Old Man Logan vol. 4: Old Monsters

The first story in this volume contains something I never thought I’d see:  Good art from Felipe Andrade.  In his work on other titles like “Ultimate X-Men” and “Siege:  Battleworld” he usually took “stylistic exaggeration” to mean that he had the freedom to deliver characters that looked like twisted, misshapen lumps of their usual selves.  This time around in “Old Man Logan,” he actually buckles down and delivers familiar characters who look like how you remember them.  There’s still some exaggeration going on with his style, but that actually works out fine in a story that has the title character teaming up with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Howling Commandos to rescue Jubilee from Dracula.  You could argue that the Lord of Vampires building up his vampire army to take on humanity is too big a threat for what is basically two issues of monsters vs. vampires.  Yet writer Jeff Lemire has the good sense to not take everything completely seriously and it winds up being a fun bit of goofiness in the end.  Thanks to Andrade’s solid work as well — which is something I wasn’t expecting to ever write.

Then Andrea Sorrentino shows up for his swan song on the book and knocks it out of the park in a story that deliberately aims to confuse as it shifts between two timelines.  In one, Old Man Logan is back in the Wastelands and finds out that the Banner kid he rescued has been kidnapped by Kang and turned into a warlord.  In the other, he’s stuck on a space station with Puck fighting off an infestation of Brood.  If you can plow through the confusion that Lemire throws at you, then everything will be explained with things also being set up nicely for his final arc next volume.  The real star of the show here is Sorrentino who makes the Brood sequences as nightmarish as a (good) “Alien” movie while throwing in plenty of stylistic tricks to show that he can bring more than atmosphere to a story.  It’s going to be a tough act for the next artist(s) to follow, but at least they’ve got narrative momentum working in their favor.