Comic Review: Iron Man 86

7/18/2004

 
Iron Man 86: This issue sees the debut of the new (for the moment) creative team of Mark Ricketts and Tony Harris on the Iron Avenger's title, and I've been waiting for this book for months. After reading it, and re-reading it, I find it a mixed bag. On the one hand, I freely admit my expectations were exceptionally high, and a new team needs time to grow a rhythm (assuming they are together long enough to do so) and that, combined with the fact that Ricketts is building on a Marvel cross-over event, which I think is very difficult to do while still doing your own thing. On the other hand, Harris' art is fabulous through the majority of the issue, and Ricketts shows evidence of a more mature writing style than is frequently seen on this book. I give Editorial credit for at least inserting a "Previously..." page in the front of the book, to set up this issue within the context of this larger cross-over. However, it doesn't provide enough information: they the most skeletal description of Tony's current state of mind,
and the incidents of the last few issues of the cross-over, and a single, though, beautiful, image from the painter Gradov, who is currently producing a much-anticipated fully-illustrated book with Warren Ellis outside of the primary Iron man continuity (and is rumored to be a future
creative team for the main title, but we'll see about that one) which doesn't give us much in the way of visual background on the story. These pages are much more effective when we see an indicative snapshot for each of the last three or four issues, like a super-abridged recap like you'd see done so well on 24. Anyway, the book: The Singularity, Part 1.

Ricketts appears to be trying for a contrast between the Tony we knew, seen in flashbacks with Rumiko and others and looking like Cary Grant, and the apparent Iron Man we know now, busting things up and wrecking his reputation in short order. The obvious question posed is whether or not Tony is in control of the armor's actions or his own, or even if it's him in there in the first place. We never see indication that Tony is acting of his own volition, and this is part of the problem of the story: plotlines involving this man, beset by addiction and emotional instability, operating what essentially amounts to a weapon of mass destruction in the parlance of our times, suddenly at the mercy of his own technology, have been seen many times before, most memorably recently in EIC Joe Quesada's run in which the armor became sentient and jealous. Ricketts seems to be setting up soemthing similar, as evidenced by Tony reading the Age of Intelligent Machines by Ray Kurtzweil in what looks to be straight-forward forshadowing, and later, in how Harris portrays the armor as a menacing external force, viewed from the perspectives of his victims. I wouldn't put it past him, though, to be playing with our expectations and the conventions of the title, using these references as a red herring for something else more interesting under way. That would be refreshing, but I suppose not necessary. This book has already taken a mighty stride forward in quality with this issue, and I'll take what I can get. But having recently read J. Michael Straczynski's latest Supreme Power, which plays with genre conventions and expectations very well, I can't help but read this issue and wonder if we are really seeing the whole story.

All of the familiar faces are back quickly enough: Rumiko is back in Japan running things, or at least standing round while things are run on her behalf. Happy and Pepper Potts are once again supportive and seemingly balanced as a couple and remain friends to Tony in a time of need in
which he refuses to actually take any solace from it. His executive board at Stark Enterprises is meddling in how to save the company from the obvious spectre of bad press (Tony being publically outed as iron Man, now kicking walls down in the U. N. on live TV and generally wigging out like a freak, thanks to Brian Michael Bendis' and David Finch's Avengers 500,) and there is the recurring presence of women in various states of interest in the man and myth od Stark, though Ricketts FINALLY steps up and shows women who would think a man with his reputation would be anything less than a catch. Tony Harris' rendering is wonderful, as always, one of the more interesting uses of photo-reference as guideline for art breakdowns, because he pays extra attention to the facial details. Sometimes it backfires (Rumiko's face is excessively distorted by laughing or exclamation or whatever in a few scenes) but most often it is highly effective at realizing these characters in a fresh way. And I love his take on the armor. It's cold and alien, yet limber and agile in appearance. It also avoids the Marvel standby of "liquid metal" in favor of reigidized armor plating, without adding cumbersome mass to the suit. The scenes of the armor are breathtaking.



This robot looks forward to the rest of this run, hoping to see some interesting twists in an already mature script as the issues unfold.

9/10 Clicks
 
So says...Wrongrobot!






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