Invincible Iron Man #18 – World’s Most Wanted Part 11 : Kids with Guns vs. The Eternal Angel of Death

Can it really be that we are at part eleven of this World’s Most Wanted arc?  Is there any end of it in sight?  Part twelve would make for a nice hardcover compilation but for the rest of us who have slogged through this ‘bottoming out only to be reborn’ year-long saga it is all a bit much.  That goes for this issue’s title and might well serve as writer Matt Fraction’s style: all a bit much. 

The issue picks up on the flight of Tony Stark to one of his remaining repulsor stations and perhaps the one that started it all in Afghanistan.   That’s right, not Vietnam but Warren Ellis’s reboot/re jigger of some years ago which also gave us the Extremis virus.  The only development of any note in issue #17 was one of the sub-plot involving Maria Hill and the Black Widow. That sub-plot pays off in this issue in what is perhaps one of the best turns in this whole Most Wanted story if altogether yet another example of re-setting a character in compliance with the movie. Not to spoil much here but Pepper Potts pulls a fast one here on Norman Osborn & Co. and sets the character in the camp of gutsy sidekick that the movie and perhaps current sensibility can only justify as a departure from Pepper’s early days as the damsel in distress.

Tony otherwise runs on the programmatic descent to his origins and motives set by the writer for this entire storyline by rediscovering through some “kids with guns” in war ravaged Afghanistan the change he once made against war and weapons when he became Iron Man. A change by the way which is not part of the first origin story but was grafted on to the story and then simply retold as being so in both the re-launch of the comic and in the film. To be fair the convolutions of the dialog aren’t exactly making Tony a born again pacifist but he does use the word with some reverence and shame at being the war-maker. Of course this war making isn’t just about weapons manufacture but that war he waged on his fellow superheroes which I am sure that readers of this blog are as sick of me referencing as I am having throw back in fans of Iron Man issue after issue. One does not even have to think as I do that Tony has nothing to apologize for much less change to see this ongoing theme in these issues. See http://fourcolormedmon.blogspot.com/2009/08/tony-stark-is-being-disassembled.html for others picking up on this pointing to the forever rants that this comic keeps re-heating the guilt or non-guilt of Tony.

Rifter
on Aug. 27, 2009
@Vance Astro said:

” @speedlgt said:

” OMG this is to all stark defenders……………………………STOP just STOP hes been a prick and hes getting whats comming STOP IT. I always feel like I have state that I dont hate the guy just so his defenders dont make it a flame war and go all fanboy on me. Hes great I like him but hes to blame for everything and I dont see how (or that he should ever) be redemmed. so STOP your WRONG all of you…….just STOP “Stop making a big deal over it.Everytime Stark is brought up..Civil War doesn’t have to be.It’s 2009… “Woot sense  

It won’t end even when this storyline technically ends as FourColorMedia’s Avi Green shows us in the upcoming issues #20 & #21.  Until everybody gets to give Tony the ‘what for’ and  come-upance that will clear his soiled being even mindwiping him and re-writing him won’t do it all.  If it all seems a bit much it is because it is just a bit too much stretching this story and theme out to hit every part of the character so that Tony Stark’s Bush era ideology can be considered paid in full – forever.   

“He’s making this ultimate sacrifice for the good of the many and I think that’s the one of the reasons why Tony was never villainous,” explains Fraction. “He made a difficult decision and he’s owning the responsibility for it. You might have disagreed with him, but now that everything’s gone off the rails Tony’s the one cleaning it up single-handedly and is making sure no one is paying the price but him.”  

WTF? I suppose it is better than being brought before a war crimes tribunal in the Hague but this whole storyline has been just as tortuous and humiliating for this character and those that loved what he had developed into being as a multi- dimensional counter example to the otherwise flat morality of superheroes.

It’s been a hell of a year

2009 Eisner Award Winners

via icv2

Published: 07/26/2009, Last Updated: 07/27/2009 04:49am

The winners of the 2009 Eisners were announced at the San Diego Comic-Con. There weren’t a lot of surprises at the Eisners this year. Dark Horse’s Hellboy collected three awards and Chris Ware won two. DC appeared to have garnered fewer than normal, but they were big ones including “Best Writer,” “Best Continuing Series,” and “Best Publication for Kids.” As they continue their push into the world of comics, mainstream publishers made their presence felt with Harper’s Childrens Book winning two awards and Vertical earning the “Manga” award for its edition of Tezuka’s Dororo. while Abrams took home the “Best Comics-Related Book” award for Mark Evanier’s Kirby: King of Comics. And the ladies did well–Jill Thompson (“Best Painter”), Carla Speed McNeil (“Best Digital Comic” for Finder), Lynda Barry (“Best Reality-Based Work for What it Is) and Eleanor Davis all won well-deserved awards.

Here are the 2009 winners. For a complete list of Eisner Award nominees see “Eisner Nominations Released.”

Best Writer

Bill Willingham, Fables, House of Mystery (Vertigo/DC)

Best Writer/Artist

Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library (Acme)

Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team

Guy Davis, BPRD (Dark Horse)

Best Continuing Series

All Star Superman, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (DC)

Best Limited Series

Hellboy: The Crooked Man, by Mike Mignola and Richard Corben (Dark Horse)

Best New Series

Invincible Iron Man, by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larocca (Marvel)

All I am going to say for now is I just don’t get it.  Or rather I do all too well as snark boy remakes Stark in his own image.  Other news out of the Con was word on Fraction working the video game connection to Iron Man 2 so I guess that hopes for his leaving Iron Man alone are like looking at the current state of the economy.

Teen Tony: Redeemed !

Early word on this new animated series now airing on cable via the Nicktoons Network had me more than sceptical and in fact filled me with a kind of dread. On the whole Marvel has had some very iffy to down right rubbish goes at the animation interpretations of their characters over the years. This has been both in terms of animation and in the questionable level of content quality across all of their properties which in short can be summed up as bastardizations of the comic that inspired them.  The Iron Man series of the 90’sbeing just one example of the pain inducing TV that Marvel had concocted that grates on a fan of the comics and their exacting details but also insults even a child’s credulity with cheesy plots and dialogue.  Disney XD has been airing that old series and watching it now shows that it isn’t just insensibly bad but also a testament to how desperate fans of the comics can be to having any moving rendition of their beloved characters happen at all.  The dread that I felt though was not inspired by Marvel’s animation history but by Marvel’s own comics history. Avengers:Timeslide #1 and Iron Man #325 introduced to the Marvel Universe in 1996 one teen-aged Anthony Stark of Earth-96020 and Avengers Vol 1 #395 saw the death of the our earth’s Tony Stark.  To many a fan of the character it is considered the low point in the entire history of the character in terms of just about everything about it. Art, writing, convoluted story via multiple titles left readers with a mess to make sense of a character they hardly recognized anymore.  Marvel editorial was in complete meltdown at this time and not just financially.   Rebooting the whole title two years later would be sigh of relief to long time fans.

The Armored Adventures series, which airs it’s new episodes on Friday nights with repeats throughout the week, follows a teenage Tony Stark after the death of his father in a plane crash. Tony attends high school and with the help of his friends Happy Hogan, Jim Rhodes and Pepper Potts, fights as Iron Man against such published villains such as the Mandarin and Crimson Dynamo. Movie and comic bad guy, Obadiah Stane starts off the series two-parter with a familiar position in Tony’s life as second of the Stark empire and plays a similar sinister role as usurper.  I won’t go on here about the plots of that which I did watch except that it also integrates a start to larger story arc involving the Mandarin who is a mysterious unknown figure to Tony and the world at this point in the story seeking the rings of power.  The Mandarin himself as shown to the viewer is actually a character called Zhang Khan and his son Gene Khan extending the father and son theme introduced in the pilot of Tony and his father Howard.

Like so many cartoons the medium is expected to be a first-exposure reworking of the concept that inspired it that can stand on its own.  In that regard it also stands apart from any other media treatment and in this case the recent live action movie and the 2007 DVD animated film in creating its own continuity.  To be sure this is a cartoon with one ongoing story and continuity though much of it can stand on its individual episodes.  Even though only three have aired the Nicktoons website and other TV sites have made available the summaries to all 26 of the season one episodes.  With stories ahead to feature the Hulk, Black Panther and core Iron Man players like Madame Masque and A.I.M. the fans of Iron Man are in for a treat. 

If one has been watching or heard good things about the Nicktoons Wolverine and the X-men then don’t miss either as rather intelligent and fun renditions of what comic readers have already digested in their decades of following the ups and downs of both properties in the Marvel Universe.  Iron Man: The Armored Adventures in particular manages to capture some of the gee whiz aspect that often can get lost even in the comics amid all the intrigue and drama.  It will also have that added feature that DC seems to have mastered in its various animated series to appeal to fans old and new in the making in keeping both guessing about what twists are ahead on the formula and canon.  Christopher Yost now is to the Marvel properties what Paul Dini or Bruce Timm has been to the DC Universe; a comicbook geek first who wants to make great watchable animation for everyone.  The first few episodes have me already convinced that its mostly his steady grip on the show that will not disappoint.  While a part of me will always yearn for an animated version of what I have already read and more about the arms making, russkie butt-kicking womanizier Tony Stark but that just is not going to happen on something backed by the money or network to make it as it is now being made.  The truth be told that’s not the whole of the character either.  As Yost himself recently put it about his forthcoming Avengers animated series “It’s what you know and love put right on the screen.”  I have to agree that’s what he has done with Iron Man for me.

The Invincible Iron Man #14 – The Night Phantom Walks!

After lauding the arrival of George Tuska in finally establishing his style on the title in my last post this issue has him away on vacation. It says so right in the credits of the issue that identify Johnny Craig as doing a fill-in for the regular artist.  To think that creators were once expected to take vacations just like everybody else is in itself pretty remarkable as a historical note about comics and this issue.

Craig had been the artist that stepped in when Gene Colan came off the book and continued to ink much of Tuska’s subsequent penciled issues.   In terms of age and career Tuska was Craig’s senior by a full decade having worked in comics since the 40’s on strips and famously with Will Eisner’s shop and and Harry Chesler’s Fawcett comics. Craig on the other hand came to fame after the Second World War with his crisp, naturalistic approach in EC legendary horror comics like The Crypt of Terror, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear; which he also sometime scripted on all of them.

Oddly then it would be the junior that of the pair that would come off as being the more dated of the two in terms of style and even story as this issue demonstrates with its pulp magazine elements and staid stiltedness of a time passed in comics. The set-up could well that of an old-time radio adventure hero or pulp fiction story in that our millionaire hero travels to an exotic locale of the tropics and encounters strange superstitions and dangerous plots.   It could only have been more fitting if he too had been on vacation but Stark has come to the island to investigate an explosion at one of his off shore manufacturing plants as a pretense to follow Janice Cord who has come to get away from it all.  Tony Stark’s investigation leads to a surviving eyewitness of the explosion being caused by a mysterious Night Phantom and further to evidence that some sort of radioactive entity is behind the sabotage.  Early on Tony meets a prime suspect in the person of the wheel chair bound Travis Hoyt who decries Stark’s plant as ruining the island’s natural simplicity and beauty.  Passed by as a crank against progress for selfish interests it is only later when Tony’s jeep is attacked by the Night Phantom that his role becomes clear as the person behind the entity.  It turns out that Tony recovers from the assault at the home of Hoyt under the care of his guest Janice Cord.  The Cords and Hoyt it turns out have a history together as Janice’s father and Travis were once close friends thus doubling the enmity that Hoyt feels for Stark as destroyer of not only the island idyll but of Cord Industries as well.

Tony however can’t let the Night Phantom prowl the jungles while the trail is hot and the police inspector that had been aiding him in the investigation might be outmatched against the super being.  He dashes off to change into Iron Man armor and leaves Janice with her host.  Travis Hoyt however becomes totally unhinged by his rage and jealousy toward Stark and Janice’s obvious affections toward him such that he leaps up from the wheel chair after Tony has gone off into the night to seek out the Night Phantom.  In yet another plup/radio drama motif Janice is taken captive to a hidden underground lair by the now exposed villain and relates to her his story of transformation by the pool of radioactive water that he his dragging her toward with his irresistible strength and want to share with her.

Iron Man however hasn’t been idle and has found out the lair due to the radioactivity and springs into action at the fateful moment to rescue the damsel in distress from Travis’s gift.  The ensuing fight for the next two pages between the Night Phantom and Iron Man is well done if archetypal as the added danger to Janice distracts the winning hero long enough for the villain to try and make an escape.  The escape in this case is the very pool of water which empowered Hoyt and now drains with upon impact into a vortex deep below the earth taking him to his doom.

The ends on the same note that as both Janice and Tony travel back to America that he dare not indulge in expressing his true feelings for her and pursue their relationship further as they will always have the life and death nature of Iron Man before them.  If anyone could do such a story with more than adequate artistic aplomb then it was Johnny Craig as the scene where Janice discovers Hoyt’s true nature as the Night Phantom is pure horror comics.

Horror comics were near dead by time this issue hit the newsstands in 1969 long past the heyday of the 1950’s and EC Comics golden period into the near demise of Warren Comics own line of titles which counted this issue’s writer as one of its refugees.  The genre itself floundered more upon bad management rather than demand drying up and the 1970’s saw it come back as force in comic magazines a well as in traditional formatted comics. In only two short years Marvel alone would be publishing Man-Thing then The Tomb of Dracula , Ghost Rider, Werewolf by Night as well as expanding with Curtis Magazines imprint of Marvel Comics that existed from 1971 to 1980.  The genre itself picked up a new visual flair as well as depth in the writing.

Iron Man himself would stride right into the late 60’s next issue as Tuska would return to art duties on the book and the present would finally catch-up to our futuristic hero.

Invincible Iron Man #12 – World’s Most Wanted Part 5 : The High-end Technology of Ultramodern Destruction

Ah yes the Sub-Mariner and Iron Man at it again. By my count this makes for the fifth story just within the Iron Man title with additional appearances that I am not counting along with any Avengers stuff out there.

For the geek in you that’s:

Tales of Suspense Vol 1 79

Tales of Suspense Vol 1 80

 

Iron Man Vol 1 25 – This Doomed Land -This Dying Sea!

Iron Man Vol 1 54 -Sub-Mariner: Target for Death!

 

Iron Man Vol 1 120  – Layton/Michelinie arc

Iron Man Vol 1 121

Iron Man Vol 1 122 

 

Iron Man Vol 2 12 – the Reborn era

Iron Man Vol 4 12 – jumped by a remote armor

 

Iron Man Annual #10 – Atlantis Attacks!

Iron Man and Sub-Mariner Vol 1 #1 doesn’t really count as readers here will know by now.

Thanks to Dark Reign and Marvel’s 70th anniversary readers have been getting a chance to see more of Marvel’s earliest hero back in ambivalent action all over the Marvel publishing universe.  The latest encounter between the two of them came when Tony was still director of S.H.I.E.L.D. responding to Atlantian terrorism against U.S. cities.  All of Atlantis went into exile as a result of that showdown and Subby himself turned to an old ally and fellow monarch Doctor Doom for refuge.

For the Sub-Mariner though the reader will have to wait as the issue begins with the Iron Lady a.k.a. Pepper Potts going to the rescue of a school in an earthquake wearing the 1616 armor.  The weaponless armor, it is stressed, is designed for heavy rescue and recovery using repulsortechnology and magnetic fields which to an onlooking H.A.M.M.E.R. is about to be put to the test by the ruthless Norman Osborn. That is until we cut away to the doings of our hero on the run now below the Red Sea at Stark  #26 assessing his own armor post-last issue’s fight with War Machine and grand entrance that follows of Namor, the Sub-Mariner.

Like so much in the Iron Man title these days, expectations are thwarted as the scene cuts away to more about Maria Hill’s discovery at FuturePharm of the Controller setting up shop with a mind bank and a collection of mind controlled people.  Hill’s attempt at intervention backfires and rather horrifically becomes just one more of the Controller’s mind slaves. 

We get some beautiful panels of Iron Man in action with the Sub-Mariner and artist Salvador Larocca just gets better and better on this book. The retro-Armor of the Kurt Busiek era is just delightfully detailed and he is turning in some of the best Sub-Mariner since his own work on the failed Marvel imprint Tsunami retelling the Namor story for the YA/Manga market but the fight and story really lacks any real momentum here. The Iron Lady in action too is hampered by the absurd design of the armor as a womanly form distracting rather than adding to set-ups the writer is trying to deliver.

What is really happening here apart from the slow reveals of plot about the government secrets, extremis and Tony’s self-mindwipe is something that I have to give credit to a conversation I had with a friend about the Dark Reign aspect of the story. The task given to writer Matt Fraction atop his ‘redeem Iron man from Civil War‘ is also to stall for time with the character. As my friend put it: “it is not as if they are going to stop publishing a monthly Iron Man comic with the movies around but really he’s (Tony Stark) pointless right now with all this Norman Osborn stuff going on in the Marvel Universe” implying Iron Man really has no role in the larger publishing line’s overarching story and yet runs the risk of upsetting it within the Invincible Iron Man title as it was the spot that Tony Stark just occupied as the mover and shaker of the superhero status quo within the shared universe.  For the foreseeable future until Dark Reign plays itself out readers of Iron Man are going to have to content themselves with an Iron Man on the sidelines and just coping with the onslaught of trouble that being heaped on him.

To that end and the end of the issue – a bright spot of things to come features a New Avengers evil ally of Norman Osborn, The Hood and cohort Madame Masque, being called in to deliver Tony Stark’s head on a plate for a heafty bounty.

Giulietta Nefaria aka Whitney Frost will be familar to this blog’s readers already from her role as Big M, the leader of the Nefaria family of the Maggia.  I have yet to blog about her return to the pages of Iron Man as Madame Masque and the function she played therein. Her return to present day publication is welcome as it suggests a potential for developing the personal, emotional, and dare I say it, melodramatic aspect of the both the character and the title that has been sorely lacking for years.  Matt Fraction though will perhaps STILL be writing the book and that seems less hopeful for a real change in the book’s tone and direction.

The Invincible Iron Man #13 – Captives of the Controller!

As visual storytelling goes this is one of the first for George Tuska to show what he could really bring to the superhero genre and his long run on Iron Man.  While I have been posting a good deal about what writers do on comics I also should not neglect the penciler/artist design factor.  This is a long and twisting story for all of its regular 20 pages full of action.  While Tuska would draw some amazing in-panel action of the Iron Avenger in battle the panels themselves where most often in quadrilateral, trapezoid,…just about any four-sided figure other than rectangle or square. One clearly understands the tension that he was going for with such page constructions but just as often it seems overdone and even at odds with the less fraught in-panel drawings that could be downright goofy fun.

As to the story where we left it – Janice Cord and Iron Man were brought to the Sandhurst manor as captives to the Controller’s disks. Or so we were led to believe as it becomes clear just a page in that Iron Man is again up to his tricks and has been pretending to be enslaved and hauls off and belts our baddie. This fight in the lab that carries on for six more pages shows Tuska at some of his most dynamic and intense action illustration ability. He even manages to make the Iron Man rocket skates seem cool.

The Controller however gets the eventual upper hand as he trundles our hero out of his faux-castle on the hill via a trapdoor a.ka. vacuum disposal tube and dumps him into the nearby ocean.  Contenting himself with the thought that the gears of the tube have finished off Iron Man along with the drowning the Controller sets himselfupon his larger plan to enslave mankind with his mind control devices.   To this end we shift away from the revelation that Iron Man has made it to shore and doesn’t dare counter attack for fear of those already ensnared and to the Controller stopping a speeding train on its way to New York City.  The train is needed by the Controller, as we learn, to carry his massive absorbatron that will siphon off the mental energy of of the entire city without the need for the disks as well as to carry his living batteries that power his awesome strength with him.

Enter S.H.I.E.L.D. as the E.S.P. section of the organization has alerted Nick Fury and Agent Sitwell to the danger embarking on its plan.   Iron Man here has to keep SHIELD from usingdrastic measures to avert the Controller from taking control of an entire city and figures that the train itself must be halted but not destroyed all while findinga way to free those already giving him the mental energy to stand-up to Iron Man’s strength.

In the course of on again off again fighting as the train gets underway toward its target we get multiple scenes of desperate combat as the Controller seems unstoppable.  At last however we discover that Iron Man has used the skirmishes to disconnect the cars and de-power his foe as the continued to roll along.   In the end Janice is free and Tony is haunted by the prospect that this time he found a way to avert danger without sacrifice but he knows that danger will aways catch up to him and perhaps fatally with those that he cares for.  Talk about being a gloomy Gus!

Okay, so the story makes for only a modicum of sense if you look at it very closely, What are those disks for again when you have a big machine to suck energy out of the air or SHIELD showing up because the mentalists sense something big coming???  Its not totally insane and in fact it is just insane enough to make for a the wild ride that Goodwin saw as being the job he was supposed to provide readers with in picking up Iron Man every month.

The Controller himself would return in many issues and years later becoming a classic Iron Man foe but the classic combo of the talents of Goodwin and Tuska hit their stride right here with this story with their mixture of tense drama, high action and the tightrope walk over the absurd bearing the fantastic along with it on its shoulders.

Invincible Iron Man #11 – World’s Most Wanted Part 4 : Breach

Pepper Potts meets the Jarvis1616 interface and Henry Hellrung gets a visit from the fugitive Tony Stark at his AA center.  Not to put too harsh a comment on the issue but what we have here is writing for the trade with a nod to the fact that issues or chapters require some hanging element to keep the story moving.  The scenes which comprise this issue are tour through the state of affairs under the Dark Reign of Osborn with the characters that currently account for Tony’s circle of most trusted friends.  A circle consisting of Pepper Potts, Jim Rhodes, Henry Hellrung and Maria Hill which we see in flashback gathered in Tony’s office and given the elaborate e-mail drop procedure for making clandestine contact with each other should the need arise.  Fraction lays it on thick with a bit of cleverness here as the password for the mail account is T0NYW@SR1GHT maintaining the air of always thinking ahead and the arrogance that comes with being ahead of everyone else. 

What the casual reader would be looking for at of the issue is the cover advertised clash between War Machine and Iron Man which comes about from Hellrung’s contacting Rhodes via the drop system to see if  War Machine can do anything about getting Tony to turn himself into the authorities to answer to the charges made against him.  Armored up the two encounter each other in the skies as Rhodes is scanning for some activity of an Iron Man suit.  In an obligatory nod to the fact that the story is still being sold in single issues Tony explains to Jim and the reader that he can’t surrender himself to someone like Norman Osborn and not just for his personal safety.  In fact his fears extend to compromising Jim as War Machine as abetting his flight from the law and the necessary need to put on a fight between the two toward demonstrating to Osborn and H.A.M.M.E.R. that Tony is alone in his stand against the system.  In all it is still pretty cool to see the older Kurt Busiek era armor go up against the War Machine of today and make a fight of it.  As rendered by the artists Salvador Larroca and his colorist Frank D’Armata it hums with high tech glory with a chilled palette.   It’s a fight that Tony in the end can’t win but like with so much else that the writer keeps present about Tony Stark is that he has a plan, a contingency or a ploy to out think and out play his opponents.  Here it’s an escape into the ocean below the air battle while damaging the War Machine armor sufficiently to prevent pursuit. 

True to Tony’s assumption, H.A.M.M.E.R. and Norman Osborn have been tracking the fight and this leaves off the issue with further involvement of the Dark Reign conspiracy as Osborn calls in a favor with one of his cabal to get rid of Stark beneath the waves.  None other than Namor, the Sub-Mariner is tasked with finishing off our hero as the cliffhanger to the next issue.  The Sub-Mariner is just one of the issue’s revelations about enemies of old returning to the title and as we brought up to speed with what Maria Hill has been doing in a series of sequences while Tony is on the run we find her discovering at a seemingly abandoned Futurepharm facility the figure of the Controller laying in a room full of  ‘missing’ individuals confined to tanks feeding into him.

For more on the Controller just check out my recent post about his introduction in a two part-er to the Iron Man title back in 1969 which I’ll wrap next time.

Invincible Iron Man #5 – The Five Nightmares Part 5: Code Black

This issue proceeds toward the building confrontation between Tony Stark and Ezekial Stane that the readers have been led to expect as this series started. Its been an odd re-launch for the title character if not a radical re-invention. The writer, Matt Fraction, has had a number of aspects that he has been determined to bring to the fore about Iron Man in the Marvel Universe and his moral role. The hammering is some of this into place has been quite evident on the page.

Issue five of Matt Fraction’s first arc of the new Invincible Iron Manwalks right in on last issue’s cliffhanger of Stark Industries global facilities being targeted by Ezekiel Stane’s group of Stark modified tech-based terrorists. Some might find the idea of tours of world of tomorrow a funny take on the concept of Futurist PR that is both clever and natural but that just underscores how far afield Fraction has been mandated to pull the character into being now the well loved imagineer in the mode of a Walt Disney meets Steve Jobs by way of post-microsoft Bill Gates.  Stane, it goes without saying, goes in for the big kill of these facilities by going for the Long Island complex in his infiltration via a tour group and if there was any doubt about the creative intent here the t-shirt on Stane clinches the moralizing about Civil War.

Not to go un-remarked upon as well in this Tour of Stark Industries is the statue of one Isaac Stark – a WTF objectionable revival of a Marvel Holiday Special 1996/4 and underlines yet again that Tony inherited not just money but the pernicious value of a history of family genius. (could we please just for once have a hero with no inherited traits) What please does being from a long line of whatever add to a character?

With this issue we are back into the trappings of a superhero story after Fraction and Larocca wrap up the magical mystery tour of Stark Industries mission on earth of peace, love and understanding through science and technology and on to an old-fashioned straightforward hero-vs.-villain big battle.

Along with tossing over the side all the post 9/11 ethos of a greater goods by doing what is necessary the readers get images of the terrorist’s explosion in the facility in Valencia, Spain (artist Larroca’s home town), which simultaneously leaves no doubt that on one hand that yes that is what bad guys do – cause substantial civilian casualties while further establishing Ezekiel Stane as a vile threat and yet on the other hand makes such gruesomeness seem once again conventional and inevitable. This is terrorism not just as a tactic but as a human pathology that can only be staunched not eradicated. Which is what has made the character of Ezekiel Stane so very retrograde as a kind of villainy on par with Batman’s Joker sort of mad bad ‘this is part of my fun’ that has no cause much less any solution. Sure we have Ezekiel’s father death and humiliation driving these urges but urges primal they remain.

Salvador Larroca’s final battle scene art of this issue proves particularly satisfying, finally nailing the arc’s conflict with dynamic images that make the second half of the book great superhero comics. The action, power and flow of the uninterrupted fight sequence show us that his talents lend themselves to an odd realism that is Larroca overall style.  If one had to make a comparison to a now classic comic artist I would have point to George Perez although I fairly sure Marvel editorial was aiming toward Bob Layton for his clean art qualities combined with photo real detail. Perez himself really only did Iron Man in the Avengers but what particularly suggests Perez in Larroca’s work is the facial gesture.  Unlike the type action that is so winning in this issue the concern of making faces more communicative as they are in reality seems to be the shared connection. To this end it is perhaps why Larroca has resorted to photo reference to the level of photoshopping of late.

I can’t really find fault with Larroca’s intent yet it has produced a odd mixture that parallels his writer in the resulting friction between naturalism and mannerism.   This over-effect cracks the seamless quality of any simulation of reality and here that not a helpful to the storytelling by taking the reader out of the work.   If I have stressed any point in my postings it is that Iron Man comics are dependent on a kind of realism which “respects” the ontological wholeness of the reality they depict while not being entirely mechanical and allowing for the role of the imagination within the body of the work.

What Fraction and Laccoca produce is reality and comment within textual experience which apart from stepping away from a kind of neo-realism that has been traditionally the forte of the character’s construction also necessitates that one be agreement with the comments being made.  By having the elements of affirmation highlighted away from reality, the creators seek to command rather than convince what is the reality and truth are to be taken away from the experience.  This is perhaps most evident to those who don’t agree with the commentary but also points out the artificial nature of being sold a bill of goods to all.
I’ll just leave off here with a quote I came across recently while reading about filmic realism -

” Directors we label today as neorealists were a crucial part of general postwar cultural revolution which was characterized by a number of aesthetic and philosophic perspectives, all united to only by the common aspiration to view Italy without preconceptions and to develop a more honest, ethical, but no less cinematic language.”

We live in very different place and time for sure.

The Invincible Iron Man #1 – Alone Against A.I.M.!

Reading through this landmark first issue felt more like reading a last issue.  While marking  a measure of success for the character and his fans to have his own title with more pages as well as Marvel Publishing’s own expansion at the time, Colan’s departure and the diminished role of Stan Lee marks a certain high water mark for this character’s artistic rise. That however would only settle in the reader’s mind next issue as greatness was still in hand for twelve cents with this first issue.  The Lee/Goodwin plot writing would also introduce a technological theme that can be found in issues being published today.  A.I.M.’s evil plan, we find in this issue, lies in capturing Iron Man to make copies of the Armor suit and its array of technological weaponry and build an army of Iron Men.

 The head genius at A.I.M. by the name of Mordius has created a device which takes a x-ray scan of technology and then is able to replicate all the material details. By such the seeming unconscious and captive Iron Man encounters three Iron Men replicas on an island hideaway upon busting out of his confines. The fight with the Iron Men however is not an easy one though we learn that our hero had been just laying in wait to discover the purposes of his abduction and that the replication process is flawed by the protective coating on the armor rendering the high tech weapons of the armors near useless.

As Tony discovers tricking his enemy isn’t the same as defeating them as he has to use his experience and quick thinking to stay ahead of their numbers and other technology from bringing him down.  As has become familiar to readers of the title it is not the sheer might of the armor that wins the day for Tony Stark in his confrontations with his foes but by guile and competitive edge which more often then not is a hair’s breadth of difference in speed or creativity to win or its inverse of having a touch more humility or less arrogance.  The later applies here in which Mordius blows up himself and the entire island in confidence that the multiple generator capacity can more than make up for Tony’s sabotage of one or two.  There is too a certain ruthlessness in luring his foes into fatal mistakes that we don’t equate with ’superhero morality’ unless they clearly be vigilantes.  As Tony puts it near the issue’s end ” Half measures will leave AIM able to bounce back ! But I’ve got do something…!” and that’s not something that we would not expect to hear from big boy scout Superman or even Batman but would be just fine in the world of Jack Bauer.   (and people wonder where the Iron Man of Civil War came from?)

Iron Man however isn’t the only delight of this “big premiere issue” as the plight of Jasper Sitwell aboard the sinking gambling ship is a great piece of visual storytelling which pays-off a building mystery over the past few of issues of Tales of Suspenseby revealing who the Maggia boss big M is.  We discover that the alluring mystery woman among Tony’s clutch of beauties had been none other than the Big M and revives the femme fatale to this character’s title where it had been lacking since the Black Widow defected to the West.  Whatever else there is to be said about the politics of gender in fiction, the base realism and early model of Terry and the Pirates just begs for Iron Man to have his own Dragon Lady.  Issue #1 seemed off to a very good start and Tony’s women problems would only multiply from here on.

Tales of Suspense #98 – The Warrior and The Whip!

For the first time in Tales of Suspense Iron Man was bumped from the lead story of the issue in favor of Captain America. I really can’t begrudge Marvel for it as it has to be one of the best Captain America stories ever and done not coincidentally by greats themselves Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I mention this at all in this survey of Iron Man’s history because the crown of amazing fight sequences in comics art rests easily on the head of Kirby but this issue and the following one also show that even side by side Gene Colan could hold his own with the King.

Last seen aboard a Maggia run gambling ship operating in international waters, Iron Man had just been locked into a room deep below decks to face the Maggia’s Big M hired assassin: Whiplash. A near depleted Iron Man squares off against an electrified and shattering whip in a defensive posture trying to survive an onslaught of lashes. Iron Man, with no offensive weaponry, resorts to using a hologram projector to confuse Whiplash with duplicate images of himself in hopes of finding someway out of his predicament. It seems to work for a time.

At Stark Industries itself SHIELD agent Jasper Sitwell learns that Iron Man was carried away from the scene by Morgan Stark. After radioing in to SHIELD HQ and Nick Fury himself, Sitwell learns that Morgan Stark is not to be trusted and is ordered to find Iron Man as soon as possible due to the cousin’s underworld ties. While the agent is still at the plant he is beset by a bevy of beauties demanding to know where their Tony is and an exasperated fails to note what the other women do. The girlfriends wonder one particularly mystery woman trying to meet with Tony Stark.

The batteries on Iron Man’s holographic projector finally run dry as the Avenger can barely stand in his suit for lack of power. The issue hangs out doom for the hero as Big M orders Whiplash to finish Iron Man off once and for all…next issue.

The Letters Page of this issue would also note that this was Stan Lee’s last issue as scripter for Iron Man (Lee would transition to Editor keeping his hand on the tiller at Marvel) and it was the end of an era that had built a vast universe of not just characters that interacted but institutions and governments that expanded the discourse about what heroes are to a world of powers as much as being beings of power. There is also that old New York tone of dialogue that Stan made synonymous with Marvel Comics. One can hear it in the snapping lines of the women this issue on to Nick Fury’s “clam up and listen” and would Tony Stark ever again refer to himself as being “helpless as a kitten”? The next generation of writers would be just that born out of the ground that Stan had put down.