Old Man Logan

Just when you think you've seen everything Mezco had to offer --- thanks to visiting with them at Toy Fair just a few weeks ago --- the company goes ahead and sneaks a surprise out into the wild. Though Mezco's One:12 Collective already has quite a packed slate for 2017, it turns out there's still room in the schedule for an all-new Wolverine. Or should we say, an Old Man Logan.

Over the course of this week, Marvel has been teasing a new X-Men title by unveiling a few characters that comprise the roster at a time, all leading up to the big reveal today. In July, the publisher will launch a new volume of Astonishing X-Men by Charles Soule, but unfortunately Marvel's own website neglects to inform us of which artist is involved, highlighting a systemic problem in the industry of favoring writers' contributions over those of the artists.

Since arriving in the mainstream Marvel Universe following Secret Wars, Old Man Logan has taken on a life of his own as a standout solo star, and his adventures beyond the original eight issues have been expanded upon in great detail. However, what a lot of people forget is that Mark Millar actually wrote a sequel to "Old Man Logan" at the same time as he was writing the original, as part of an experimental attempt to link his work-for-hire superhero comics with his own creator-owned franchises.

Superheroes are usually all about flying around, big fights, and being larger than life. In Old Man Logan, the outgoing creative team of Andrea Sorrentino, Jeff Lemire and Marcelo Maiolo mixes that with a slightly different approach. In this series, Logan remains pretty grounded. His costume becomes a brown leather jacket, and most of the time his fights are pretty brutal, and mostly involve people getting straight up punched in the face. And it all hinges on Sorrentino's take on Wolverine. It's leaning heavily on realism, with sharp blacks that add a noirish vibe.

Logan is in cinemas this week, and everyone's going crazy for the even-more grizzled and even more violent take on Wolverine. While the film is loosely based on Old Man Logan, a Mark Millar and Steve McNiven tale from several years ago, the comics incarnation has taken on a life of his own in recent years. Marvel has announced Ed Brisson and Mike Deodato as the new creative team on Old Man Logan title, pitting the dystopian-future version of Wolverine against The Maestro, a version of The Hulk from a very different dystopian future.

It wouldn't be a comic convention without Hasbro coming to town to show off its latest and greatest in the Marvel Legends line. It wouldn't be a comic convention without Hasbro coming to town to show off its latest and greatest in the Marvel Legends line. Though you would think the Marvel Legends team wouldn't have much left to show after the deluge of reveals from San Diego Comic-Con, the smattering of new figures unveiled at New York Comic-Con somehow managed to rival the awe of those other newcomers despite the smaller roster. We caught up with Marvel Legends senior design manager Dwight Stall to talk about the announcements, and where the line was headed in 2017 and beyond.

I'm not really sure I understand why Old Man Logan is a thing. The original series by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven is one of the most miserable and misanthropic comics you'll ever be unfortunate enough to read, and injecting that streak of vinegar into the Marvel Universe doesn't feel like much of a win. Besides, the character's main distinction from the usual Wolverine is that his hair is grey. Logan was already a grumpy old dude. Oh, and this Logan is alive. That's a pretty good distinction. This refugee from another timeline in the newly rebooted Marvel Universe allows Marvel to keep telling new Wolverine tales without hurriedly backtracking the death of the previous Wolverine, who got turned into a hood ornament not so very long ago. It's a deft bit of shuffling to create the illusion of permanent change, but if the result is that Laura Kinney gets to be Wolverine for a little bit, I'm in favor of it. Plus, this new Old Man Logan series comes from Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino, and that's a solid creative team. Maybe they can make something great from this wet wodge of unhappiness?

We were greeted with an unexpected — but totally welcome — surprise yesterday at 20th Century Fox’s Comic-Con panel. Hugh Jackman was the first to arrive on stage for the X-Men: Apocalypse portion of the evening, where he once again confirmed The Wolverine 2 as his last Logan outing. We weren’t expecting much in the way of news from the sequel, but then Jackman said three words: “Old Man Logan.”

Marvel formally unveiled its post-Secret Wars 'All New, All Different' line up on Wednesday, featuring a Marvel Universe reconfigured by the experiences of Battleworld, and an eight month time jump that allows the publisher to set up a new status quo for many of its characters. Marvel has never had a better opportunity to shake up its line, so readers had high expectations for a bold, diverse, inventive new direction. With that in mind, we're going to share the new titles with you, alongside some observations on how the new Marvel Universe is shaping up, starting with the X-Men. A lot of fans weren't sure there would still be an X-Men line coming out of Secret Wars, or that it would still share space with the rest of the main Marvel Universe, given that Fox's control of various licensing rights has led Marvel to step back from heavily promoting these characters. But the X-Men still sell comics, and Marvel is in that business, so the X-Men haven't entirely gone away, though the line is down to only six titles, with just three team books and three solo books.

Another week, another batch of Marvel promos for summer 2015 events with familiar titles: Infinity Gauntlet, House of M, Old Man Logan, Inumans: Attilan Rising. They joins a slew of other recycled titles including Armor Wars, Civil War, and Planet Hulk. Then, today, things changed up a little. Marvel sent out an email for its newest summer 2015 event in the same format as it has been (one image with no text besides a title), but it doesn't have the title of an old series, though it does share a subtitle with a series of books that started about 12 years ago. It's called simply Ultimate Universe: The End.