WARNING: this article features spoilers regarding issue 72 of Wolverine, so if you haven’t read it, do so now.  I’ll wait.

I am a Mark Millar fan.   I’m sure that statement will be met by some with rolled eyes and audible scoffing, but I don’t care.   Some of my favorite comics runs have been lead by Millar.  Ultimate Fantastic Four.  Ultimates 2.  Marvel Knights Spider-man…  just kidding.  

Jeph Loeb’s recent work notwithstanding, Millar is sort of the Michael Bay of comics.   He works best when creating sweeping, high octane epics based on radical concepts.   Take Civil War.   I kind of hated it, as much as I didn’t want to.   Mostly it had to do with the over-whelming sense of pointlessness of the project.  There was only one way Civil War could possibly end.

  Beating up your friends may make for an interesting drunken Saturday night, but it doesn’t change laws.  That’s not the way our legal system works. If it were there would be a lot of gay people with rings and black eyes in California right now.

Also I was really pissed with what he did to the New Warriors.

But an un-enamored as I was with the series, I have to admit it was interesting from start to finish.

One of my favorite Millar projects has been and remains his initial run on Wolverine, Enemy of the State.     It was a simple concept: Wolverine vs the entire Marvel Universe.  The concept sells itself.   Wolverine is brain-washed and sent to kill every hero on Earth, and comes close to succeeding.  And when the brain-washing is un-washed (dirtied up?) he reminds us that he is the best he is at what he does.   Which is apparently killing thousands of ninjas and nazis.  Because when you take away those wonderful personality flaws that we all love so much, what’s left is the reality that Logan is an unstoppable killing machine.

It also didn’t hurt that John Romita Jr delivered among some of his best art work in his 30 plus years as an artist.

So when I heard that Millar had decided to return to the Wolverine series which he nearly single-handedly delivered from mediocrity, I just about wet myself.    Old Man Logan is the antithesis of Enemy of the State.   It shows us just how stoppable Wolverine is if you know where and how to cut.  In a post-Superhero Apocalypse where all our favorite characters have fallen to their enemies, Wolverine is dead leaving only an old pacifist named Logan.    Logan’s family is in trouble, and the only way to save them is to get in the Spider-mobile with blind archer Clint Barton and travel across the country to get the money he needs.  (Although it seems like a man with a healing factor could just spend two days giving blood or something.  Maybe regrow a kidney and sell the old one?)

The whys and wherefores of how Logan got to be this way and what happened on the night all of the heroes died… isn’t really all that interesting.   The story kind of shines when it focuses on super cool rockin’ sci fi scenes and crazy concepts.  Like when the Felix Unger and Oscar Madison of the Superhero set find themselves being chased by Venom T-Rex.   Or when the inheritor of the Ant-Man helmet turns out to be a homicidal 10 year old.   Or even just the idea that Hawkeye’s ex-wife is shacked up with an Ultron robot.   Nine out of ten of Scarlet Witch’s personalities agree, once you go bot you never go back.   (Heheh. Go-bot.) 

But the parts that reveal the mysteries of this Marvel Universe’s decimated history seem to drag on and even dominate the story.   And it’s a big part of why I find this story underwhelming.   This week’s Wolverine #72 is the penultimate chapter, yet up until now, I’ve felt like the story had barely even begun.   So slow was the pacing.  More on that later though.

Another problem I have is the art.   Steve McNiven first paired with Millar on the aforementioned Civil War series.     And then, as now I’ve found his work a hindrance.   Tossing aside the fact that his work tends to be a little uneven, I’m not saying that he’s a bad artist.

Steve McNiven can draw the hell out of just about anything.

His art is just too pretty though.  It feels like I’m looking at a bunch of paintings in an art gallery.  His work rarely comes alive and flows the way comic art should.  The stiffness of it all detracts from the flow of the story.   And in many ways its beauty feels cold and emotionless.

Fortunately there’s more than enough good in this arc from both the art and the writing to hold most fans’ interest, including me.   Especially now.   As I said earlier, I felt the story had progressed so slowly that I wondered at times if we were even half way through the arc.  A big part of this is due to Millar’s insistence on keeping Logan a pacifist throughout and Wolverine a dead concept.  He only popped his claws twice.   Once in the day dream fantasy pictured above, and then during the X-Men massacre.  (Which by the way was completely ludicris.  Mysetrio is more powerful than all of the X-Men’s telepaths?)   And the massacre was a flashback.  So within the context of the story, he doesn’t pop his claws at all.

And then I read issue 72.   It’s pretty obvious how Logan’s story ends and has been since the first issue.  And yet still… when you hear the classic SNIKT… when you see those lovingly rendered adamantium ginsu knives… the Fsnboy in you cheers.   And right then, you know that this story will not go out with a whimper.  

The claws are popped.  The finish line is in sight.    And “we have out little killing machine back.”