Live alone in a paradise

Alternate realities are catnip to comics readers, from the imaginary tales and dream issues in classic Silver Age Superman issues to the What If? series of Marvel. The allure is obvious - take familiar characters and tropes and mix in a new scenario. With superhero comics, where Good ultimately has to triumph in a morality play, you can instead have a Greek tragedy result instead.
And tragedy and suffering are splashed all over Wolverine: Old Man Logan (2009, 224 pages), which collects six issues of the Wolverine series plus a Giant Size Old Man Logan issue that rounded out the storyline. Writer Mark Millar has put his stamp all over the Marvel universe in recent years, doing such series as Civil War. He also is well at home in ultra violence, as seen in his decidedly un-kid-friendly work on The Authority and on Marvel 1985. It is that PG-13/R rated Mark Millar who brings us the story of Wolverine 50 years from now in a dystopian, Mad Max-like future after all the super villains got smart, banded together, and in one major push attacked and killed most every superhero and took over the United States. The wreckage left behind is the most intriguing thing in Old Man Logan - the giant skeleton of Loki decaying on a Midwest battlefield under the wreckage of a seemingly transported Baxter Building, the Red Skull's trophy case of Captain America's shield, Silver Surfer's surfboard and other pelts, and the wreckage of Wolverine's life as a subsistence farmer in a West Coast desert, now committed to nonviolence and not able to make the rent payments to the Hulked-out sons and daughters of Bruce Banner who are a bunch of murderous thugs.
The story itself is a mix of road trip and Unforgiven, with Wolverine traveling from West Coast to East, seeing the ruins along the way, and his passivity - the result of a tragedy during that super villain offensive that strains credulity - being constantly challenged and tested.
And it is that testing where the story ultimately stumbles and falls, as he somewhat suddenly on a dime ends up going back to his nature as a killer and the bloodbath begins. The final issue is essentially page after page of white-haired, creased and wrinkled Logan hacking and slashing his way through Hulks Jr. and finally Banner himself in an over-the-top orgy of violence. It probably was inevitable that the story would end up here - we are talking superhero comic books, after all - but that journey, like Wolverine's, was more interesting than the destination.
Steve McNiven's art, like what he did with Civil War, is strong and clean, with some panels - like demanding you stop and linger.