Comic Review: Iron Man 89

11/01/2004

Iron Man 89: I can't decide what flattened the tires on this one: Rickett's discomfort with characterization and continuity, or a rushed, forced resolution to the arc before the celebrated relaunch, or the jarringly sloppy fill-in art. But man, what a wasted opportunity. Let's look at the basics: Tony Stark is locked in a violent clash with a mysterious foe in another, irrationally duplicate suit of Iron Man armor, while the military is moving in with heavy artillery, and Stark's only remaining loyal employees, the Potts, are at the controls of Stark Enterprises' satellite communication and deployment systems coincidentally conveniently overhead. As Stark and the mystery villain wrestle with tanks and slam each other around, the military contingent, led by someone or other, some military Thunderbolt Ross stereotype, have organized on the sidelines, in various reconstituted but somehow maintained obsolete Iron Man suits, but without helmets, and given orders to take out the last Iron man standing. The villain's face-shield is ripped off, coincidentally at the same time Stark's is, and the reveal on the villain's identity is...no one of consequence? Maybe it's an obscure figure from back in the day. Maybe it's an unknows victim of Stark's business dealings, a faceless jealous boardroom opponent. Who knows. Anyway, Pepper Potts figures out a way to send a kill code to all Stark Technology in a given blast radius, using some sort of satellite deployment, and comes to grips with her fears and desires and lets fly, knocking out all of the jarheads in the classic armor, immobilizing the unknown bad guy, and Stark... is still able to dissemble his aggregate-style component armor and parade around in his boxers and deliver an angry speech. After his unmolested exit from the scene, the military leader, also inexplicably able to move around in his Iron Man armor gear, delivers a hokey speech using that antiquated no-no of a term "super-hero" and then puts a bullet in Angry Businessman's head. We see Stark mourning his dead girlfriend in Japan for about seven seconds, plus a nationally televised apology, resignation, and half-assed attempt to re-establish his secret identity, and then we cut to the reveal of the crafty, evil manipulator of these events, and it's... the son of the Mandarin, drawn Image-style. Great.

This issue was full of holes. From the script's perspective, all I can say is, where the hell was the editor? The Potts had access to a secret control station they shouldn't have access to, with Pepper having familiarity and training on Stark's failsafes and Doomsday contingencies, they spoke and acted out of character, the empowering self-confidence melodrama was excessive and yet perfunctory, and the technological explanation for this kill code business was Star Trek silly. The contingent of military yahoos in Stark armor was lame as well. Why no helmets? So we can tell them apart from the OTHER unnecessary Iron man clone... and yet they never entered the fray. Nor were they differentiated in any way by US military insignia or anything else. The Thunderbolt Ross guy's speech: what was the purpose of this, to establish how noble Stark is and how he definitely -efinitely -EFINITELY couldn't be the kind of guy who would blow up his Board of Directors, kill his girlfriend and all the other crap they recently did to the character... without explaining away the mystery rage-fueled drunken BS at the UN Assembly... or was it to rationalize his execution of the bad guy? Was this Rickett's making some sort of political statement? I can't tell. The melee between Iron Man armors was ludicrous. They never used any interesting IM tech, nor any indication of fighting skills other than the ability to understand that tanks are, you know, heavy and throwable objects. The masks were pulled off at the same time like the cheesy star-power identification tactics in Hollywood films that caused Spidey to be unmasked through half of his sequel. The funeral scene in Japan was so abrupt they might as well have handled it with a phone call, and the apology to America, and Stark's subsequent little discussion in the limo, were so inane and stilted the whole thing would have been better served if completely removed from the script. Kolins' art? Some of his worst to date.

A few notes point on what I would have liked to have seen done differently: Lots of basic story elements here that could have been interesting. Had some of this been implied, instead of shown or described in cheesy dialog, it would have served the story better. Imagine the Iron Man clone, which would have to be a previous, obsolete armor in the first place if we want this to be at all plausible (or if the conceit continues that this looked like the current Iron Man and was presumed to be Stark gone mad, then leave him the new armor, and put Stark back into some older gear, a la the Obadiah Stane days) pummeling away at Stark, hammering him with everything, though not with any particular accuracy, as Rickett's did manage to mention last issue that the clone didn't have experience with the Iron Man armor's offensive capability (but DID have enough experience to dodge, fly, maneuver around, etc which makes no sense) and putting everyone around them at risk of collateral damage, with Stark diverting all of his attention defensively, trying to catch debris and saving civilians while he's being slammed around (like they did so well in Spider-Man 2.) Now, let's even keep these idiotic military guys. Give them unceremonious, original gray stocky armors, with US insignias like a star or whatever on a shoulder plate, and have them lurking in the rubble and trying to take pot shots at the pair of Iron Men having at it. Show Stark taking them out one at a time strategically, using his expertise to dispatch them, yet not even acknowledging them being there at all. Show the Thunderbolt Ross cipher forced to abandon his armor and escape in his undies in shame. Then, when enough civilians were free and clear, have Stark execute one of those Warren Ellis surprise understatements like: "Pepper, do it." and have a cold beam of light take out the clone like the fucking death star would, pressure-cooking the dope within until he settled in a pool of his own sludge in the armor's boots, like the Indonesian drawrven skeletons of recent headlines, the armor itself undamaged, standing there immobile, in mid punch or whatever, with a cone of crackling static electricity discharging in the trees around them. Stark could make a ceremony of pulling off the helmet, and the rest of the armor one by one, as news copters approached, have him strip down, give his speech of quitting and getting back to his playboy industrialist business, then leaving in a limo or whatever. Cut scene to Stark on national TV in mid-speech, showing the news cameras, the crowds outside the studio, Iron Man guy No. X standing beside him, the new "bodyguard" interacting alongside Stark for the world to see (as if that either proves anything, is any more reliable than the seventeen other times they've done this, or would even be a good idea after the televised smackdown with... another Iron Man in the first place) but all this shown on TV screens and radio, while we see, from a wide angle shot, Stark in person paying his respects to his dead Asian girlfriend Rumikos family, showing us the interviewed Stark is a hologram or whatever. And then cut to the silhouette of the son of the Mandarin, shown from the back, and you know, NOT sitting on grasshopper robots all the time, watching the feed, his associate asking about what Stark is saying to be translated, and the Mandarin guy dismissing it as a hologram anyway, but stating that the first part of their plan is complete, the dope was engineered to fail, to give Stark false confidence, but in fact leaving the armor, which they provided him, left in the Stark Compound, implying hidden surveillance, bombs, secret weapons, what have you, being Trojan Horsed into Stark's company. And never show him in Mandarin garb, and certainly not Image-style grinning and flexing.

Just this robot's take on it.

3/10 Clicks

So says...Wrongrobot!


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