Publication history
Old Man Logan debuted as a character in Mark Millar's run on Fantastic Four, which featured characters who are heavily implied to be the aged Wolverine and Bruce Banner Jr. as an adult. Wolverine: Old Man Logan started as an eight-issue storyline from the third volume of Wolverine ongoing series by writer Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven, published by Marvel Comics in June 2008. The series ran through Wolverine (volume 3) #66–72 (June 2008 – June 2009) and ended in Wolverine Giant-Size Old Man Logan #1 on September 9, 2009.
Old Man Logan debuted in his solo series during the 2015 Secret Wars storyline,[2] written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Andrea Sorrentino. This story is continued in an ongoing series with the same name beginning in January 2016,[3] written by Jeff Lemire with Sorrentino returning as artist.
Fictional character biography
Original story
The United States and the world of Earth-807128 has been conquered and divided among supervillains, with territories belonging to the Abomination (later conquered by the Hulk), Magneto (later conquered by a new Kingpin), Doctor Doom, and the Red Skull, who has named himself president of the United States. Superheroes have been wiped out of existence, with the few survivors in hiding. Logan lives with his wife Maureen and young children Scotty and Jade on a barren plot of land in Sacramento, California, now part of the territory known as Hulkland. Needing money to pay rent to his landlords the Hulk Gang (the incestuous hillbilly grandchildren of the Hulk and his first cousin She-Hulk), Logan accepts a job from a blind Clint Barton to help him travel east to the capital of New Babylon and deliver a secret package (which Logan assumes to be drugs).[4]
Logan and Barton encounter several diversions on their journey. They rescue Barton's estranged daughter Ashley (who seems to be an aspiring Spider-Girl) from the clutches of the new Kingpin. However, she then murders Kingpin and reveals her intention to seize his territory of Hammer Falls (formerly Las Vegas) herself as the new Kingpin and "Spider-Bitch" before attempting to kill her father. Logan rescues him and the pair escape, as Spider-Bitch sends her forces after them.[5]
They escape a cluster of Moloids who are destroying cities by sinking them from beneath the surface. They then get chased by a Venom symbiote-infused Tyrannosaurus (imported from the Savage Land), but they are rescued and teleported by the White Queen and Black Bolt.[6]
Throughout the story it is reiterated that the "Wolverine" persona died the day the villains attacked and that since then, Logan has refused to use his claws. Flashbacks reveal that on the night the attack happened, a group of 40 supervillains attacked the X-Mansion. Unable to locate his teammates, Logan slaughtered the attackers to ensure the safety of the mutant children. As the last "attacker" Bullseye was killed, Logan realized that the entire assault was an illusion created by Mysterio and his perceived enemies were actually his fellow X-Men. This destroyed Wolverine emotionally and mentally and he fled the mansion and wandered away to a train track in shock and shame. Though he made a subsequent suicide attempt by allowing a freight train to run him over, Logan could not actually kill himself, but had effectively killed "Wolverine".[7]
When they arrive at the capital, Hawkeye delivers his package to an underground resistance group hoping to begin a new team like the Avengers. The package contains super-soldier serum, enough to form an army, but Barton's clients expose themselves as undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. They shoot and kill Logan and Barton.[6] Logan's body heals and he awakens in Red Skull's trophy room amongst the armaments and costumes of fallen superheroes. Without using his claws, he kills Red Skull's men and engages Red Skull himself, eventually decapitating him with Captain America's shield. He grabs a briefcase of money (their intended reward for the delivery) and uses pieces of Iron Man's armor to fly back home. Upon arriving, Logan discovers that the Hulk Gang murdered his family and left the bodies unburied in his absence. His neighbor Abraham Donovan states that Logan's family was killed when the Hulk Gang got tired of waiting for their payment. This results in Logan finally unleashing his claws.[8]
Logan seeks out and slaughters the Hulk's grandchildren Beau, Bobbie-Jo, Charlie, Elrod, Eustace, Luke, Otis, Rufus, and Woody before encountering Old Man Banner himself who displays monstrous strength, even in his human form. It is implied that the gamma poisoning in his body had begun to deteriorate his sanity in his old age. Banner reveals that while the murder of Logan's family was intended as a message to others, he really just wanted to get Logan angry enough to fight him because he had gotten bored with being a "super-villain landlord" like the others. In his Hulk form, Banner easily defeats Logan and then consumes him. Logan recuperates within Banner's stomach and bursts out, killing the Hulk. Afterward, he discovers a baby Hulk named Bruce Banner, Jr. A month later, Logan and his neighbors hold a small memorial for Logan's family. With nothing left of his old home, Logan then says he plans to defeat all the new world villains and bring peace to the land—with himself and Bruce Banner, Jr. being the first members of a new group of superheroes—before riding off into the sunset.[9]
After a fight with the Ghost Riders, Old Man Logan finds that Pappy Banner's head was placed on a gamma-powered robot made from adamantium by Tinkerer. He uses it in his revenge on Old Man Logan. Before Old Man Logan can be finished off by Pappy Banner, he is suddenly attacked by Bruce Banner Jr. who separates Pappy Banner's head from the adamantium armor. Rather than kill the head, Old Man Logan buries it and plants a tree over it so that its roots can slowly dig into his skull.[10]
Fantastic Four
Some time later, Old Man Logan and the now adult Bruce Banner Jr. are featured during a scene when the new Defenders, led by an older Susan Storm, travel back in time to use cosmic energy to restore their dying Earth. Now calling himself the Hooded Man, Old Man Logan accompanies Gaia back to his original timeline in order to repopulate the now desolate Earth and keep her from going insane from the lack of inhabitants. He is later seen gardening with Gaia who is now pregnant with his child.[11]
Earth-21923 version
The history of this Old Man Logan is the same as the one on Earth-807128. When the multiverse was destroyed and Battleworld was created, a different version from an altered universe version of "Old Man Logan" called Earth-21923[a] is reborn on the Battleworld domain called the Wastelands, a recreation of his native reality with his memories still intact, although he does not know how he arrived in Battleworld. After having declared the intention to set his world right, Logan disrupts a poker game between the Gladiator and his Flying Devils, and he ends their human trafficking ring by killing them, freeing those imprisoned. While on the way back to meet with Danielle Cage, Logan witnesses the head of an Ultron Sentinel fall from above. Wishing to investigate further, he brings it along with him back home, where Bruce Jr. and Danielle also reside. After explaining this new development, he investigates the head's origins. He visits Hammer Falls and meets with the dying Emma Frost, and he learns that the head is from beyond the Wastelands, so he begins traveling beyond his domain.[12]
When Logan trespasses upon its borders, he is approached by an unidentified Thor of the Thor Corps. She attacks Logan with a lightning bolt for breaking Doctor Doom's laws, falling into the Domain of Apocalypse in the process. Already healed from the burns caused by the Thor's attack, Logan is attacked by Victor Creed (who is one of the Horsemen of Apocalypse) and his soldiers, but Logan is rescued by the X-Men and taken to their hideout, where they are attacked by Apocalypse and his other Horsemen.[13]
The battle that ensues is intervened by the Thor who attacked Logan earlier and as she argues with Apocalypse, Logan flees and hides. The Thor then demands to know to where he had run, but no one answers. Angry, she attacks both the X-Men and the Horsemen with a lightning bolt and then looks for Logan through the domain. When she is near the domain's walls, Logan climbs it and attacks her from behind. Enraged, the Thor attacks him with another lightning bolt and lets him fall into the neighboring domain of Technopolis as she is attacked by Apocalypse's Infinite Soldiers. Logan is taken to Stark Tower by Baron Stark and Grand Marshal Rhodes, the Thor of that domain. After healing from his injuries, Logan awakens only to find himself in a totally different domain from the one where he was. He ends up fighting Rhodes, but is defeated and sent to the Deadlands as punishment for breaking Doom's laws.[14]
Due to his healing factor, Logan succeeds in fighting through hordes of zombies in the Deadlands. He takes shelter inside a cave where he finds an uninfected She-Hulk who has been there for a long time. He tries to convince her to throw him out of the Deadlands when the zombies find them. In a desperate attempt to save Logan's life, She-Hulk grabs him and jumps as high as she can to throw him out of the Deadlands as he had suggested, ultimately sacrificing her own life to do so. Afterwards, Logan finds himself in the Battleworld domain called the Kingdom of Manhattan.[15]
While wandering the city he has not seen in years, Logan meets this domain's Jean Grey and Emma Frost. They take him to meet the rest of the X-Men, as well as "his" son Jimmy Hudson. Logan later leads the superhero population of the Kingdom of Manhattan in a rebellion against God Emperor Doom. Subsequently, Logan finds himself in a new world.[16]
All-New All-Different Marvel
Logan wakes up in the past on Earth-616 and decides to prevent his apocalyptic future. He targets the minor villain Black Butcher and easily kills him.[17] He seeks Mysterio's location and is joined by Kate Bishop.[18] Logan meets Commander Steve Rogers, who shows him his adamantium-coated corpse from the future.[19][20] Logan appears in Extraordinary X-Men but declines to rejoin the team.[21][22] He decides to protect Maureen from the Reavers but gets wounded.[23] Later, he decides to hunt down Lady Deathstrike.[24]
Logan experiences nightmares about a villain uprising, and Jean Grey convinces him to change his mind. He seeks help from experts to rescue Bruce Banner Jr. from the Wastelands. In the current time, he defeats the Hulk Gang with help from Hawkeye.[25] He is also involved in the "Civil War II" and "Inhumans vs. X-Men" storylines. Logan becomes part of Kitty Pryde's Gold Team of X-Men and confronts the Weapon X organization.[26]
Logan tracks down the Regenix drug and confronts the Crazy Thunder Gang.[27] He helps Silver Samurai rescue Mariko Yashida from the Hand's control. Later, Logan, Lady Deathstrike, and Sabretooth are captured by the Orphans Of X but eventually rescued and revived.[28]
Dead Man Logan
After defeating an alternate version of the Maestro, Logan recognized that he was dying of old age, now relying on regenix to supplement his failing healing factor. He decided to set out to return to his original timeline after sorting out a few loose ends in this one, which included eliminating Mysterio so that the villain could never attempt the same feat he accomplished in Logan's past. Mysterio was recruited by Neo-HYDRA and Miss Sinister when they learned about Logan's history, but Mysterio eventually turned against Neo-HYDRA to aid the Avengers when he learned that Neo-HYDRA intended to kill him once they had won. Mysterio subsequently faked his death after Logan and the Avengers defeated Neo-HYDRA.[29]
After a meeting with his resurrected counterpart, Logan asked Mariko to keep an eye on the version of his future wife in this timeline before he returned to the Wasteland via a time portal created by Forge.[30] Returning to the Wastelands, Logan engaged Joseph Manfredi and his henchmen who are allied with Lizard in Florida, the Creel Gang in Georgia, and the Phantom Riders in Nashville, Tennessee. When Logan was captured by cannibals operating in the Ozarks, he is saved by Danielle Cage and Bruce Banner Jr. who inform him that a lot of villains like the Punisher Gang are looking for him after what he did to Red Skull and Hulk. What happened to Red Skull and the Hulk Gang caused a power vacuum in the Wastelands. After a fight with the Tranquility Temple that tried to kill him and Bruce Banner Jr., Logan drove his group to the Badlands where they met with Forge and Dwight Barrett. Forge's lair was attacked by Sabretooth and his clones. Forge unleashed an unstable Speedball from him container who destroyed the Sabretooth clones as Sabretooth made off with Bruce Jr.[31] Tracking Sabretooth to a Weapon X facility, Logan and Danielle discovered that the head of the Weapon X facility is Mister Sinister who created the Sabretooth clones and claimed that he orchestrated the villains' rise to power which Red Skull took the credit for. After Logan and Danielle Cage rescued Bruce Banner Jr., they got chased by the Sabretooth clones until Danielle picked up Mjolnir and became the new Thor.[32] Logan would eventually meet his end after killing Sabretooth and Mister Sinister, weakly affirming that his healing factor has finally worn out and he just exhausted his final vial of Regenix. Dani and Bruce take him back to the graves of his deceased family and he dies looking up into the sun. After burying Logan with his family, Danielle Cage, now acting as the new Thor, Bruce Banner Jr. as the new Hulk, and Dwight Barrett as the new Ant-Man, formed a new incarnation of the Avengers and vow to keep fighting the opposition until they can find a place they can call home.[33]
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