Wolverine Old Man Logan Giant-Size #1
Hell fucking yes, it’s on. This son of a bitch is the one-shot conclusion to Millar and McNiven’s Old Man Logan storyline. In case you’ve been living in a hole filled with suck and a lack of utter awesomeness, Old Man Logan is probably the best Wolverine storyline of the last, like, you know, ten years.

Now listen, I know that’s not a difficult thing to pull off. Most Wolverine storylines these past few years have usually involved Luke Cage, the Avengers, or like, X-Force where Wolverine is ejaculating blades covered in blood to be totally X-TREME.

In fact, Millar is probably only competing against himself, and maybe Joss Whedon. Whatever, still.

The past seven installments of the Old Man Logan storyline have found good old Logan on a post-apocalyptic journey with Hawkeye to deliver some mystery goods in order to make some quick cash. Logan’s a broken old dude living in a world where the superheroes lost the throwdown to end all throwdowns. Living on a shitty farm with his family, he needs to make some cheddar or else the Hulk Family will like, rip his wife in half and fuck the gaping mess. I’m not making this up. Through the way Millar has thrown every single shade of awesome at the reader save for one thing: Wolverine’s claws. Millar has thrown Kingpins and dinosaurs and mole men and the Red Skull as the president of the country at us, but not the quintessential berserker rage.

Collectively, as a fan base, we’ve been edging towards orgasm for like a year now. This issue seems to be where we all get to rip our frothy load.

The issue description says it enough:

Wolverine returns and unleashes a tidal wave of bloody revenge! It’s Wolverine versus the Hulk Gang to the death!

Seriously. The reason this is going to be so fucking stellar is because Millar has written a brilliant, tortured Logan without resorting to even the hint of a claw for seven issues. And now this is the money shot.

The entire seven-issue arc has been standalone, and if you haven’t read it, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s for both haters and lovers of Marvel’s most over-exposed cash cow. An understated Logan has starred as a battered and broken husband and father. And throughout the arc, Millar continues to examine the notions of escape that he seems obsessed with in his comics – using this comic to examine if Wolverine can escape being the bloodthirsty alcoholic we all know and love and make an attempt at something resembling happiness.

I’m guessing the answer is no.

Also dropping is Fantastic Four #571. I dropped FF after Millar left it two issues ago, but I’ve only heard good things about the first issue by Hickman/Davis. Then there’s Dark X-Men The Confession, where Joe Quesada admits to the public that Marvel’s direction does in fact blow. And finally Halo Helljumper #3, which is probably crap but thanks to the franchise will probably outsell great titles like Daredevil. I’m not bitter.

Kaboom Vol. 1 Limited Edition Hardcover
Oh shit! Does anyone else remember Kaboom? It was totally amazing for like six months back in the mid-1990’s. I was like thirteen back then and the rage at the time was to  ninja an anime vibe for your artwork. Joe Madureira got that shit rolling on Uncanny X-Men and people like Jeff Matsuda followed in his wake. I was absolutely in love with it. I was like FUCK I LOVE BIG EYES AND MOTION LINES. I blame it on the onset of puberty. With all those new hairs sprouting up, a lot of crazy shit made sense. For instance: watching the WWF, and jerking off to photoshopped pictures of Tyra Banks onto of pornstar heads, that I downloaded from AOL chat rooms.

I hadn’t even thought about this title in forever, but seeing that it was coming out for release as a limited edition hardcover yanked my ass down memory lane. I’m going to spend the better part of the afternoon digging through my comic boob library for these originals. Either they’re safely collated, or they died a warrior’s death by the side of my toilet eons ago.

Wednesday Comics #12
I’m searching desperately for something I want to give a fuck about with DC this week. After I glazed my fingers with Marvel’s goop, I mean, the least I could do is show some love for their Distinguished Competition. Yeah, I really have nothing.

I haven’t been following Wednesday Comics, though I have been buying them. I know, typical fucking comic book guy. Buying shit he isn’t reading. Fuck me. However, I love the alternate approach to storytelling and narrative, and anything that approaches something differently then we’re used to is something I’m willing to support. Since I’m a lazy fuck and they come out weekly, I fell behind on issues of Wednesday’s Comics pretty quickly. The final issue comes out this week, and I’m probably going to sit down and read one release a day for twelve days or whatever. My brother has assured me that there’s some dope shit in there, especially since we’re both Paul Pope fanboys.

I’m interested to see what the net outcome of this experiment will be. The owner of my local comic shop says that sales aren’t that great, and that doesn’t surprise me. It seems like an even more inaccessible way to distribute comic books.

It’s neat, it’s novel, but I just don’t think it brought any new fans in. When I first read about it, the impression I got was that they were hoping it’d rope in some new fans. If that was the intent, they failed I suppose. But if they were trying to present a new way to experience a comic book narrative, then I think they’ve done something neat.

- Caffeine Powered