For those not up to speed on the Marvel soap opera, here’s the shortest version possible:  Norman Osborn–the former Green Goblin–is pretending to be a good guy.  He’s become head of Homeland Security, he’s disbanded S.H.I.E.L.D. and formed a new agency called H.A.M.M.E.R. (no, i don’t recall what it stands for). Since most heroes won’t play ball with the guy who’s spent years trying to kill Spider-man, he’s been forced to recruit super-villains to masquerade as heroes. Filling the role of Wolverine (see, Dark Wolverine, cuz he’s…  okay, you get it) is Logan’s estranged son, Daken.

So, to recap: Daken is a sort of bad guy pretending to be a really bad guy pretending to be a good guy, working for a genuinely bad guy pretending to be a good guy.

Despite supposedly being a baddie, it’s hard not to like Daken.  He has much the same skillset as his father, but can also manipulate pheromones to bend people to his will.  Aside from his mild mind-control power, he’s also extremely smart and highly manipulative.  Turning him loose in the Stark Tower headquarters among such mental giants as Hercules and Bullseye has been a fun, fox-in-the-henhouse sort of treat for several issues now.  He’s failed to impress Osborn, however.  He questions Daken’s loyalty after some hijinks, and sends him to apprehend some criminals at a photo-op situation of his own creation.

This leads to a run-in with minor Wolverine supporting castmember Emmy Doolin, who realizes right off the bat that Daken isn’t really Wolverine and that Osborn is trying to manipulate her.

The story sounds more complex than it really is.  The fun in this book is found in the way Daken is constantly pushing people’s buttons.  Sometimes he seems to pick fights just to be a jerk, but you find rather quickly that he doesn’t undertake much of anything without a plan. His goading of Osborn is witty and scornful, but he plays at least somewhat nicely with other heavies like Reed Richards.  They both ask him whose side he’s on, and he has set himself up rather brilliantly so that he can honestly answer “yours” to each of them.

Taking over on art recently is Segovia, who has a lively style that suits the action well.  Lots of linework (crosshatching, shading, etc), but he manages to keep the action at the forefront without making everything too busy. His page layouts try to be a little too cute sometimes, and he accidentally confuses the flow of the page.  But aside from a few ticks, he has a very accessible and easy-to-read style.

By the end of the issue, we’ve set up a showdown between Daken and Doolin, and indirectly a showdown between Daken and Osborn’s trust in him.  Meanwhile, Bullseye continues to believe he has Daken’s number, and the Fantastic Four (who sit this issue out) will no doubt be involved as well.

Daken loves to make enemies, and we’re quickly building to see if he can best them without getting plowed under.

Grade: A

This is a special one shot that concludes the “Old Man Logan” story which ran in Wolverine #66-72 over the last year or so.

The background. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic future (are there any non-apocalyptic futures in the Marvel universe?) where the bad guys have won.  Most of the heroes are dead, and the US is divided up into sections controlled by the major baddies.  Logan has survived, but has retired from the hero business.  He and his family eke a living from the California soil, while paying rent to the hulks, Bruce Banner’s murderous gang of inbred thug-offspring.  The Wolverine issues are some of the best work Marvel has put out lately, and come highly recommended.

In that main story, we witnessed a cross-country trip that ended with a climactic battle in Washington, DC.  It seemed as if that would be the end, but we were teased with a final chapter, wherein Logan finally embraces his inner mustelid.  Thus, the giant sized one shot and thus, the final chapter, and it is…  um… well, let’s just talk about the plot for a moment.

The Plot. Heres the plot. Ready? Here we go.

Logan kills everyone.

Now this isn’t a terrible story idea, as story ideas go.  It’s a revenge story, which is a time-honored tradition in prose, comics, and  movies.  With a revenge story, you don’t really need a plot.  The plot sort of assembles itself: awful thing happens to good guy, good guy snaps, good guy sets out to get even.  This usually means a series of grisly fights.  A few more bad guys end up dead after each one, until there’s just the big bad left.

Problem #1: Like I said, it’s fine as a story idea.  But it isn’t really a plot.  It’s just one long (and admittedly fabulous) fight scene.  If you don’t mind paying five bucks for one long fight scene, then don’t worry about it.  You’re fine.  Those looking for the internal depth that the other issues had will be disappointed.

And that’s problem #2: this is all just a hyper-violent coda to a story that was already great, and already done.  If Wolverine #72 (minus the last couple of pages) had been the end of the story, the world would have been no worse off.

So what’s good about Giant-sized Wolverine? Plenty.  First, while this one particular chunk of the story is lacking in direction, the overall story is quite compelling.  If there do wind up being more stories set in this world (and with the company that just recently finished a House Of M offshoot story, it seems likely), then this was a necessary step forward.

In addition, plot points aside, Steve McNiven’s art is jaw-dropping, as always.  It’s detailed but never too busy.  Facial expressions are incredibly detailed.  He lavishes as much attention on trailer parks and cow entrails as he does on explosions and wreckage.  And possibly at Millar’s direction, the depictions of the hulks as trailer trash are absolutely hilarious: bad teeth, receding hairlines, mullets, you name it.

If you haven’t read the whole Old Man Logan story, you should.  Once you have, this is a fun–if slightly brainless–addition to it.

Lets look at a chunk of the movies that came out this summer:  Transformers 2, GI Joe: Rise of Cobra, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Terminator: Salvation, Public Enemies, and the list goes on and on.  What do you see in this list?  Nothing but complete and utter disappointment from the creators of these horrible disasters. 

Am I the only one that remembers summer being the point in the movie season when we were suppose to get the bad ass movies of the year.  Not the artsy stuff that is released at the end of the year, but the fun, popcorn action and comedy stuff that you don’t have to really think about to enjoy.  And yes, I understand that reading that sentence means that none of the movies this year should have been bad, but there is a difference between mindless fun and the horror that hit the cinemas this summer.

I wondeer if the bigger issue is that there was nothing that really stood out as a figure for the summer movie event.  Growing up, you knew that come summer, you were going to have a huge Schwarzenneger film, or a Stallone film that would blow the socks off of you and you would sit back and enjoy the fun action, corny dialog lines and of course the shot of nudity.  Looking at this summer, there was no stand out hero or actor that had you drooling at the release schedule.  There is something to be said when the big hero that stands out from the summer uses a walking cane to get around while hanging out with a boy scout.

Part of me thinks that the look at this summer could also be a trend of my generation getting older, and more crotchety about what we watch on the big screen.  I took my son to see Transfomers 2 and he absolutely loved the film.  He also saw Land of the Lost and thought the potty humor was hysterical.  I am still going to therapy to forget everything I saw in the Transformers 2 movie, and I subjected my wife to the horror that was Land of the Lost. 

Looking at the flipside, I can say that there were a few hits that at least took a bit of the ugliness of the summer of 2009.  People have raved about Up, and Harry Potter seemed to keep up the tradition of translating the books to the movie screen.  I saw The Hangover and thought it was probably the winner of the summer if Star Trek had not been released in the same summer.  It was nice that there was something to enjoy this summer, but overall, nothing will watch out the taint that was Summer of 2009.