The genre started with Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s 1956 manga Tetsujin 28-go (which was later animated in 1963 and released abroad as Gigantor to my childhood delight). While debatable, as the robot was controlled by remote instead of a cockpit in the machine it is not as if we haven’t seen both in early Iron Man comics.  After that the genre was largely defined by the more fantastical by Go Nagai’s Mazinger Z, his most famous creation, as not only the first successful Super Robot anime series, but also the pioneer of the genre staples like robots being piloted by the hero from within a cockpit.  In one sense the fantastical aspect itself replicated the whole of the superhero genre, which in coming later to Japan ordinates the superhero to science differently than it did in the Us and else where. Consider just the different histories with atomic power and one can see how the genre priorities could be arranged differently.

Anime itself has certain staples which appear in this series as a breath of fresh air to those unfamiliar with japanese action animation.  The inclusion of characters like reporter Nanami Ota and Stark subsidiary scientist Dr. Chika Tanaka play off the traditional character of Tony Stark as the cheeky and somewhat arrogant playboy genius in ways that include sexuality rather than deny it as in so much of our animation.  As types though the characters of Ota and Tanaka are extremes.  Plucky but naive novice reporter Ota gives the audience and Tony someone to connect with while being knowing.  She is the cute one of the pair that is often accompanied by the aloof and seemingly cold cypher in the pubescent male dialectic understanding of women.  Here she is played by Tanaka who is not amused by Tony’s attempts at banter to engage her interest.

Voice actor Adrian Pasdar (yes of Heroes, Castle… fame) does a good cross of Robert Downey Jr. and the more subdued Tonys in the media over the years by taking the manic down at least two or three notches to likable levels while keeping a bit of the sleazy.  The rest of the voices are right in step with anime cliché at this point and add to the very distinct quality that this is our Tony visiting Japan.  Which is what the story basically is.

Tony as Iron Man is a publicly known fact at the start of this series and is just now expanding into the japanese markets with the acquisition of Lab 23 which will be leading the production a new arc power station and showcase the Iron Man Dio, a new prototype armor, that will replace him when he soon retires. In the first episode however, the Dio goes out of control and it is up to Tony as Iron Man to stop it along with an organization, introduced here, producing a number of tech baddies called the Zodiac and later revealed as an offshoot of Marvel Comic’s A.I.M.  It dovetails with much of Iron Man continuity so that anyone who is either reading the comics or seen the movie can walk in a see much the same character. It only makes the usual departure over the origin of Iron Man giving us yet another rendition of his capture by some sort of Warlord and escape with the help of another.  The arc of the series is getting the arc reactor to working levels for Japan’s benefit and free of the saboteurs.

There is in words much to love about this series as an adult Tony Stark taking on new threats each week in action that ranks up there with many a cartoon that is already on TV.  It might not be breaking any ground visually or even in story but as a fusion it is quite successful.  Produced by stalwart japanese animation company Madhouse it might even be considered a lesser work for anime buffs.  Certainly the fight sequences are abrupt and somewhat predictable and just as a matter of comparison the Armored Adventures is far more detailed and for me exciting.  Madhouse has been around for quite sometime and produced various levels of work over the now decades of its existence.  So it sort begs the question of why hasn’t something like this show happened about ten years ago already?

Much of the answer for that lies with Marvel getting its house in order and the legacy of its own animation company effort.  The fact this is overdue should not prevent one from checking it out and even enjoying it as I have.  With the comic in the hands of Fraction still it is a great way to trill to some classic Iron Man and tie into a universe at the same time.

Adrian Pasdar – Tony Stark / Iron Man
Laura Bailey – Dr. Chika Tanaka
Eden Riegel – Nanami Ota
Travis Willingham - Captain Nagato Sakurai
Kyle Hebert – Yinsen / Iron Man Dio
Neil Kaplan – Minister of Defense Kuroda/Rasetsu
Cindy Robinson – Pepper Potts
Milo Ventimiglia – Wolverine
Daran Norris – Editor Nomura/TokyoJournal
Ben Diskin - Ichiro Masuda

Spencer works to summarize the events of the first four issues while gearing up the next stage of the conflict. And Marvel it seems is also trying to make of for it too by publishing this week an issue called:

Even without it, the recapping of  material is handled well enough, and the character banter prevents the exposition from feeling too unnatural or heavy-handed. Spencer is able to find a bit of time to highlight all of Rhodey’s personal relationships in the series, from Tony Stark to Suzi Endo to his trio of military minions. In fact even at the shortened 20 pages of $2.99 book it seems like he is burning them off with filler panels as much as doing character work.  The final pages, Spencer finally gets the new  armor in action and in Paris, France which has so far nothing to do with the Invincible Iron Man‘s recent adventures there.

With only one artist doing the art we have none of shifts in tones that prior issues provided. While Kano was one of my favored artists of the three ( his figure and face work go in two different directions as the faces get too much and the bodies in space and action get too little. Then again he is tasked with by the writer to almost no dialogue and telling the story is competently told. His action sequences flow well if lacking umph and pow. Kano’s handling of the armor and tech designs is a little less impressive, but the new War Machine design lends itself to heavy caricature rather than glitter so it’s not the 2.0 armor that looks bad but the robots being fought coming off worse.

Spencer knows that his real knack is a tight character sequence and the scripts work up from this and they benefit from visuals to back it up. The story here sputters to an almost abrupt conclusion in the final two pages, as if it has almost given us too much and needs to save itself for the next issue. Regardless, this point one reads as nearly essential to getting back on board of Iron Man 2.0 and living up to its initial promise.

As to that gate to hell thing?  Back in the now ended Immortal Iron Fist series closing the gate to the eighth city supposedly happened in issue #25 after the defeat of Changming but how this was so was quite murky with this supposedly one way portal. Here the seven Weapons begin to focus their chi in unison as they had to enter the Eighth City but Iron Fist is suddenly sort-of possessed by Agamotto (as revealed by Dr. Strange at the end of the issue), and he won’t let them get their mojo together to close the gate.

Iron Fist makes short work of the six Immortal Weapons, and finally true to the Prince of Orphans intuition, Jim has a crucial role to play in this fight.  Again the art here is not up to delivering martial arts action anyway. He engages Iron Fist with some of the new armor’s cooler features like  Ghost Tech (which lets objects phase through him) and Stealth Mode (which turns him invisible), but to little effect.  Stepping up the game given the stakes, Jim prepares to unleash literally his big guns  at the behest of the possessed Danny, but as he fires, he is unknowingly mystically enhanced by Dr. Strange, and Danny is knocked out and the Gate to Hell closes.

The epilogue conversation between Dr. Strange and his assistant Wong keeps the mystery of the possession going as it suggest that larger forces are at work in an interdimensional conflict because even Strange himself felt that he was being guided by something in stopping the Iron Fist.  Where that story will play out is unclear even though they plug a Sun Wukong Fear Itself one shot issue at the end.  The additional plug for the “Palmer Addley Lives!”  in the next 2.0 issues isn’t near as important as the ad pages which let the reader know that if you want to gat back to the story from issue #4 you are going to need a #7.1 and then #8.

On the whole it is a pretty shabby 2.0/Warmachine  story and while ‘annoying’ is one of the features of the Monkey King they get spot on it doesn’t entertain very much or add anything to the Fear Itself story either.

Even as I try to write this out, it really does not make ant more sense than the turgid page below which is in the opening pages of this issue …and that is before it gets even weirder with the foul-mouthed dwarves. Firstly, to speak of one’s sobriety as something valuable to oneself is far too much of an abstraction of oneself for most people let alone for one who is written  by the same author as an otherwise self-centered jerk.  However from the movie on down to the version Fraction writes built on a Addictive Personality profile has very little to do with genius except for the hyperactivity. Were we to take this as just this page’s fact there is the matter of the facts of the recent issues which show is lack of self-awareness like his recent offending of Pepper to his utter lack dignity before villains like Doc Ock to win the day. There is also the facts of much else of the “classic” profile that seems too inconvenient and left out like : The report finds that there are several ”significant personality factors” that can contribute to addiction:

- Impulsive behavior, difficulty in delaying gratification, an antisocial personality and a disposition toward sensation seeking.
- A high value on nonconformity combined with a weak commitment to the goals for achievement valued by the society.
- A sense of social alienation and a general tolerance for deviance.
- A sense of heightened stress. This may help explain why adolescence and other stressful transition periods are often associated with the most severe drug and alcohol problems.

All of which is supposed to be triggered by the immensity of immortals like Thor and Odin being gods not just superhuman.  As a tie-in with Fear Itself and its own conceits about the overwhelming power and the collapse of confidence brought on by the return of ancient gods bringing death and destruction to earth we have writer of both, Fraction, trying to bring a science hero in line with the awe and supernatural of the threat he has set down as insurmountable by mere mortal means. The artificality of the setting and the character reaks worse than a sotted retch.

The issue really doesn’t have much of a main plot apart from Tony winning over the hearts of the dwarves of Svartalfheim through brawls, drinking and genius.  All of the action really is back in the real world where both Pepper and the Hammer women are about to converge on Paris to pick up where both of their company’s main assets recently faced off with the stone cold killer that was the Grey Gargoyle and is now Mokk: Breaker of Faith (one of the Serpent’s Worthy).

As I have noted before in other work by Fraction the logic of much ideas is not progressive or linear as much as it is associative through a collection of ideas that cluster into an outcome.  Here we can take the subtitle of the Apostate, the breaker of faith and Tony’s offering to the Gods he claims he does not believe in and out of that we are supposed to get what? that Tony really is a man of  faith is not a religious man per se?  It is just plain ridiculous and really just a way to get Tony to hit rock bottom as has been espoused as one of the goals of the run by the writer to show us the depth of the man and the heroism to make a comeback.

This series has lost all sense of delivering a hero who is accomplished and confident and almost treats that with a kind of contempt as the one theme that has been at the forefront of the character concept has been redemption.  Redemption after all can’t take place when a character feels and acts like they have nothing to make up to the world for.   To writers like Fraction who see Tony as an extension of U.S. superpower policy however oh yes he does have a lot to atone for and change into.

In a way this was an inevitable point and theme in that  Redemption is a religious concept referring to forgiveness or absolution for past sins or errors and protection from damnation, eternal or temporary, generally through sacrifice.  Even if we accept that Tony’s redemption is secular we already know that this is something that was tacked on to the character well back in the 1970′s and not part of the original character which regarded the Cold War as a moral and just reaction.  It was only in the 1970′s and along with turn against Vietnam that the use of violence to maintain peace was called into question.  Redemptive violence has an important place in the Bible’s narratives of conquest, national security, and moral purification, and sits incoherently beside biblical messages of acceptance, coexistence, and love.   The later values being hallmarks of the peace movement and the injection into the narrative of Tony Stark the theme of “they shall beat their swords into plowshares.”  Without violence however superhero comics would start to be like indy comics and a major publishers need to do better than have comics featuring hugs.  The American superhero story portrays someone blessed with gifts of moral and physical perfection. He  rescues/saves/defends  communities through violence whose institutions, laws, and leaders have failed in confronting a clearly defined threat. The hero must rise above those failures and rescue the community — sometimes violating the law in some way or just nearly doing so and thus these heroes are not full members of their community. The disguise or alter ego of some sort is part of this because the failed societies around them would persecute them if they could identify them along with their enemies.

Consider the rejection of weapons making by Stark and Stark industries and the rededication of his company to making people’s lives better as “absolution for past sins or errors” and we again have the subversion of the technological aspect of modernity and the military industrial complex that accompanied it.  It was the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) within DARPA, with a mandate to interconnect the United States Department of Defense’s main computers that gave us the internet as much as we like to believe that the computer age is thanks to maverick minds out to create a better future from their garages.  It was a theme that issue #501 took up as well to deliver the new package that is Tony that heroically rejects the cold war hero and  its affirmation of American centrality to the world’s hopes through its power.

To get to that thought however it is going to take an insane inversion through lalaland holding the hand of drunk dwarves.  That is where we find Tony Stark ready to make weapons again for the good of all with the gods’ blessing.   Which suggest that redemptive violence is possible but only to those who face such huge forces and not those that live within a world where sobriety is possible as well.  To call this a conclusion however would be to imply logic when in the truth it is really a case of conditioning through associative learning.  To which the reasoning reader has to say – enough.

Like the other stories that make up this quest, the two in this issue are a mix of nostalgia from creators who were either spectators or actual participants in that Marvel history we are revisiting. With this first story we have the combination of both as veteran X-men writer Louise Simonson teams-up with a contemporary artist with a fluid but slightly retro style. Marvel readers will recognize Nauck perhaps most from his Amazing Spider-Man #583: the Spider-Man/Barack Obama issue but he has done work for years and has a command of the classic style and pace. I particularly love his scowling Iron Man faceplate throughout the story and all of the art, while conventional to the period, has an extra sizzle that advances in printing and coloring notch up for extra enjoyment. Heck even Dazzler looks pretty hot too.

As an entry point, the picking up on the Hellfire Club’s attacks on the mutant Dazzler after her first appearance in Uncanny X-Men #130 (February 1980) is a little repetitive but exact to place us in history.  For once in this series and in quite some time in the pages of a Marvel comic do we have an on panel footnote telling us an issue reference.  The story itself turns on breaking into the Hellfire Club with the help of Dazzler in an effort to access the Time Machine component that is being held by the Club’s Inner Circle. Apart from touching on Dazzler we are being taken back to perhaps the most well-regarded points in X-men history as well as the The Hellfire Club and its Inner Circle were introduced in “The Dark Phoenix Saga”, attempting to subvert the X-Men’s Jean Grey and her growing powers. And while Simonson did not write the The Dark Phoenix Saga as editor on Uncanny X-Men for almost four years (#137–182) she also edited another X-Men title for almost 2 years before becoming a writer on X-force.

I for one was actually dreading a team-up with Dazzler simply because to my mind she was always a character that one associated with the cheapest of Marvel’s creative impulses to hone in on fads and expand the number of titles with knock-offs and spin-offs. It didn’t help that along with other shoddy intros of new characters like New Warriors they were taking on the top villains of the Marvel Universe and would define “pimping” and “pwning” for Marvel readers who weren’t new to the meta-narritive.  In other words you didn’t have to hate Disco to hate even  the pretense of glitzy and vapid new generation trying to replace the prior era’s contributions.  And since even when she first appeared way back in 1980 Disco was already on the wane even is one wasn’t a Hard Rock true believer. Fact is Alison Blaire a.k.a. Dazzler as icon for difference and talent had more in common with American Idol before there was an Idol fame machine and now shares a fan base with those that watched the TV series Fame or today’s Glee.  While not a fan myself of any of these shows this story still proved to be action packed and rollicking because it doesn’t dwell on mopey lyrics yet credibly gives us a moment of Alison’s star charisma.  Sometimes a writer succeeds in knowing what not to write as they do in the writing

Iron Man’s mission seems near complete by this story’s end by seeing off Dazzler and while the expert hand of Simonson has given expert voice to X-men foes the actual X-men of yore are handed off to the next story as Iron Man is captured by the Hellfire Club’s Sebastian Shaw.

The Iron Age: Bad Moon Rising
Rob Williams – Writer,  Rob De La Torre – Artist
If there is a lead writer on this mini-series then it would be Rob Williams who did the Alpha issue and the Captain Britain story in addition to this one. We will also have his finale in Omega but as to what we get in this moody encounter with the X-men shows that he is more at home with artists setting a tone. This work to the good here as trying recreate the classic created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne with Iron Man would be pointless. Instead of redoing Uncanny X-Men #133 (May 1980) the darker edgy aspect of the encounter is heightened. Credit to Rob De La Torre for pulling off an otherwise uninteresting interlude within the Hellfire club as they seek rescue Jean. William however hang a lamp on the plot point near the issues end regarding the non-randomness of Tony’s journey through time to recover the Time Machine parts. Despite the Dark Phoenix’s interference in destroying the now complete machine and some opaque references to time and fate the reader is left with the idea that all is not lost however it might look like such.

As a sort of end before the end these numbered issues of the Iron Age have been a fifty-fifty affair as they connect on one level or succeed in one of the two stories to engage the read before the eye rolling can begin. The other half is quite useless except as a trip down memory lane and consider old and new comics capacity for hackery.  One never feels quite cheated though for the experience as so that is a measure of success.  I await the next issue.

This Iron Age has turned up as a far more fractured project than I expected but then again that proves to be a good thing as the stories are far more uneven and mixed in personal satisfactions than a more single or  dominant voice might have proven in different eras and with the different characters. What the reader gets therefore are shards of nostalgia that thematically reflect the fractured time of the overarching story while getting to indulge in the writer’s and period’s conceptions of a past.  Either as the excuse or as the larger story driving the three issue mini series,  Tony Stark is travelling back through time to save the world in the future which is his and our present day. He needs to gather pieces of Doctor Doom’s Time Platform in order to return to the future – to stop the destruction of the world by the Dark Phoenix of the acclaimed X-men storyline.

In this first sub-story we are in the hands of an Iron Man writer who while a contemporary writer also knows his Avengers history. It is however this contemporaneity that is the biggest drag on an otherwise faithful return to what many regard as a high point in the long history of Avengers’ adventures complete with Tom Palmer inks.  In particular this point in time seems to be set after The Avengers #232 (June 1983) period where Stark and Pym have quit the team due to their personal failings and Hawkeye has a cast on his leg. Palmer did not work on those issues but then-writer Roger Stern was setting for the title a defining run for a generation of readers which Palmer would be part of just a short while later. 

It may have been a great period for The Avengers but as noted the “Friends” of the sub-title is almost ironic as far as Iron Man is concerned.  As the issue shows at the onset, Tony at the height of his drinking problem during this time and getting help from his then early 80′s self is pointless. He tries to enlist the help of the Avengers to recover the time travel elements, who consist of She-Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Wasp, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), and new member Starfox. If we are just looking at the panels the art and dialog of the old books we can see that are captured quite well.  Thor in particular struck me as so of the period that it started to take me back fondly as well. The parts however do not make the whole. 

While Stern himself was on a kick of redemption for Pym just before this point in Avenger’s time  this story follows on the mistaken notion that flawed characters are damaged characters or that characters may have committed such acts as they can no longer be considered  heroes even though they remain superpowered.  Only by repenting, denouncing oneself and eventually making sacrifices and heroic action that reverses the “mistakes” does  a character stand a chance of re-entering the pantheon of Superheroes.   To some, I must add, but not this reader heroes stand apart from or rise above humanity.  While such writing  may hold a  certain lurid interest in characters finding triumphs over their dark natures or past that’s not what Iron Man is about or even much of Marvel’s characters.  Contrary to what you may have heard or read, Iron Man is not about overcoming being a weapons dealer or his alcoholism.  In fact making things that kill some people or even being an insensate ass through an addiction are not moral conditions in the construct of the character but a truth.  There were always intended to deliver a humanity about the characters whose impulses were not to be denied but directed.  So rather than setting the characters apart from everyone else as the noir detective ‘Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.’ these were intended to be identifiable superpowered persons.

To see as one does in this story both Pym and Tony wringing their hands and hoping and knowing that rising above such selfs is the mark of being a hero is just sickening with its sanctimonious editorializing and its deliberate construction as something to be overturned.  In the end knowing that Tony was once a drunk and then kicked it to better kick butt is not what makes him so compelling as knowing that what makes him a sometime drunk and a genius is also what makes him Iron Man.

The second sub- story  by  the british Williams and art by Ben Oliver is a much darker narrative and visual. The feel is distinctly different from the first full length story. Perhaps it’s the echo of Civil War here and the strident connection with early eighties anti-Thatcherite politics and our own anti-Neocon epic but the background makes this both seem personal and indulgent for the writer. 

The villan then was a mad member of Parliament called of James Jaspers the 238-universe who successfully campaigned for the outlawing of superheroes. He then created The Fury, a highly adaptable android created to exterminate superheroes. Within two years all the superhumans of the world  had been killed by the Fury. A proper 616 universe Jaspers then appeared in the UK’s  Daredevils Vol 1 #9 September, 1983 written by a then obscure writer named Alan Moore.  Moore’s politics however weren’t any more obscure than a New Statesmen editorial and equating the Prime Minister with reality altering villiany is as plain as one can make it.

James Jaspers here has called for all mutants to be regulated and rounded up in England. Agents of S.T.R.I.K.E. (UK’s version of S.H.I.E.L.D.), under the command of Vixen, are rounding up mutants in the streets of London when Captain Britain shows up to help the innocent citizens. He mistakes Iron Man for one of them and accidentally destroys his homing device, which allows Stark to travel to the next Platform piece.

He manages to fix it and locate the other piece in this timeline – it’s inside S.T.R.I.K.E. Headquarters. Managing to infiltrate the secure location, he not only finds the piece, but finds something wholly unexpected – Donald Birch, the man who brought the destruction upon the Earth.  Moralizing and time travel have gone together since the “No Time Like the Past” episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. Coming as it does atop the said convention of wrong and evil Jasper’s war against a class of people the ethical conflation here is the like means and ends question which comes up in debates about if Killing even Hitler is a wrong as in a case like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The Captain Britain tale has even more moralistic overtones than the Avengers story, both for Stark and for Captain Britain himself. However the political nostalgia creates such a conflation with persons, actions and ideals which people still get mixed up over even when talking about Civil War. While both stories were good on their own, the first one has a deeper historical resonance to it coming from a powerful period in Marvel history that U.S. readers are bound to appreciate more.

The Iron Age: On 42nd Street…
Jen Van Meter – Writer
Nick Dragotta – Artist

This is another post- Iron Man Vol 1 # 169 (1983) sub-story and after the fall of Stark to Stane but otherwise a more exact point in comic continuity I can’t figure.  Luke Cage has a serious mad on toward Tony Stark and Iron Man throughout and much of the story involves just why Tony would need the help of Heroes for Hire rather than that of his own bodyguard to track down this stolen tech that he claims he is looking for.  That’s not much to hold up a story which is nothing more than  perfunctory fight sequences with street level tech villains like the Scorpion and the Tinkerer in addition to seeing Luke Cage again in his tiara and yellow shirt. The only bright spot are the moments where Iron Fist pieces together that the Tony Stark they encounter is not the Tony that had recently torn up Times square but really that is just more pimping of the Iron Fist’s insight that the old Heroes for Hire title rode in on as superpowered Private Investigators amid the pop culture swirl of TV shows like Magnum P.I.,  Simon and Simon or even Miami Vice that were buddy shows as much as mysteries.  In the end Tony time jumps and is another step closer to building a time machine he can control which will let him stop the end of everything.

Iron Age: Johnny Storm, Super Star
Elliot Kalan – Writer
Ron Frenz – Pencils
Sal Buscema – Inks

It really can’t be much of a spoiler here to note that the nostalgia in this sub-story might well be for the period that we are in as much as it is for the era visited in the story.  As readers of Marvel comics probably know the death of Johnny Storm aka the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch in 2011 will be as dated as the armor that Tony wears at this time before too long as being dead in comics is period not a lasting condition.   The pathos on display here by Tony for the departed hero has yet to happen in his time will be like the fashion of this story; as passing thing.

Like costumes worn, be it red FF uniforms or Armor with nose pieces,  nostalgia builds itself around a period in time which we can recall with details that separate it from the steam of time that leads it right up to the present or constants. Comic art styles too can be dated to periods of both popularity and proliferate so bringing in both Frenz and especially Sal Buscema  is a master stroke in capturing the mid 70′s figuration and action. The appearance of Doctor Doom is bound to take one back to Fantastic Four Vol 1 #157 of April, 1975 though it appears that this is set after #158 just before Johnny goes back to wearing the blue uniform.  John Buscema, the older brother of Sal, did some FF issues during this period and in addition to influencing a whole generation of artists through  his How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way (Marvel Fireside Books, 1978), clearly had a lot in common with his brother’s style.  Sal worked on other titles in the 70′s but also was inking others’ work and would much later work on an Englehart scripted run on Fantastic Four.

As to plot it just gets the reader from point A to point B as Tony is captured by Doctor Doom in Central Park then escapes from the  Latverian embassy to don the retro armor and enlist the help of the FF toward breaking back in to get the armor and the Time travel part that will send him on to the rest of his puzzle piece hunt.  Again it is not the story or the writing that makes any of these sub-stories fun or thoughtful about times past it is the period itself and if it touches with your own memories of Marvel reading.  Mine goes to this FF period far more than the Iron Fist or Power Man and thus was worth the trip even if it is pretty mindless and contrived as I am sure a lot from the period was as well.

I am not sure what to expect from the next Iron Age issue except more mixed results for good and ill.   See you then.

In Invincible Iron Man #504 we learned that  it was the Grey Gargoyle who had found one of the  hammers of Fear  and started turning all of the denizens of Paris  into stone with his now enhanced abilities.  Abilities which also pumped up his strength enough to pound the holy heck out of Iron Man and thus Tony into unconsciousness as they fought amidst the growing rubble that were once people. As cliffhangers go it was sort of expected that something or someone would get Tony back on his feet to rally against the seeming unbeatable.

That is not exactly how this second issue of this tie-in begins though but rather it begins with teenaged Tony Stark conversing with his father about the building and use of a Neutron bomb and the question of humane war.  Then we get on to a pile of what were once human beings in the present day.  Then we get on with the fight with the rune spouting creature that was once Gargoyle.

In case you haven’t quite gotten all the associations at this point the situation is grim and brutal, and since the creature can’t talk, Tony provides us with the conversation/narration that further spells it out for us.  That comes as close as one gets these days to thought balloons but unlike in decades past where writers simply gilded the lily our writer Fraction can’t resist here with overdoing the themes of a story to the point of nonsense.   He goes on how “this is something monstrous and magical. Beyond science; beyond reason. This is the face of a miracle.” to the point of losing meaning and trying to bridge a unbridgable gap in the logic of his story and its collection of themes.

It seems just odd to me to use the word “miracle” here with mass murder however much Tony may feel he is out of his depth here but oddity is not something to stand in the way of making a Fraction story hold together its motives and actions.  OK! Mr. Fraction thanks for the reminder that science hero Tony Stark is up against the power of gods. But before getting on with that we do get a bit of a break in the fight with switch in scene to Seattle as Bethany Cabe makes her position within Stark Resilient known to the rest of the employees.  As the new head of security she points out how lack things have been and how things are going to change even to a less than pleased Pepper Potts.  Steaming Pepper gets this issue extra points along with getting to actually see Bethany again in an Iron Man comic.

Then we get back to Paris and the ill-fated intervention of Detroit Steel in the fight between Iron Man and the Grey Gargoyle.  It brings us back to the dire and deadly real as the fight goes on for some pages and culminates in death and a narrow victory of sorts that lets Tony leave the field of battle with his own wounds both physical and psychological.

 On the whole this  is one of the best tie-ins with Fraction’s Fear Itself event. He is telling an epic story that here intrudes on realism rather than as in the main series itself or in some of the other tie-ins  just insists on the fantastical being understood as real and therefore realism.  As I have noted before, Iron Man has a claim on realism that other superheroes quickly step out and away from via its ongoing science fictional premise.  Invincible Iron Man is where the reader can get more depth in terms of how big and impactful the threat these hammer wielders are; and what kind of chance even a big time hero like Iron Man stands against this threat because of the scale of the human measured against it. Invincible Iron Man #505 follows well from the last issue in giving readers an action packed look into what one earth’s mightiest heroes is facing. And it doesn’t have to rip anyone’s arm off to do it though it stoops to killing someone recognizable too.

Some of Salvador Larroca’s great panels in #505 really sell the story as a human being in a horrific situation by making the horror so clear, photographically clear. Be it the panel of Iron Man puking inside of his helmet to Iron Man slicing into the Grey Gargoyle’s head and even the  dead statue-fied people and Nicole Kidman-ish Pepper Potts all register on the human eye as something one might see through a camera’s lens. This faculty lets us down however in telling us what we need to know at the issue’s end as Tony comes back to the offices of Stark resilient and leaves with something under his arm.  If I had not read Fear Itself #4 not long after this issue I might still be wondering what the heck.  The mystery object that takes precedence over actually fixing the now damaged armor is a bottle of alcohol.  Tony flys off with it at the end of the issue with little sense of dread or intent for the reader.  The panels all have the clues and sequence into a continuity yet what the sense of it is really is more in the mind of Matt Fraction than something we might call realism or psychology.

For those that haven’t gotten Fear Itself #4 the bottle is not just a coping reflex and relapse of his alcoholism buy a befuddled attempt to offer a sort of sacrifice to Odin the Asgardian god in that issue of himself or his sobriety.  Really that’s the best I can make sense of what he is up to but in truth is just rings as false and forced as I am describing it.  It is as if Fraction himself couldn’t bring himself to put it in the Iron Man comic itself because it fails the otherwise Hyperrealism standard that the comic has set for itself.

Keeping it Hyperreal

Check out the interview with Iron Man: Armored Adventures season two story editor Brandon Auman as he talks to Marvel Animation Age about the teenaged Tony Stark’s upcoming episodes. More episodes and more Marvel U crossover are on the slate so tune in if the comic has been getting you down.

As shown here and in Fear Itself #2   there are supercharged hammers falling out of the sky all over the world, seven to be exact  although this issue only shows us four. Iron Man, not exactly surprisingly given the swank factor, ”volunteers” to go to Paris to check that one out as their effects are starting to be known across the globe.  What we know from other titles in the event is that these hammers are recruiting tools for forming a group of the Worthy serving Fear.

It just so happens that a French man Grey Gargoyle, a long time super-villian to many heroes and Iron Man, is in Paris the night a hammer crashes to earth in the city. Iron Man arrives in Paris to find every living creature has been turned to stone. The faces of the terrified civilians are horrificly frozen and rendered by artist Salvador Larroca with individuality and a kind of realism that has been one of the strengths of his run on this title. Iron Man finds someone who has somehow survived the transformation, but they are discovered by a creature with glowing eyes and wielding a hammer. The monster freezes the survivor and smashes him into pieces. Iron Man engages the creature as of yet not connecting him to his former adversary, but nothing he does has any effect except in causing collateral damage. As Iron Man smashes through the literaly petrified people, Tony reminds us and himself in the scripted word balloons that these aren’t just statues… They are the bodies of people. When he smashes one, he assumes he is killing the hapless victim trapped in stone. Tony slowly realizes this ruthless and cold beast was once the Grey Gargoyle.

As Tony fights the amped up Gargoyle, Pepper gets in touch with Bethany Cabe in person as per the issue’s opening  dialogue over the security of Stark Resilient despite Pepper’s protests.  We really don’t get to see much of Bethany but fans like myself have been clamoring for her return to the comic on message boards and in blogs like this one so just having here mentioned was a lift.  I grant that she have been a “proxy ginger” but at least she was a modern and independent woman where many of us have despaired at the forced and movie driven use of Pepper Potts in the same which she never was in the comics.  (more on this if and when she does return)

Back in France, Tony’s fight does not go well with the hammer wielder while being immune to the petrification he is battered into unconsciousness by the hammer and eventually awakens in a massive pile of statues reminding him of the horror that these are bodies stacked on top of each other.

Matt Fraction’s writing  like in the overall event has been battering us with how deathly real and horrible the impact of these creature has been but as of yet he has only succeeded in this his most experienced title.  Realism depends on relatable scale and consequence and while my quote from the Hurting still holds for the rest of this event and its relationship to comic book realism this one slips that conundrum as well as Civil War did. This is a paced, sobering and ultimately horrific story tying into the Fear Itself story. We also have a lot of Iron Man in this issue which other tie-ins don’t do and a lot of fighting with the new Grey Gargoyle. There’s a real sense of fear in this book as Tony does seem up against it with this altered Grey Gargoyle. Fraction’s scripting has been from the start on the title been, punningly, hammering each turn and note of the story as if to say what needs to be said at the moment to elicit the response or recognition that high-profile character is supposed to have following the movie product.  In fact it has read like so much like a product that we have difficulty getting simply lost in the story itself.  This superhero story though in telling us what to feel, like dread and fear, is not over burdened with a lot of the requisites that have come before.

As noted this dread and fear is sold by Salvador Larroca. I came to really like Larroca’s art on his Namor series back in 2003. Then as now his style has elements of the great George Pérez in his ability to use the face and body to express a mental state as if it were a snapshot. He has such a tangible quality that mixes well with the fantastic such that one could believe that they are touching the page, one can feel whatever it is that he’s drawn. Of course this is in large part due to the artist’s style working with current coloring and printing with its gloss and rich palette that has a shade and gleam that delivers water and metals so in keeping with our expectation. If it’s someone’s face we expect the smooth of the to skin to grade not angle. If it’s Iron Man we are looking at, we expect to feel a buffed sleek metal of some kind. In this issue, I expected to touch one of those petrified people and feel the cold grit of stone. Nothing, though, matches the freaky expressions of the victims when they were frozen for the art is doing double duty here by using something that the medium as a whole so often must not dwell on and that is the stillness of the panel frame. There’s so much uneasiness as I read and looked at this comic that I have to say this is one of the most effective comics I’ve read.

This comic should certainly please those who have been loving the Matt Fraction Iron Man and as the comic detours into this event it hardly seems like a break at all.  While my hopes for a deeper insight into the deepest fears of the characters of these comics will be in vain I am still going to be looking forward to the next issue and hoping that this event will signal

However before you can say FRBXP! in runes we get an aside which builds what we already suspected was the main point of this outing with Greithoth:Breaker of Wills and Skirn: Breaker of Men and that was introducing  Marvel’s version of the Monkey King a.k.a. Sun Wukong.  Known as main character in the classical Chinese epic novel Journey to the West and recent film with Jackie Chan, The Forbidden Kingdom with versions in a multitude of media there is even the further connection to the adventures of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey-god of India.  I suppose its was about time that Marvel got around to having a Trickster archetype in its comics as good guy.  That Spider-fella seems either forgotten or like X-men you can never have enough of them under copyright.

That’s about it as the two Worthies seem to make short work of the team assembled against them and we come back to Steve Rogers being briefed by Stephen Strange in whatever HQ they are in about their real problem being not just the hammers but Iron Fist as well. As cliff hangers go it is a  nice ominous touch which is the issue’s strongest moment but again that may also be the art helping it along.  Not much else here I am afriad  Ariel Olivetti’s art is just wrong for this Martial Arts heavy book and the scenes where gods, kung fu and Hi tech collide do not work very well and it seems like he knows it as well.