Synopsis
The narration of the story, interposed over shots of a bloody Wolverine crawling from some woodlands to a train-track, begins:
No one knows what happened on the night the heroes fell. All we know is that they disappeared and evil triumphed and the bad guys have been calling the shots ever since. What happened to Wolverine is the biggest mystery of them all. Some say they hurt him like no one ever hurt before. Others say he just grew tired of all the fighting and retired to a simpler life. Either way he hasn't raised his voice or popped his claws in fifty years. His old friends would barely recognize him now. 
Fifty years later, Logan lives with his wife Maureen, his son Scotty, and daughter Jade, on a plot of land in Sacramento, what used to be California, but is now part of Hulkland. He requires money to pay his rent to the landlords of this territory: the descendants of Bruce Banner, the Hulk Gang, who are a product of years of incestuous procreation. He refuses to sell his children's toys to pay for the rent. Logan is shown as a broken old man, refusing to fight anyone and living peacefully; he realizes that he will be unable to pay the rent, and that the Hulk Gang will not accept a plea to pay double next month on its own.
The Hulk Gang arrives the next day to confront Logan on his lack of payment, and violently beat him, deriding his inability to fight back despite once having been the most violent of superheroes; though Logan entertains visions of gutting the eldest Hulk brother, Otis, he remains calm and takes his beating, to the disappointment of his son, Scott. While healing from the injuries in bed during the night - though very slowly due to his age - he is confronted by a blinded, elderly Hawkeye. In order to pay off his rent, Logan accepts a job from Hawkeye: help him navigate across the country and deliver a secret package, possibly illegal.
The next morning Logan says goodbye to his wife and children. They leave in the Spider-Buggy, a vehicle once known as the Spider-Mobile, newly customized by Hawkeye for a long trek. Hawkeye is in the driving seat; despite his being blind, the vehicle is still his, and Logan's purpose along the journey is to help him stick to the right direction.
Turning on the car's SatNav, Logan sees a map of Amerika, now a land dominated entirely by super-villains, who have renamed cities and areas for themselves, with names such as Lair of the Creel Gang, the Lizard King, Paste Pot Creek, Hammer Falls, Osborn County, The Kingdom of the Kingpin, and Doom's Lair. The route plotted for the two old men goes straight through neo-America.[1]
They pass San Francisco, where Moloids have devastated the area. A biker gang, calling themselves the Ghost Riders, attack the two partners and try to see what Clint is carrying in the Spider-Buggy's trunk. Logan takes a beating from the gang before Hawkeye kills them all. When asked why he didn't defend himself, Logan has a brief flashback which reveals a massive beating from Sabretooth, Apocalypse, Omega Red, and Mr. Sinister. The pair then travel to Hammer Falls, formerly Las Vegas, where people gather to pray for the return of the heroes. There, an Ultron tells Clint his third wife, Tonya, who is Spider-Man's youngest child, is waiting for him: their child got the idea of assuming the mantle of Spider-Bitch and went to confront the Kingpin, where she will soon be executed.[2]
Logan and Hawkeye head for the Kingpin's headquarters in Fisk Lake City, to rescue Spider-Bitch, who had attempted to defeat the Kingpin with the help of Daredevil and The Punisher. In an arena filled with cheering spectators, the new Kingpin, after stating that he killed Magneto, because he'd gotten too old, and took his turf, has Ashley's two friends executed by feeding them to dinosaurs.
After crashing the Spider-Buggy through the side of the building holding Spider-Bitch, Hawkeye kills all of the guards without the help of Logan. The Kingpin arrives as Hawkeye frees his daughter, but upon being freed, she slays Kingpin and turns on Hawkeye, revealing that she is in fact only interested in ruling over the Kingpin's turf. As Spider-Bitch prepares to kill Hawkeye, Logan looks on.[3]
Having only accompanied Hawkeye with the intention of helping his family out their financial rut, and taken a vow of pacifism, thus refusing to so much as pop his claws for the last several decades, Logan reluctantly prepares to step into the conflict, saying before he does, "Damn you to Hell for making me do this, Hawkeye."
Wolverine then proceeds to drive the Spider-Buggy through the site of the brawl, grab Hawkeye, and crash out the side of the building, the two making a break for it. Spider-Bitch then orders her new minions after them, and soon, Logan and Hawkeye are being chased down by at least fifty vehicles, as well as Raptors. Before they can gain on the two heroes, the Moloids collapse the ground around them, swallowing them into the Earth.
Logan awakes a few hours later, hundreds of feet underground. Logan activates a glow-stick, and sees that the Moloids have devoured everyone except Logan and Hawkeye. He then helps Hawkeye out of an overturned Spider-Buggy, which they then get in, and use to drive up the wall and out of the chasm. They then proceed to drive cross-country, back on their route. On their way, they pass through what was formerly Wyoming and South Dakota with towns including Paste Pot Creek, now home to dinosaur imports from the Savage Land, and Electroville, where a collapsed Baxter Building lies over the gigantic skeleton of Loki, before coming to find The Red Skull, now President of the United States, has his face on Mount Rushmore, which also happens to be home to a host-less Venom Symbiote.
They make their way to former Iowa, where the two stop at a bar in Des Moines for a drink. It is here that Wolverine reveals that he's only doing this for the money to pay the rent for his family. He says he doesn't get excited by death anymore, and doesn't want to go back to the way he was - that he's afraid to. That statement triggers a flashback to Wolverine, costume torn and bloodied, standing over the dead bodies of Omega Red, Mister Sinister, and Lady Deathstrike. A man then comes over and is about to joke about the two heroes' "heart-to-heart" when Wolverine tackles him and puts his fist under his jaw, tempting him to make the joke. He then storms out of the bar, after being stopped by Hawkeye. Hawkeye, frustrated and curious, begs Logan to tell him what happened to him. Logan then agrees to tell him his story about what happened the night the heroes fell.[4]
Wolverine then recounts to Hawkeye the tale about how a group of super villains, many of whom were already dead, seemingly invade the X-Mansion. Wolverine begins to evacuate the younger students while the rest of the X-Men had mysteriously vanished since the onslaught began. Finally the fight comes down to Wolverine and Bullseye. After finally killing him off, Bullseye is revealed to be Jubilee. Mysterio then appears, and the illusion is swept away, revealing Wolverine has slaughtered the X-Men.
Stricken with grief, Wolverine runs into the wilderness and is unable to account for his time there. He then tries to kill himself by laying his neck on the train tracks as a train approaches. The act doesn't kill Wolverine but he decides that "Wolverine" is dead, so he puts the violence of his past behind him, and goes simply by Logan. Wolverine hasn't used his claws since that night fifty years prior.
After the flashback, Wolverine and Hawkeye set out back on their journey. They come across a young boy named Dwight wearing Ant-Man's Helmet and asking for a toll of eighty cents to cross a bridge. If they don't pay he will have the ants take care of them, to which Logan replies, "Is this a joke?" Hawkeye pays the toll and tells Logan the kid was serious and that it's eighty cents well spent. As they drive over the bridge several corpses are seen under it. They continue on past a herd of dinosaurs while a Venom symbiote controlled Tyrannosaurus Rex follows behind them.[5]
They notice the T-Rex and attempt to shoot at it while unknowingly being monitored on a security screen by Emma Frost from the Mutant Forbidden Quarter of Chicago. She sends Black Bolt to stop the Venom T-Rex with his vocal powers. After repairing the Spider-Buggy, Emma allows Logan and Hawkeye to continue with their journey.
Upon reaching their destination of New Babylon, formerly Washington, D.C., and now covered in all areas with propaganda of the Red Skull, Hawkeye reveals that the box contains ninety-nine samples of the Super-Soldier Serum to be used by members of an underground resistance to form a new group of Avengers to tackle the villains. Hawkeye's price for delivering the package is that he wants to be given one of the samples so that he can join the new Avengers. Unfortunately, the resistance movement is a hoax and the whole deal was part of a sting operation by S.H.I.E.L.D.. Logan is gunned down by the undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives and Hawkeye is then killed by Tobias.[6]
Logan is stuffed into a body bag and taken to the Red Skull's trophy room. Once inside, his wounds heal and he bursts out of the body bag and takes out Skull's goons, declaring that the Red Skull is "going down." The Red Skull seals the room, and then laughs and mocks him, pointing out that Logan has never popped his claws in fifty years. The two fight and throw each other into the trophy case, causing hero memorabilia to fall onto the floor. Red Skull grabs the Ebony Blade while Logan takes hold of Captain America's Shield. After a short duel between them, Logan gets the best of the Red Skull and pins him. After the Red Skull mocks him again, Logan decapitates him with the shield. As guards attempt to break into the room, Logan quickly dons Iron Man's Armor and escapes.
A few days later, he at last reaches his farm and meets up with his neighbor, Abe Donovan, who leads Logan to his house. Once they arrive, Donovan reveals that the Hulk Gang "got bored" and killed Logan's family while waiting for him, as Logan himself looks over their broken corpses. Donovan believes that Logan should bury his family's bodies, as he sees it as the right thing to do. Logan, however, responds by saying...
He then pops his claws for the first time in fifty years.[7]
Logan takes his time slashing and gutting the Hulk Gang members one by one. The Hulk Gang turns out to be inbred cannibal grandchildren of Bruce Banner, a.k.a. Pappy Banner and Jenny Walters, who were both turned crazy by the extra radiation they were subjected to in California's nuclear blasts.
A lot of folks say I went mad. That the radiation sickness did something to my brain... But who else was I gonna mate with besides my first cousin? Jenny She-Hulk was the only woman out there who could take the damn pace!
The two Hulk's who killed Logan's family were washing off the blood in their nearby watering hole, when they were sliced and diced. A handful of others were hanging out at Sonny Stark's bar, picking over the belongings Logan's family had when they died. Charlie's twin brother, Luke, is the first to die, with Logan's claws coming from the front of his forehead as if his fist was midway through his brain.
Three other members including Beau are at Heff's Mansion in Los Angeles, which has become a whore house, where they used up all the girls between the three of them. Logan proceeds to kill them too, after blowing up their cars.
At Banner's Lair, Banner and his descendant, Bobbie-Jo, feed a baby as they talk about Logan's arrival. He's right on time, when he crashes the Fantastic-Car, previously owned by the Hulk Gang, right into their trailer park encampment, decapitating some, and setting off a bomb on board to blow up the rest of them. The survivors are treated to a last meal of Logan's claws, and even Bobbi-Jo doesn't survive.
Pappy Banner emerges from his cave, seeming to have control of his Hulk strength in his human body. They fight, and Wolverine seems to gut him until the Hulk emerges once again!
Twelve hours later, Billy-Bob returns from his friend's house, with the Jim Belushi movies they sent him for, to find all of his clan wiped out except Pappy Banner and Little Baby Banner.
Pappy keels over in pain, not understanding why, since he's always cannibalized his fallen opponents in the past. Billy-Bob reminds him of Logan's healing factor, just as Logan cuts his way out of Pappy's back, killing him.
Billy-Bob nervously hands over his pants, boots, and coat in order to preserve his life, and pleads to Logan to leave Baby Bruce Banner alive.
A month later, Logan holds Maureen, Scotty, and Jade's funeral, and his neighbors attend, including Donovan. They try to talk him out of leaving, setting out to bring down the other villains one by one, but he insists there is nothing at his ranch for him anymore.
Besides, I got a little partner to help me out an' there's a nice poetic justice to Bruce Banner Junior bein' the first guy on my new team.
Issues
Trivia
- This story arc was inspired by Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, and the Mad Max franchise.[citation needed]
- This story arc was mentioned as a joke in the video game Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. After Hawkeye defeats Wolverine, he says "You fight like an old man, Logan."
- The 2017 film Logan took influence from this story arc. This was first hinted at, during a Comic Con interview, when Hugh Jackman, who portrays Wolverine, was asked what would his next movie be about, to which he replied "Old. Man. Logan." Released set photos in June 2016 revealed Logan to be much older looking than in Days of Future Past, and his last solo movie.[citation needed]
See Also
- 2 minor appearance(s) of Old Man Logan (Story Arc)
- 5 mention(s) of Old Man Logan (Story Arc)
- 8 article(s) related to Old Man Logan (Story Arc)
Links and References
- Old Man Logan Reading Order Guide at How to Love Comics