Old Man Logan #4 Review

Writer: Brian M. Bendis / Artists: Andrea Sorrentino & Marcelo Maiolo / Marvel Comics Ask and you shall receive! As you’ll recall from my review of Issue #3 I have been underwhelmed with the pace of the plot in this series. #3, while visually striking, didn’t seem to go anywhere. Well, #4 doesn’t address that too much, but you can tell we’re getting closer to resolution, so that’s worth something. As in the previous issues, Sorrentino is killing the art. In this one, he uses clever panel placement to indicate motion and the difference between interior and exterior dialog. This comic has maybe 3 pages where Logan is not killing something, so there’s plenty of action to go around, and it is glory to watch.

The plot here revolves around Logan finding himself now in The Deadlands, a region of BattleWorld inhabited by zombies, symbiotes, and zombie symbiotes. Reading this, I have finally started to find the attraction of Logan the Killing Machine. He slices and dices his way through hordes of undead, and Bendis gives him that permanent old man ennui. Even killing undead for the rest of time doesn’t scare Logan. It just makes him tired.

In The Deadlands, Logan meets another old friend and they team up for some classic zombie killing fun (not going to spoil that surprise!). I do enjoy Bendis’ characterizations, each person is so distinct in accent, word choice, pacing — if you’re writing dialog, this is how it should be done. In the end though, The Deadlands isn’t where Logan…