Mark Millar may be a good man. Like the kind of good man Henry Fonda played in the movies, like THE GRAPES OF WRATH and 12 ANGRY MEN. He may be the type of man who gets other men to stand up when he passes, out of respect.
But as a writer of superhero comics, specifically superhero comics using the icons of Marvel Publishing, he's everything that's ever been wrong with Brit import writers who are too smart for the material they are working on. See Grant Morrison. See Bryan Hitch.
I read this here story free, from the public library. The public library I work for. I've never been into censorship, and I can't bring myself to want OLD MAN LOGAN off the shelves. It has to be a choice by people who have choices. But this is bad ju-ju, Mark Millar.
OLD MAN LOGAN is a project Millar worked on with Steve McNiven a few years ago. It appears as maybe the apex of the "alternate world" story, or future history, of Marvel Comics' icon characters like the Hulk and the Avengers and Spider-Man. And, to a lesser extent in my eyes, Wolverine aka Logan.
I'm going to spoil the sh*t out of this thing as I write about it. Because I can't not write about it. Like I can't not act to stop a woman being raped or an man beaten mercilessly.
In this future, the super-villains of the world and of other dimensions band together as one irresistable army. This includes gods mind you, like Loki the Trickster and brother of Thor. And Dormammu, overlord of his own dimension. Somehow, in the first of Millar's amazingly awful contrivances, the Red Skull inspires these villains to operate as a monstrous superhero extermination wave.
I'd like to say, right now, that Millar has ignored the one golden rule of superhero comics. Because, presumably, he's too cool to adhere to it. That rule is: villains, no matter who they are, super or not, simply cannot coexist under any circumstance. I mean real villains, like the Red Skull, who is a Nazi super-soldier psychopath. He is irredeemable, a murderous monster. We're not talking about the Beetle, a low-level burglar type who really wasn't ever a bad guy, just a poor one. Financially poor. A lot of villains are the crime element of the superhero ghetto, homeless and disenfranchised. Not evil, but desperate. Petty, small-minded, ect.
So this super-villain army decimates the superheroes, murdering most of them, miaming the rest, and taking over the United States. They split it into territories.
For some reason, even Dr. Doom has a territory in the U.S., even though he is a fierce jingoist for his country, called Latveria. But far be it for Millar to ever wonder why Doom would bother ruling land in a foriegn country, far from his nation. Why worry about character integrity?
Logan, former Wolverine, is a Pacifist after his experiences decades before. He was "broken" and refuses to use his claws on any living thing. Early on, Logan is living in California in the territory of the "Hulks." Yes, that's right, the Hulk rules his own territory with his family, which he sired by f*cking his cousin, Jennifer Walters aka She-Hulk. This has resulted in Bruce Banner, brilliant scientist, being the patriarch of a horde of green-skinned cannibal "greenneck" DELIVERANCE extras.
I guess it's supposed to be humorous. Logan receives a beating for not paying tribute to Banner. Logan is told his wife and children will be killed if he doesn't pay up in a week. Then a blind Hawkeye, the purple-clad archer Everyman of the Avengers, arrives looking like an aging hippie and offers the old man Logan money to drive Hawkeye across the United Super-villain Territories. Why? To deliver a suitcase filled with Super Soldier formula to a secret resistance movement on the East Coast. This resistance will become, via the serum, superhumans. They will form a new Avengers to take back the world.
A fairly pithy journey begins, with Millar showing off the grand sight-seeing tours of these territories. Lots of impressive McNiven visuals. I don't blame McNiven necessarily. He's a talented dude. He's under the mighty sword of The Writer. He's drawing what the Lord Writer has demanded. Still, McNiven contributed to this thing. He helped give birth to a deformity of everything superhero comics stand for.
I'll put it to you this way: Logan turns back into his feral berserker self and kills everybody he meets. This includes Wolverine hacking up a bunch of retarded Hulks and the main Hulk himself, who has devolved into a giant retarded fat guy. Oh, and Bruce Banner is superhuman before he transforms into the Hulk the final time. Just because. And when Wolverine kills the Hulk, we forget that the Hulk shouldn't be killed. He's invulnerable, and he heals from anything, just like old Wolverine. At least if you buy into Marvel Comics' bullsh*t.
But what the hell. No reason to dwell on such things. Wolverine kills everybody. Except for one of Bruce Banner's little babies, whom Logan is going to raise to be a "good" Hulk. The idea is Wolverine is the hope of Mankind and superhero kind as well. He's going to make it all right again.
Fine. Wolverine wankery. Everyone hypes the Wolverine. I don't much care, as it's a product of a lot of fans who can't let go of their badass identifier.
But Millar commits yet another crucial sin: he treats all the characters with vicious contempt, but saves the most loathing for the Wolverine fans. As well he should, but the problem is he surrenders logic to pull it off.
There's an internal mystery to Logan's "breaking" that fuels the early part of the story. Logan as Wolverine, along with the X-Men, were attacked in their Westchester mansion home by a unit of super-villains, including Sabretooth and the Blob, Doctor Octopus and Klaw. Keep that in mind. Klaw. Master of Sound. Klaw is a being who is made of sound. Do you dig that? He's not flesh and blood.
Back to the mystery: Wolverine in his younger costumed version slaughters all these attacking super-villains by himself. Every one of them. He guts Sabretooth and decapitates Mr. Hyde. He cuts off Klaw's weapon hand and stabs him through the throat. Wolverine wins, of course, but is torn up and injured.
At the end of the fight, Mysterio shows up. Mysterio is the Master of Illusions. He lifts his illusion to show Wolverine the battleground, and the true victims of Wolverine's savagery.
The X-Men! Wolverine killed the X-Men!
All of them. Mysterio was so good with the illusion, Wolverine couldn't smell his friends, couldn't tell it was them. Oh god.
But I keep coming around to Klaw, the dude made of sound. Wolverine killed him with his claws. The thing is, Klaw isn't alive. He's sound. Everyone knows that. And if I was a superhero in the Marvel Universe, and I knew I might run into guys like Klaw at some point, I'd be a scholar of super-villains and other superheroes. I would know what their basic thing was. I would at least know enough to survive against them.
I guess the suggestion is Wolverine doesn't care about that stuff. Facts about super-villains who might kill you. Not a big thing. It's only Klaw, a longtime classic villain, a member of the Masters of Evil and mortal enemy of the Black Panther and the Fantastic Four.
But Wolverine doesn't know this sound construct isn't Klaw. He's a rube. He's a dupe. He's taken advantage of by Mysterio, who used him to kill the X-Men. And Mysterio just shows up for that deft manuever. He never shows up again. Wolverine breaks. And Millar's insanely stupid story keeps on trucking.
Mark Millar. Stick to obvious analogues of superheroes, like your new NEMESIS series. All the blood and gore and embarrassing dialogue won't bother me so much there. Because your superheroes were not designed, created, to be extensions of empowerment for children. They are not teaching tools, symbols of the moral and ethical education of kids. Because that's what superheroes are, Mr. Millar. I hate to break it to you, but superheroes are not for old c*nts like me and you. They're for young people to perceive the way to see the world, its adventures, its fears, its horrors, without being scarred forever by the experience.
Mark Millar, you're what's wrong with superhero comics. You're at the core of the corruption that is superhero comics today. Nobody else is going to tell you. I'm nobody, so I'm here to say: you're a corrupt writer. I know you've made good money on this tripe, but you're destroying the medium, one of the few legitimately great American mediums. If this is revenge for the Colonies, I can understand that. But OLD MAN LOGAN is a turd, whether it sinks or floats. It's still a turd.
I feel awful after reading this thing. And so should anyone who cares about comics.
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