long with the artwork and considering how simple the story is it was kinda insulting to me on how late it was. But I’m getting ahead of myself; lateness isn’t the problem now with having all the issues here. So does the story read better when you can read it all in one sitting?
Let me get this out of the way; Mark Millar has wrote this story to be completely simple. The idea of Wolverine and Hawkeye going out into a desolate future on a mission is simple. Pretty much what gets us from issue to issue (until about the final two chapters) is them going around certain landmarks and we see Marvel Porn. Baxtar Building on top of a giant Loki, Giant Man’s remains as part of a highway, the new ‘Mt. Rushmore’; those type of moments keep everyone entertained. In a way that could certainly help make anyone enjoy a story, but to do it almost every single issue it gets tiring. Reading it again I’m like ‘Oh that’s a cool moment…oh there’s another one…*yawns* and another one’. I’m not saying Millar has bad ideas here, but because he’s using this to propel the story it gets old after awhile. By the time we get to the actual crux of the story, the cool moments just aren’t cool anymore.
Then we get to the actual story, which is down right insulting. Millar literally has about several stories as the main focus. What are we suppose to get out of this? Is this a buddy comic, a revenge story, just a series of flashbacks, a Wolverine story, a Hawkeye story, a story about Red Skull taking over, the Hulk Family……What is the story here!? We seriously focus on something new every single issue and there just seems to be no connection to each other. This is inherently true when we get to the finale; where Wolverine is now suddenly fighting Red Skull and then the Hulk family. Those sequences just seem out of place considering what we’ve been following for the six previous chapters. There’s no reason for Logan to fight Red Skull, and just him fighting the Hulk family is so obvious that we didn’t need all these issues just to get to this point. All we need was about three issues to tell this story, and stretching out the story just seems like a bad idea. Considering how little story we get in the first place. The finale is just icing on the cake on how bad the storytelling is. All it turns into is a slaughter and Millar tries to save it with a Western ending. It just seems forced and it would’ve been better if Millar just avoided the obvious finale in the first place.
McNiven’s artwork is gorgeous, you can’t dance around that. The amount of detail he puts into every page is astonishing. Seriously, probably the best depiction of hair in a comic book. The little strains of hair on Hawkeye or Logan just really stand out to me. McNiven also handles the ‘holy shit’ moment really well and it makes the more continuity porn moments all the more cooler to watch. It was frustrating to wait for so long, but in the end we did get some incredible artwork out of this. I admit I was a bit to harsh with the rating of his artwork because of his lateness. But in the end when I see it all in front of me, this could be the best looking comic of 2009. So even if the story is downright awful, this is almost saved because of the insane detail of the art.
I’ve tried reading this story again trying to get a better view on it. I was really hoping that maybe I missed out on something because of my rage. But sadly the story is still one of the worst things I’ll read this year. Marvel porn does not save this and when you get rid of those elements it really shows how quick and too simple this story was. If anything I was able to appreciate McNiven’s artwork more with no lateness to hurt the experience. If you want to see what the hub-bub is about this story; I say wait to find it at a bargin price. Cause if your anything like me then your going to hate the story really fast. But if it doesn’t mind you, then I can see where you’ll get the enjoyment out of this.
Art: 5 - Excellent
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I’d give the whole thing maybe a 2 writing and a 4 art. A 2 for writing doesn’t mean I hate it, though; I take 2 to mean what it says next to it: "Average". I give Millar props for bringing us something that’s "different", but the nonsensical, illogical aspects of the story and the paper-thin characterizations bring the average back down to "average" for me. I’d also take one point off the otherwise gorgeous art because of what I interpret as excessive, cheap, shock-value violence. For me, it isn’t just about how much talent a creator exhibits (detailed art, "different" story), but it’s also about what the creator DOES with that talent and what shape the talent takes.
I kind of disagree with you over the story, though. I think all of those themes (revenge story, buddy story, etc.) work together quite cohesively. And I think the progression of the story makes sense. Wolverine didn’t start out wanting to kill the Red Skull, but he does so because Hawkeye ended up getting killed. The fight with the Hulks at the end brings things full circle. Even Ulysses/Odysseus, after his travels and adventures were over, had to fight enemies at his home in Ithaca once he got back there.
The problem with the "Marvel P0rn" for me was that it was all so nonsensical and none of it built off of anything else. It was just an unending series of random odds and ends and anecdotes that did nothing to build anyone’s character, really. "The heroes fell" is not a license to make up any random hodgepodge Marvel factoid as if they’re all going to be endlessly interesting. The worst offender was the idea that Hawkeye "won the Spider-Buggy off of the Mandarin in a card game." Total nonsense. It’s a cute little idea, but it got tiresome once you heard things like that in every damn issue. Anyone can do this stuff, and it isn’t that clever: Hey Old Man Logan, did you hear about how Mr. Fantastic was the coach for the baby Spider-Ham Clones baseball team, and he ended up leading them to conquer the Shi’ar by beating Gladiator’s team of Molemen Skrulls in the Madripoor Baseball League Championship! Once you understand that there IS no real well-though-out world behind these secret histories, you understand that Millar is just playing the readers for fools with this technique.
@flapjaxx: He must’ve did it for Hawkeye cause he just left his body there and never acknowledge him after him getting killed. Sorry that was heavy sarcasm right there 🙂
See I can see where maybe Millar tried to put in these different plot elements into a story. But it just doesnt all hold together for me. It can’t be a buddy comic cause Hawkeye gets killed and left forgotten at the end. It can’t be about fighting the Red Skull cause his appearence is really just more Marvel porn and doesn’t service the overall story. You could go on and on. It’s just a bunch of ideas Millar put together on a bulletin board and somehow made a story out of it. That’s what I got from re-reading it.