"Iron Man: Stark Disassembled"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Iron Man: Stark Disassembled” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            Tony Stark was injured in a jungle in Vietnam and taken into captivity. He had shrapnel close to his heart. With the help of Professor Ho Yinsen, Tony was able to create a magnet to prevent the shrapnel from reaching his heart, and a suit of armor that allowed him to escape captivity. With the help of James Rhodes, Tony was able to return to the United States, where Tony became the superhero Iron Man.

Many years later, Norman Osborn became the leader of the corrupt government organization H.A.M.M.E.R., formerly S.H.I.E.L.D., which Tony Stark had been in charge of. Tony felt he couldn’t let Osborn obtain the database of the superhuman secret identities and the secrets of the Iron Man technology, so he did the only thing he could do; deleted the data. But that included wiping his own mind. It put him into a persistent vegetative state. He left Pepper Potts, his right-hand woman, with a suit of iron and a repulsor generator of her own before this. He also had his second-in-command at S.H.I.E.L.D. Maria Hill obtain a hard drive with the assistance of Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow. Pepper, Hill, and Widow gathered with Bucky Barnes/Captain America and Doctor Donald Blake/Thor to revive Tony.

Tony Stark was trapped in a repeated simulation in his own mind with his parents Howard and Maria Stark. In the real world, Tony’s allies watched a video which instructed them on how to prepare to revive Tony. Pepper, having lost her husband Happy Hogan, was hesitant about this, wondering why it was Tony who got to come back from the dead. Meanwhile, Osborn, who had placed a bounty on Tony Stark with a consortium of supervillains, called it off. Madame Masque, however, refused to let this go since her grudge with Tony went deeper, so she called on the supervillain Ghost to finish Tony Stark completely. She arranged a “Ghost Phone” which would allow Ghost to teleport to Tony’s location simply by making a phone call. Steve Rogers/Captain America returned from the dead and arrived in Broxton, Oklahoma, where Tony and his allies were hiding. The repulsor unit in Pepper had to be removed and implanted into Tony’s chest. The data drive Hill had obtained kept a backup of Tony’s memories, and they had to be implanted back into Tony. However, Thor’s attempt to revive Tony with a lightning bolt failed. Ghost was able to locate Tony at the Sooner Inn. Hill, Pepper, Doctor Lisk, and Mrs. Sooner moved Tony to the basement of a middle school to escape Ghost, where they called in Doctor Stephen Strange to perform a mystical surgery on Tony. Rhodey arrived but was immediately attacked by Ghost. In Tony’s mind, Doctor Strange tried to convince Tony that he had a life worth returning to but was pulled away from the surgery to fight Ghost, who defeated Strange. As Hill was losing to Ghost and Ghost was about to finish off Tony, Pepper made a phone call to H.A.M.M.E.R. to report on Ghost’s illegal activities, and as Ghost was about to attack Pepper, Tony returned to consciousness and defeated Ghost. However, Tony’s backup drive was not recent, and there were many things that Tony didn’t know.

Pepper imagined a conversation with her deceased husband Happy, where she recalled her time as the armored hero Rescue. Her suit wasn’t made to fight, but it was made to help save lives. Tony gave it to her while she had the repulsor technology in her and she used it while she was on the run from H.A.M.M.E.R.

Mother and daughter business team Justine and Sasha Hammer pitched the idea of a new mechanical force called Detroit Steel to the United States Army but were turned down. Tony Stark learned that he had given his company Stark Industries to Pepper before he erased his mind and that he was essentially broke. Tony decided to plan his new business venture, one that no longer involved making weapons. The Hammers bought decommissioned H.A.M.M.E.R. technology to plan their move against Tony Stark. Tony founded Stark Resilient and pitched making his proprietary repulsor tech available to the everyday consumer to replace fossil fuels. The Army got back in touch with the Hammer girls. Tony partnered with carmaker Carson Wyche to build a new car that ran on repulsor power and not fossil fuels. Pepper told Tony she wanted the repulsor disc Tony had removed from her replaced back into her. Tony agreed. Bambi Arbogast, a former Stark Industries employee, signed on with Stark Resilient. During Pepper’s surgery, the Hammer girls staged a terrorist attack in Shibuya, Tokyo in order to promote Detroit Steel. Iron Man and War Machine flew in to help fight, but were made to look like fools, especially since the tech the terrorists used were old Stark Industries technology. Stark Resilient hired Cababa, Macken and Pimacher to help build their new car. The Hammer girls build drones to assist Detroit Steel, and created a “game” app, tricking players into thinking they were assisting Detroit Steel in a game, when in actuality they were flying these real drones and assisting the actual Detroit Steel. Tony created a new Rescue armor for Pepper. Stark Resilient planned to debut their new car at the 21-Green International Expo in the following six weeks and had to build two cars within that time limit. Rhodey pitched placing War Machine under military supervision as liaison to Stark Resilient, but General Babbage refused, preferring Detroit Steel. Stark Resilient held a Gala, inviting the Hammer girls. Tony took Sasha Hammer on a private ride, where she attacked him with cybernetic upgrades. Iron Man and Rescue fought her, but Sasha was still able to escape. Tony’s Alpha car was sabotaged and exploded during its test run, and only Tony’s implanted Iron Man armor was able to save his life. Because of the attack, the 21-Green Expo was cancelled. Tony decided to have the Betty car tested at their factory. As the test began, Detroit Steel and the drones attacked. Tony, Pepper and Rhodey suited up as Iron Man, Rescue and War Machine and fought the drones. Tony’s team discovered that the drones were being controlled by the gamers and that they were locking on to repulsor signatures, so Rhodey and Pepper powered down. It would take twenty minutes to shut down the cellular transmissions, but Pepper and Rhodey could only survive for fifteen minutes without repulsor power. Tony had to race against time to defeat Detroit Steel, survive the drones, and save Rhodey and Pepper.

Luna Inc. created Luna City, a community on the moon. They used an old Stark Industries machine that could control the weather, and it was having a negative effect upon the earth. Iron Man and Thor had to team up, fly to the moon, and stop Luna Inc.

Okay, so now we’ve done the synopsis, let’s get down to the Tim Cubbin part of this review. Obviously, you want to know if I liked this book or not and what I thought about it. While I did find this book to be somewhat enjoyable, I honestly can’t rave about it. I found it to simply just be mediocre. There honestly wasn’t anything special about it. The stories really didn’t stand out. While it was readable, it just didn’t have a super high level of enjoyability. We start off with a reprint of the first Iron Man story and a classic Iron Man story that got severely retconned and was actually somewhat offensive that I really couldn’t go into much detail about it in this review since I’m a nice guy and I don’t want to offend anyone who reads this blog, I want people to keep coming back for more, so I don’t want to do anything to scare people away. The story of Tony Stark trapped in a self-imposed simulation and needing to be rescued and revived really didn’t grab me, and I couldn’t find the suspension of disbelief required to believe in Tony’s revival. The way he deleted his memories and had them reimplanted just wasn’t plausible enough for me to accept. I can say, however, that I do enjoy reading about Pepper as Rescue. As far as the “Stark Resilient” storyline went, however, that at least saved the book for me a little bit. I enjoyed the concept. I liked how Tony had to start a new business venture, and I thought that the car was an interesting idea. I liked Sasha Hammer as a villain. I liked the drones being piloted as a gaming app, and while I thought the idea was brilliant, I also found it to be slightly predictable, as soon as they started talking about the drones, I knew exactly how they were going to be used, but it was still a great idea to include. I enjoyed the dynamics between Tony, Pepper, and Hill throughout the course of the book, their grudge against Tony for a reason I can’t talk about in a G-Rated blog, but I thought it brought good humor and drama to the stories. As far as the Iron Man/Thor “Fair Weather” team-up, I found that to be entertaining. As far as the main artist Salvador Larroca goes, he’s an artist that I love to hate and hate to love at the same time. His artwork is inconsistently good and bad. There are times when he totally nails it, and there are times when he totally fails it. There were points where his artwork was just totally amazing, and there were times when I just thought it was awful. Usually when I give a bad art review on an Epic Collection, it’s because there are a lot of different artists, and while this book did have several artists, Larroca was the main artist, and he was the one who disappointed me the most. As far as this book goes all around, this was not one of my favorites.

Next, I’m going to talk about accessibility. I’ve literally said this at least three dozen times at this point, but I always have to do it again for my new readers since I know some of you have never read a Tim Cubbin review before and have no idea what I mean when I say “accessibility.” So here goes: Accessibility means if a person who has little or no knowledge about Iron Man or Marvel can pick up this book, read it, and fully comprehend what they are reading. In this case, I will say this book is highly inaccessible if you have not read the previous volume “World’s Most Wanted” as this book directly continues out of the storyline from that which was not finished in the previous volume, so if you have not read it, you have missed a significant chunk of the story and will have no idea what is going on at the start of this book. The entire story of Tony erasing his memories was told in the previous volume and he was left in a vegetative state, and that’s where this volume picks up. There are also many other threads that carried over from the previous volume that not having read it will have negative impact on a reader’s ability to fully comprehend what they are reading, including Pepper’s original run as Resue, why Tony had to be kept hidden, the fall of Stark Industries, Tony’s disconnection from Extremis, and the start of the dynamic between Tony, Pepper and Hill which I can’t talk about in a G-Rated blog, just to name a few, and one I can’t discuss that would spoil the ending of “Stark Resilient.” This book is marketed as Vol. 4, and while Vols. 1 and 2 have not been released at the moment of my writing this review, Vol. 3 is an essential read prior to reading this book.

I’ve been going on for quite a while now, and I’m sure you’re starting to get bored of me, so let’s move on to the most imperative part of a Tim Cubbin review: the numeric score. I score on a very basic scale: one to ten precisely. One means this book is a flaming piece of trash. Ten means this book is one of the best things I’ve ever laid eyes upon. Now, you can obviously guess at this point that this book is nowhere near getting a ten, and you would be absolutely correct. However, I wouldn’t completely call this book a flaming piece of trash, either. So, of course, we must take into account that this is a GRAPHIC novel, so art is just as important as story when I write my reviews. So, we have a mediocre story and inconsistent qualitied art, so you can imagine this score is going to be on the low side. So, imagine no further, as I am now going to tell you my score. Taking everything into consideration, I throw it all together and spit out… four. This book was readable, but it is not going to be on the list of one of my favorite graphic novels.

Next up, I’m going to tell you if I give this book my personal recommendation, and regardless of that, to whom do I recommend this book. Okay, so this book does not get my recommendation as it honestly really did not stand out to me. If I were to recommend this book to anyone though, I would say it would honestly mostly be for Iron Man fans of the comics from 2000 on, but the origin story that went on to be retconned is a huge turn off to fans from said period, and writer Matt Fraction even writes into the story that it was retconned just to redeem the change. Honestly, though, I do have a hard time recommending this book to anyone.

Well, I think we’re at the point where we should be parting ways, but first I do have a few things I have to say first. First off, this website has dozens of reviews just like this if you enjoyed it, so feel free to keep browsing timcubbin.blogspot.com, check out my “Iron Man: World’s Most Wanted” review, too, you’ll probably find that enjoyable. I’ve also written short stories, poetry, editorials, essays, articles, and several other kinds of content that you can check out, I’ve done quite a variety of work on this over the past four and a half years. There are almost 150 posts now, I’m sure you’ll find something else you can enjoy. My reason for doing this blog is because I have a degree in English with a concentration in journalism and currently remain unemployed in the field but still wish to remain active in it. I post on a very frequent basis, literally any time a new Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection comes out, I buy it, and I will review it. There are a few I haven’t reviewed due to the lack of having a laptop at the time, but they will probably eventually receive reviews. I have another review coming up, expect it sometime within the next two weeks. I guess that’s really all I have to say for now, so I’ll finish with just a few more words: Tim Cubbin… out!