Wolverine: Old Man Logan (UK Edition) s/c back

Worth every penny, and I'm not being sarcastic for once. For a start McNiven's art has moved on spectacularly from CIVIL WAR and here you can relish it for all its wizened-faced worth. It's eight chapters of constantly surprising and in one instance truly shocking supposition about what the end of the road might look like for Marvel Comics' America: barren, and broken up into States controlled by various villains with one big bastard on top.

Fifty years on from the most traumatic night of his life, Logan is a pacifist. In the final hours of Marvel's dead heroes something so monumentally awful occurred that Wolverine will not pop his claws for any reason whatsoever. He won't even answer to the code-name Wolverine. Instead he leads a quiet life of rustic poverty as a farmer on land rented from the putrid, ruthless and redneck descendents of Bruce Banner, with a family of his own for whom he tries desperately to provide. He can't, and with the Banners wanting their month of rent or their pound of flesh it's at this pivotal juncture that an old colleague turns up on his doorstep with an offer Logan has no choice but to accept: play navigational white-walking-stick for blind former marksman Clint Barton AKA Hawkeye on a road trip from West to East Coast to deliver a package that must not be opened.

Who or what is waiting for this dysfunctional duo in the less than united states? All manner of perverse permutations of old heroes and villains, a fair few skeletons strewn across country and a good one or two in Clint's and Logan's own closets.

Cleverly thought out, really quite nasty but enormously funny as well, if I told you a slither of what's in store for you, you'd snap this book up in an instant. But then you wouldn't enjoy half the surprises we all have here. However: an arena of dinosaur-death faced by two long-term antagonists, and a very unusual symbiotic host for Venom; mothers and daughters; Mount Rushmore with a substantially different aspect, and the best use ever for Logan's healing factor which you'll need to digest for yourself. Never bite off more than you can chew - that's all I'm saying.

Also, Bill Bixby's best line has finally been called and raised:

"You shouldn't have made me angry, Logan. ...People piss themselves when I get angry."

Lonewolf and Bub: you'll see what I mean by the end.