Old Man Logan

I've been really good lately, by the way. High spirits. Most likely because of the sunlight. I'm okay with that as a reason. It's 1am, and yet I'm feeling strong and alert.

Which, by the way, has nothing to do with the can of coke I was given a couple hours ago.

Hold up, wait, usually when I punctuate whatever I'm saying with a sentence like that, it could be indicative of "irony" on my part. So, to be clear, I'm being serious, discount that can of coke in regards to the list of things that are making me feel good. I'm actually kinda grossed out by it, with all its sugar and caffeine and carbonated water- but it was kindly offered to me, so I kindly recieved it. My teeth feel yucky. But at least it is tasty.

And seriously, the font/logo for Coca Cola? Pretty sinister with that third stylized "C" piercing through that "L". Ah well.

This nice guy in my building that I've hardly spoken to, besides once complimenting his... possibly Green Lantern shirt (hard to remember, it was definitely some cool shirt), and the other day I complimented his hair cut (he smiled and said thanks, so I assume I was bang on on that one... but maybe he was just being nice, I realized that it's been a while since I've seen him sans hat- because of winter you see). The next time I ran into him he asked me if I was into comics.

Yes yes, we're all aware this is a silly question.

So I said yes, and he loaned me the Wolverine story "Old Man Logan", by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven.

I've reada good chunk of Old Man Logan before, but mostly at Chapters and I definitely missed the ending. Well, that's whatI thought anyways, but it turned out I'd read less than I'd previously thought, but that's all the better for me now. I'm also glad that I'd read this after learning more about Millar's work on his creator owned series "Wanted" (Now a major motion picture!) and a story, I think, he'd done for a special issue of JLA (the GOOD Justice League book). Keep in mind that I've now learned about these two stories, but I still haven't read either of them, so I can easily have important details wrong.

The earliest bit of work was the JLA story about the super villains deciding to mass together to take down the super heroes, relying on their superior numbers to win the day, despite any heavy losses. In the end it turned out the shape-shifting Martian Manhunter was among the super villains number, thus revealing the fact that the plan to take out the heroes was a trap by those same heroes. The villains are generally portrayed sympathetically, the story being from their perspective. There's a panel I've seen from the book with Batman ready to tear into the villains that suggests a tyranny justly rebelled against.

In "Wanted", the characters live in a world that appears mundane, but is actually controlled by a cabal of super villains after they massed their kind together to destroy all the heroes- and I literally mean destroy them; they weren't simply killed, all memory of them having ever existed is wiped away, relegated to comic books for the sake of making the thought of their existence ridiculous. The protagonist is a young man, the son of a super villain, who learns the truth and goes on to become a villain himself. You know, a happy ending!

The premise of "Old Man Logan" is this: the super villains of the Marvel universe have massed together to get rid of all the heroes/take over the world, and they succeeded. Fifty years later and the world is a desolate place, a world where Logan, the man once known as Wolverine, only wants to live in peace with his family and forget his terrible mistake the night the villains began their offensive.

So, uh, there's a pattern, yes? I'm actually okay with the pattern itself, the man likes to work with the theme, that's fine. I've said that was a strength of 100 Bullets, so I can't exactly denounce it here. But it is still weird how overwhelmingly sad these worlds are.

PLUS (I just remembered), my mind repels the premise of super villains working together on that scale. Some egomaniac will demand to be top dog, infighting will happen, and any alliance will be short lived and disasterous. If most of these guys could function in a society, they WOULDN'T be villains. The heroes can put aside their differences for the greater good, but Millar seems to assert that any number of villains would be willing to put aside their well being for the greater bad. They'd lay down their life for the chance to be one of the few that get to take over the world? Not likely.

Interestingly, Old Man Logan ends the most hopefully of the lot. The JLA tale ends with the all powerful JLA remaining in charge of the world. Wanted ends with the birth of a new terrible villain in an already hopeless world. Old Man Logan ends with Wolverine resuming his heroic mantle to go on a quest to assemble a group to make the world better (if not out and out save the world). He doesn't want power- he'd have been happy on his farm if he was just left alone, but that didn't happen.

I can see the objection that by going out to oppose the super villains Wolverine is perpetuating the cycle of comic book adventure i.e. violence for one, but more importantly the creation of new pro- and an-tagonists. It seems to be suggested that if one side ever definitively quashed the other, then both sides would die off. It's a good thing this isn't ACTUALLY an essay on the subject (with marks and red pen and late penalties and everything) otherwise I'd have to back that statement up. I'm not sure why I think that thing I said. What did I even say? No, I sort of get myself, but at 2:40am- okay, NOW I'm losing steam.

I need to check out Wanted so I can more strictly compare it to Kick-Ass, a mundane world where one kid decides he's going to be a super hero (if only a lame one). There's certainly a lot of crossover between the two. I wonder if Kick-Ass could possibly be set in the Wanted universe. Or perhaps the Kick-Ass universe grows and grows, eventually becoming as full of heroes and villains and powers and the surreal that it could be a universe that becomes like Wanted.

Ugh, I'm cold and it's very foggy out. I look at the fog and wonder if this is some awful attack, a haze to conceal an alien conspiracy or something. It looks like the end of the world. I'll keep you posted, if the world ends I owe you a Coca Cola.