Life After Logan #1

This week let’s talk about Marvel’s Death of Wolverine: Life After Logan #1. This review will be a little different since this was a collection of 3 stories, all by different artists and writers. Let’s get into it.

The first story is “You,” written by Jeff Loveness, with art by Mario Del Pennino. The story opens on the abandoned Weapon X facility, now home to Cyclops (Scott Summers) and his team of X-Men. “You” is all about Scott reminiscing about his relationship with Logan. The most touching part of this story is a memory Scott has of Logan coming up to him after Jean Grey’s funeral. Scott is thinking about leaving the X-Men, and Logan tells him to stay because when the entire universe wanted her dead “I saw a man stand next to the woman he loved and said ‘No.’ That’s a man I can follow.” This line is really what I loved most about this story; it’s not how the story ends but how I almost felt it should have ended. It’s not a bad story, if you like Cyclops, (which I don’t, so overall it was mediocre for me).

The second story is “In His Honor,” written by Joshua Hale Fialkov with art by Iban Coello. This story was an automatic favorite for me. The story follows Colossus and Nightcrawler, who are on a final errand for Logan. They are in Japan en route to a memorial in honor of Logan’s love, Mariko Yashida. While they are delivering Logan’s sword under the watchful eyes of her ninja clan, Colossus slams it into her memorial and the ninjas attack. Colossus and Nightcrawler defend themselves, and the rest of the story is the two of them just beating the crap out of the ninjas. The art was crisp, the story had a meaningful middle, and allowed me to see two of my favorite mutants honoring their fallen comrade. Loved it!

The final story is “A Little Piece of You,” written by Rex Ogle with art by Patrick Scherberger. This story focused on Armor (Hisako Ichiki) raging her pain away against Wolverine’s top villains. This, however, turns out to be a Danger Room simulation, and Hellion flips the “off” switch on it. They bond, we hear a neat bit about how Logan is now a part of her psychokinetic armor, as he is now dead and her armor utilizes the dead around her somehow. I don’t know much about this character, and while I might sound glib and dismissive about this story it was actually pretty good. I didn’t much care for the art, but “A Little Piece of You” was meaningful enough to earn high marks from me.

This whole collection was pretty great. I would probably give it 3.5 out of 5. There was one story I loved, one I thought was okay, and one I honestly could have went without reading as it focused on a character I don’t care about… but overall it was a great memorial to Logan, the Wolverine.