Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. #29 – With Iron Hands: Part One of Four

After such a good turn at Iron Man by Daniel and Charles Knauf , Stuart Moore has come in for a four issue arc that I hope is only the four and the two return.  Which is not to slam on Moore here as he puts forth a very taut  spy/terror S.H.I.E.L.D. story which draws on a heap of elements in that past and recent history of the agency.

What I am tired of in the spy game genre however is the whole blowback theme that

seems to place whole heaps of evil doing right back in the agencies that are working to preserve national security.  What this issue seems to get right is the Tom Clancy-esque, The Unit vibe that special ops stories like this thrive on before it veers off into the spy politic.   It remains to be seen where this will go after this threat set-up and what the real villain will be in the arc but I’m assuming that less will be made of it being the work of extremist ideologies that fuel much of the world conflict of today’s international grief than comics care to look at as well as the national power plays that seem horrifically devoid of any moral standard.

Not that comics have ever been any good at looking at cultures beyond the domestic one which would be the precondition for a novelistic consideration of the origins of what and where “bad guys” are coming from.  If anything comics prefer to punt away from actual countries names time and again to some vague amalgamation of the demonized other rather than get into the details which would slow the plot down one assumes.  In the Iron Man comics history, despite its heavy political and civic realism, this goes back to even such cases where Soviet Russia, Cuba and China where hard to avoid naming directly and were when they could.  To be honest all kinds of media fictions face a lot of problems and critique in trying to address head-on real world threats and would prefer to get by on just cool lingo, smart  intrigues and bold action.  One just has to look to TV’s 24for just one example or the BBC’s Spooks (aka MI-5) to see how thorny ethnicity, culture and race become when looking at “others” being the generators of violence.

Had the current Iron man series been a product of the Cold War then perhaps Stark would be able to pull off a more Blackford Oakes kind of heroism in Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. but alas that is the mark of really good writer of today who can manage reality without falling into cliche or a politically convenient crouch.