By Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Omega level mutants — always a problem, right? They have such power, but so little control over it. What’s a government to do? Let the ticking time bomb walk around free? Hook them up with a mutant training academy? Or maybe it’s in the public interest to take ’em out. Education seems like the most humane option, but Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan 4 reminds the reader just how fucking deadly two non-Omega level mutants can be when they understand how to use their powers.

Writer Declan Shalvey smartly ties Maddie’s inorganic-teleportation powers into the carnage wrought by Wade and Logan in this issue. She literally teleports the claws off Wolverine’s knuckles and on to Deadpool’s. And Wade is pretty brutal with them claws on his hands. He murders one doctor, cuts another’s leg off, and if only the claws hadn’t been ‘ported away at the last second, he would have impaled a dude’s face with them. Brutal, but by no means expert. We don’t get the demonstration of expertise until Logan get’s his shinies back. Shalvey and artist Mike Henderson evoke the classic nine-panel layout, and rob the scene of anything but the carnage.

Each of those first six panels shows the claws doing something they ought not to be able to do. I mean, look at that first one – not only is he popping a guy’s head off, it’s not even clear which body that came from! Or that third panel: it’s like Logan is just erasing part of their bodies. It is a balletic explosion of violence, always focusing on those three blades.

Which supports Logan’s decision at the end of the issue to turn Maddie over. Maybe letting mutants realize their potential is the worst thing that can happen to them.

The conversation doesn’t stop there. What do you wanna talk about from this issue?