Long John

I don’t read any comics from “The Big 2” (Marvel or DC Comics) any more. I present this as a fact, not as braggadocio. The last major publisher series I read was Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo’s Batman from the New 52 reboot from issue #1 through to its conclusion. For awhile, I had a Marvel Unlimited subscription and dove into the X-Men archives and appreciated that service quite a bit. I know writers like Mark Waid, Jonathan Hickman, Rick Remender, and others are probably doing great things for superhero comics right now and I respect that. I just don’t read it because my interest in reading superheroes isn’t that high right now, but I’ve got nothing against those books. They just aren’t for me, at least right now.

However, because of my impressionable age at ten years old, the X-Men do hold a special place in my awareness. I will always have a bias toward them, I admit it. The books don’t particularly interest me any more (though while subscribed to Marvel Unlimited, I did read through the available All-New X-Men and a bit of Remender’s Uncanny X-Force run and liked very much what I saw), but I seem to always be ready to defend their viability and importance.

Cinematically, the X-Men have done well, though their prominence has buckled a bit with the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, the X-Men producers keep doing what they want to do, and I respect and honestly enjoy what they’ve done with the properties (between the X-Men films as well as Deadpool and The Wolverine).

The X-Men golden child, Wolverine, has even branched off into his own cinematic series with mixed results so far (of two entries). However, with the second entry, The Wolverine, directed by James Mangold (of Walk the Line), the most favorite mutant seemed to find his cinematic voice outside of the ensemble movies. The Wolverine isn’t perfect, but I think whatever dissatisfaction I have with it is borne out of old-school obstinance as well as some narrative issues, but overall, I really liked it and have been excited for its “sequel.”

By “sequel” I mean that the Wolverine movies aren’t serialized, which I applaud. They are all very separate stories doing their own things, kind of like the Indiana Jones movies.  The third and ostensibly last Wolverine movie takes place in a dystopian future. It’s based on (not an adaptation of) Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s “Old Man Logan” storyline featured in the Wolverine comics and I liked it because it was basically Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven but with Wolverine; a western with superheroes.

While I knew that this last Wolverine movie, the title of which has been revealed to simply be Logan, was based on “Old Man Logan,” I wondered how much of the tone and timbre it would have from that storyline. Namely, would it have that “western” vibe? A trailer came out today. Needless to say, I’m excited.