The End
Mark Millar promoted his new Wolverine story ‘Old Man Logan’ as his take on Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. Which is nothing new. Previously he promoted Wanted as his version of Watchmen. Essentially he is pitching this as the last Wolverine story, not to be confused with Paul Jenkins’ Wolverine: The End. Not to mention X-Men: The End.
In case there’s any confusion on this point, Millar is not the only one trying to recapture DKR. The attraction for these comic writers is understandable. Comic titles are franchises. There is no one creative vision for any of the mainstream comic characters – there may have been original creative teams, but they have generally long since moved on, leaving their creations in the hands of whomever is hired for the task. So Stan Lee’s Daredevil is a million miles from Frank Miller’s, or indeed Ed Brubaker’s. Seeing as these are stories with no ending, shedding continuity as often as times change like a snake sheds its skin, it is understandable that some writers evidence a strong desire to conclude the story, even if it is in a What If title, an Elseworlds or an ‘End’ story.
End stories can be identified as generally occurring in a dystopian version of the future. The DCU of DKR had succumbed to an all-powerful fascist American government that had successfully ejected most of the heroes and even recruited Superman to be their enforcer. Millar’s Old Logan wanders a landscape littered with the detritus of superhero wars populated by copycat vigilantes and aging fellow heroes from back in the day. This eagerness for dystopia is tiresome, in that every story seems to follow the same pattern. Marauding gangs of adolescents thugs in retro hero costumes are a recurring feature, as well as the surviving heroes making appearances either grossly overweight or missing limbs. The Invisibles by Grant Morrison features its own End story in the final issues, with King Mob the leader of the anarchist protagonists seeming to sell out by converting their history of activities against the Grand Conspiracy into a video game. Morrison and Alan Moore are exceptions in that their storylines – The Invisibles and Promethea – both end with an apocalypse, but that ‘end of everything’, is not shown as an atomic mushroom cloud. Instead humanity embraces its own end with a celebration, the eschaton revealed as a pan-global shift in perception.
The fascination with the end of all things is not new in fiction or history. There are theories that the Great Fire of London in 1666 was deliberately started by millenialists seeking to fulfill their own belief that Armageddon had arrived. It is an act of egotism, this fascination with the end – because people cannot accept that this world will outlast them. On a much smaller scale comic book writers need to make their definitive mark on narratives that they are only contributing to for a brief time. Mark Millar had already written what some consider to be the best Wolverine story in years Enemy of the State. This was the ‘balls to the wall action’, Canuckle-head story, with Logan becoming brainwashed by an evil organisation named Hydra and going on a killing spree. Wolverine’s violent nature is key to his popularity, which makes attempts to market him as a kid friendly character noisome at times. He is basically a killer struggling to control his bloodlust. In recent years he has become a flagship character for Marvel alongside Spider-Man and the Hulk, so his essential nature is frequently only hinted at, for fear of upsetting parents. See also how silhouetted murder and slicing off limbs is fine, but there is a taboo on depicting him having a smoke. Millar overturned all that by having the fierce mutant go on a rampage within the institution he had called home for so many years, Xavier’s School for Higher Learning, threatening the lives of the children residing there. The storyline was immensely popular and with the exception of one more story from the Scottish writer, a WWII era POW yarn with Wolverine captive in a concentration camp, his run was concluded on something of a highnote.
For Millar to return to the book now and suddenly jump forward in time to do his own ‘End’ story seems excessive. All the usual ideas are repeated – aging heroes, wasteland surroundings, villains in the ascendancy and a hero broken by his past. Perhaps he will pull something interesting out of his hat, but Millar to me has always seemed like someone who thinks ’subtle’, is a species of wood.
Maybe someday there will be a Wolverine: The End story about Logan happily married to a fellow superhuman and their arguments about doing the washing.
Tags: Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller, Mark Millar, Marvel, The End, Wolverine