Review also posted to my blog.


content warnings: graphic violence, murder, allusions to rape, ableist language, sexist language
representation: blind main character, biracial (black-white) side character


My feelings on this are fairly mixed. This has been touted as one of the greatest comics ever and inspired what is (in my opinion) one of the best comic book movies ever made. Maybe that's part of why it just didn't hit me the way it was meant to; every element of this comic I think was done better by Logan.

This follows Logan in a dystopian world where, in order to make rent and keep his family safe, he must go with an elderly and blind Clint Barton on a trip to transport some drugs. What follows is a gory, gritty adventure that is sometimes amazing and sometimes incredibly meh.

First of all, I already had a bit of a bias against this due to it being written by Mark Millar, one of the most overrated writers of all time in my opinion. He pretty much singlehandedly ruined one of my favourite comic book series, The Authority, with his Mark Millar-ness and his general approach to grittiness has always rubbed me the wrong way. Luckily though, I felt like with this one featuring a straight man in the lead he side-stepped a lot of his worst tendencies, though there were still moments (Clint calling Emma Frost a skank, the use of the r-word, a reference to a female character being raped). Other than that, the other meh parts for me was the plot as a whole. A lot of it just fell flat for me, and I can't quite pin down why.

I really enjoyed the dynamic between Logan and Clint, though. They're both old and jaded without ever feeling cliche, Logan in particular. I still think that the film explored his mental state better, but this was still a take that I enjoyed and probably would have enjoyed a lot more if I hadn't seen the film.

I have to give some props to the illustrator, Steve McNiven, because some of the panels in this absolute blew me away. Admittedly, they blew me in a way that I normally wouldn't enjoy with a lot of this trying to be nothing but shocking and gory, but it sill got me. The moment that stuck with me the most is when you find out why Logan hasn't used his claws in fifty years. I already knew about one of the pages but that didn't ruin the impact, and the other page was just as powerful. 

Despite it not living up to the film loosely based on it, this is still a really fun and gory comic that I would recommend for any fan of Wolverine, or just someone who wants to read a Mark Millar comic where a main character isn't raped.