Mark Millar and Steve McNiven have been reunited on Wolverine, with their new eight-part storyline "Old Man Logan."

This is an unusual storyline for an ongoing title.  It's basically Wolverine: The End - or rather, it could have been, if somebody hadn't done that already.  It's set half a century in the future, in a world where the villains won, the heroes mostly died, and a broken Wolverine has settled down to quiet life as a farmer.

Obviously that's not going to fill eight issues.  So, driven by the need to pay his rent, Logan is dragged out of retirement for one last job, which will of course be simple and will set him up for life.  You know the schtick.

I can't help but wonder why this story is running in the regular Wolverine title.  It's very rare for Marvel to run out-of-continuity stories in their regular titles, and the premise seems more suited for a miniseries.  In fact, even the cover - which incorporates the subtitle into the logo - almost looks like it was designed for a mini.  Usually, it's the other way round: Marvel take a story that would work perfectly well in the regular title and inexplicably make it a one-shot, thus selling fewer copies.  This way makes more sense, but in practice it's still a strange anomaly.

Now, Mark Millar does enjoy his worlds where the bad guys won.  The problem with this story, I think, is that he can't quite seem to make up his mind what tone he's going for.  Is this a melancholy, downbeat story about a broken, shuffling hero in a despairing dystopia? Or is it a wacky, over the top story about a bunch of redneck mutants flying around in a vandalised Fantasticar? 

For the most part it wants to be the first one, but that doesn't stop elements from the second trying to shoehorn their way onto the page.  It's an uneven read.  And perhaps that's why I don't really believe in Millar's future world.  It feels like a collection of elements from two different stories, which don't always seem to have been thought through very clearly.  For example, the Hulk's family are apparently running most of the western states of America - so why are they collecting rent in person?

But the quieter, subtler bits... those work.  That's not as easy as it sounds, because Millar has Logan acting wildly out of character for the whole issue.  The risk here is that he no longer feels like Wolverine at all.  Millar gets away with it, though, and manages to sell the idea of "How did he end up like this?"  Steve McNiven does a nice line in empty landscapes and characters who've given up.  And sure, it's a slow start, but there's nothing wrong with that.  A story like this needs to start slow.

I'm not entirely sold on this arc.  From the look of it, Millar's taking us on a tour across America where we can meet dystopian future versions of other Marvel villains.  That's not an idea that particularly thrills me, and it's not too hard to predict the basic shape of the storyline to come.  On the whole, thought, this is a good start - as long as Millar resists the temptation to throw in quirky ideas that mess up his sombre atmosphere.

Rating: B+

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