Old Man Logan's runs: the founding story of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven (2008-2009), autonomous and complete; the resumption of 2015 who imports it into the main continuity; the long series of Jeff Lemire (2016-2018); And Dead Man Logan (2018-2019), which gives it a written ending.
This file has a property that this corpus has not encountered on any other: it has a beginning and an end. The character was created in 2008 and concluded in 2019, and there is no reason to consider that anything is missing.
For a collector, this changes everything: the file is finished, and therefore truly complete.
Top 1: Mark Millar and Steve McNiven (2008-2009)
Screenwriter: Mark Millar | Designer: Steve McNiven
The founding story, published in the Wolverine series, and designed from the start as a closed story: a devastated future, a character who has given up, one last journey.
This corpus places it at the top without discussion, and for a reason which has to do with its form: it is a story autonomous, readable without knowing anything else. A rare quality in a catalog where almost everything assumes a context.
This is also what explains its distribution: it was read by people who do not read comics, which gives this file an unusual type of request.
Segments to target: the original series numbers, then the concluding volume.
Top 2: Jeff Lemire (2016-2018)
Screenwriter: Jeff Lemire
The long series which addresses the question left open by the importation of the character: what does a man from a ravaged future do when he finds himself in a present that he can still change?
The angle is right, and it gives the character a reason to exist outside of his original story: which was not obvious.
Recent and abundant period. This is the best content-price ratio in the file.
Top 3. The 2015 recovery
The moment when the character leaves the variant status of an isolated story to join the main continuity.
It is an editorial operation more than a story, but it is decisive: without it, the file would have stopped in 2009 and would never have produced its own series.
Recent issues, very popular. ⚠️ Numerous alternative covers, with poorly justified price differences.
Top 4: Dead Man Logan (2018-2019)
The series which concludes the character, deliberately and definitively.
This corpus wishes to highlight what this represents. It is extremely rare for a character in the catalog to receive a written ending rather than a simple editorial abandonment. Here, the conclusion is the very subject of the series.
Recent, abundant, and very little sought after: although it closes the whole.
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Start my trial →Top 5: Appearances in collective titles (2015-2018)
Between his own series, the character circulates in several teams of the mutant franchise.
These passages do not have the structure of the four previous segments: he is one member among others, and his particular status serves above all as a punctual spring.
This corpus mentions them for a practical reason: they often appear in advertisements under the label “Old Man Logan number”, even though they do not constitute keys in any way.
They can be collected at any price, and they are optional.
How to collect these runs
A practical remark which clearly distinguishes this file.
Unlike characters that have been around for decades, this one requires no sorting: there are no issues where he appears unimportant, no appearances scattered across entire franchises, no gray area.
Four segments, around fifty issues in total, and the whole thing tells a complete story from start to finish.
Only one of these segments is costly-the first appearance-and for reasons that this corpus examines in detail in the collection guide. Everything else belongs to recent and abundant periods.
It is, as such, one of the easiest files to complete in this corpus. The difficulty is not finding, it's deciding what you are willing to pay for a single line.
For number-by-number selection, see our key numbers and our collection guide.
Track each run and identify missing numbers with our collection management application.
If you want a single story, complete and readable without context, take Millar and McNiven's tale in a collected edition. If you want to follow the character in the present, continue with Lemire's series, the richest in content for its price. And if you want the whole file, finish with Dead Man Logan: the file is finished, hence genuinely completable, and the only real difficulty is deciding what you accept to pay for the first appearance.
Frequently asked questions
Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's story (2008-2009), published in the Wolverine series. It is self-contained and was conceived from the start as a closed story: a devastated future, a character who has given up, one last journey. It reads without knowing anything else.
In publication order: Millar and McNiven (2008-2009), the 2015 return that imports the character into the main continuity, Jeff Lemire's series (2016-2018), then Dead Man Logan (2018-2019), which concludes it all.
Yes, it is one of the easiest to finish. It has a beginning and an end, four segments and about fifty issues, with no grey zone or scattered appearances. Only one segment is costly, the first appearance; everything else belongs to recent, plentiful periods.
It deals with the question left open by the character's import: what does a man from a ruined future do when he finds himself in a present he can still change? It gives him a reason to exist outside his original story and offers the best content-for-price ratio of the file.
No. Between 2015 and 2018 the character circulates in several teams of the mutant franchise, but he is only one member among others. These issues often show up in listings under the "Old Man Logan issue" label, although they are neither keys nor essential.