Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. #35 – War Machine, Weapon of S.H.I.E.L.D. Part 3

The last issue of this Secret Invasion  tie-in saw Rhodey go down fighting Super-Skrulls in Russia and wakening to find that the Skrulls had taken him prisoner to one of their ships for dissection.   That last panel also revealed to us the extent of the as of yet unexplained physical damage and artificial replacements to his person.  Opening to the same scene of him strapped down and exposed on an operating table we see the sinister work of Skrull scientists about to begin with a scalpel when Rhodey’s now artificial eye seems to come to life.  The action that follows, and that is the main of this issue -action, follows his reversal, escape and ultimately his ass beating of his captors and their fleet attacking Russian atomic stockpiles.  Needless to say but the it does lead to the one bit of political comment in the book finds the Russian superhero team, the Winter Guard, turning on their ‘orders’ to treat War Machine as a co-equal invader and work with the hero for true heroic ends.  Crimson Dynamo in particular turns to his personal conscience and the evident “good” that War Machine is doing and contravenes his commanders.  He also delivers the dumbest line of the issue by overextending his moral choice as proof of some larger truth when he says “The world is troubled place, War Machine.  Its leaders seem to confuse arrogance with wisdom.” He follows on it with “We need good men. Men with the power to help, the freedom to act, the judgement to choose a course…and the courage to face the consequences.”  WTF! this is such a horrid moral mish mash that amounts to nothing much more than the world needs more good. 

Writer Christos Gage, having hit all the required marks for the upcoming War Machine series, somehow felt the need to say something about the Civil War era choices of which the text itself refers to thematically by using the word atonement.   Just what it is that joins or separates arrogance with wisdom we haven’t a clue in the context of what we have seen or in the speechmaking excepting that it requires good people.   If comics are about the moral education of youth then we are seriously in trouble with this muddle.  That’s it kids just be a good person and you won’t ever have to worry about doing anything bad.  Gage it seems won’t be carrying on into the the new series which will be written by Greg Pak of recent Planet Hulk fame at Marvel but one suspects that the international setting of this story arc was intentional to carry forth this message of power, freedom and judgement in righting wrongs around the world and saving it from bad people.  Sigh. 

In all this has been a very sad and sorry exit of the series Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. which at its height reveled in moral razor’s edge of power, authority and assortment of virtues all making a claim for  the good.