Review- WOLVERINE- OLD MAN LOGAN VOL. 1: BERSERKER

WOLVERINE- OLD MAN LOGAN VOL. 1: BERSERKER (Marvel, Second Printing, 2017; Softcover)

Collects Old Man Logan #1-4 and Wolverine: Old Man Logan Giant-Size (cover dates November, 2009- June, 2016)

Writers: Jeff Lamire and Mark Millar (Wolverine: Old Man Logan Giant-Size)

Artists: Andrea Sorrentino and Steve McNiven with Mark Morales and Dexter Vines (Wolverine: Old Man Logan Giant-Size)

Colorists: Marcel Miolo and Morray Jay Hollowell (Wolverine: Old Man Logan Giant-Size)

The PARENTAL ADVISORY box on the back cover should be enough to tell you that this is not all ages reading. With that in mind, I had to let go of my nostalgic yearnings for the Wolverine of my youth and think of this as that same Wolverine a few decades on. When put in that context, with both of us three decades worse for the wear but as stubborn as ever, I was able to enjoy this book for the violent fun that it is.

Logan wakes up in 2015, “a few years before things went bad”, a reference to the events in the original Old Man Logan arc where the villains all come together and kill nearly every hero. He is bound and determined to stop the events as they happened in his future timeline. Logan is older and wearier, less prone to anger but also less tolerant of bullshit. I can relate.

Logan has made a list of people he needs to kill in order to stop the seemingly alternate future timeline that he came from from happening. First on the kill list is Black Butcher, a minor leaguer who crossed Logan and his son in his future. Bruce Banner, a/k/a The Hulk, is next on the list. Logan finds The Hulk, only it's the fake Amadeus Cho Hulk. Then we see the fake female Hawkeye before he encounters the then-old man Captain America before stumbling upon some X-Men and a Sentinel.

I'm not crazy about all of these doppelganger heroes, as it smacks of the cheesiest aspects of Silver Age DC. Your mileage may vary, but this old man says get off of my lawn, you damn kids with your teenage Asian Hulk and female Hawkeyes! Back in my day the Hulk was Bruce Banner and Hawkeye was Clint Barton, and that was how we liked it!

My only real gripe about this book is the padding out of the page count/ price point by reprinting Wolverine: Old Man Logan Giant-Size here when it was already reprinted before in the original Old Man Logan trade. It's not like including it in this collection again provides valuable insight into this arc. It's a double dip, plain and simple, and the worst kind. Padding a page count for a price point.

I'm still on board with this series, with Volume 3 moseying on up to the front of the backlog reading pile.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 4 out of 5.

The OCD zone- I was surprised to see that this is a second printing. Marvel often times lets books fall out of print while quietly reprinting others like this one.

Paper stock: Coated stock with a slight sheen. The paper seems a bit on the thin side compared to what Marvel used to out in their trades of contemporary material.

Binding: Perfect bound trade paperback.

Cardstock cover notes: Laminated cardstock coating. The curling factor that was plaguing the newer Marvel trades seems to have been rectified.