"Iron Man: The New Iron Age"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Iron Man: The New Iron Age” as presented in Mavel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            Jun Shan was an award-winning filmmaker. On the night of winning a Golden Dragon for best film, he and his wife Chuntao were abducted by the supervillain, the Mandarin. The Mandarin gave Jun no choice but to make a film about the life of the Mandarin. As Jun interviews the Mandarin for details of his life, the Mandarin told lies in order to conceive what he thought would make the most award-winning film of all time. Jun went out to do research to learn the truth of the Mandarin’s life. Jun and the crew of the film secretly conspired behind the Mandarin’s back to show the true story of the Mandarin. The Mandarin wanted the villain of the film to be his archnemesis Tony Stark/Iron Man, and decided the film would end with the death of Tony Stark by the Mandarin’s hands, an event that did not actually happen. Jun shot the film as the Mandarin instructed, planning to humiliate him at the premiere and escape with his life and his wife.

            Tony Stark had recently erased his memory and got most of it back. In 2011 he turned to former Stark Industries employee Peter Parker/Spider-Man for help finding stolen plans for a Stark weapon. The two had been working on it before Tony fired Peter, and Tony did not have the memory of what it did. Peter was able to trace the weapon to the anti-super hero anarchist techno-terror cell the Bastard Sons of Wilbur Day. Iron Man and Spider-Man teamed up and found out that the terror cell had actually built the weapon and fought to take them and the weapon down. In 2052, Lord Mandarin was Emperor of Earth and Tony Stark was his personal valet. The Mandarin was on the verge of purging the Earth of the human race. Tony’s children, Ginny Stark/The Black Widows and Howard Anthony Stark/War Machine were humanity’s last hope.

            Tony went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to discuss the state of his life. He hoped to have dinner with his former secretary/current CEO of his company Stark Resilient, Virginia “Pepper” Potts, only to find out that he already had his chance with her before he lost his memories and that she wasn’t willing to give him another chance.

            Stark Resilient was preparing to pitch a proposal for a new home to the Asgardian Gods. Tony was attacked by Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus, who was dying. Octavius threated to detonate a nuclear bomb over Manhattan if Tony didn’t cure him and had his associates Electro and Sandman hold Tony’s employee Tim Cababa hostage and instructed them to kill Tim if Octavius didn’t check in with them every five minutes. Pepper came looking for Tim and fought Electro and Sandman but was unable to defeat them. Another Stark Resilient employee, Leonard Pimacher came looking for Tim and startled off Sandman and Electro, and Pepper was unable to prevent the villains from escaping. Tony was unable to cure Octavius and admitted it to him, and Octavius confessed there was no bomb, and he only wanted Tony to humiliate himself to Octavius and admit that Octavius was smarter. The Asgardians accepted Stark Resilient’s pitch to build a new Asgard.

            A time of fear and uncertainty gripped the world. Seven mysterious objects entered Earth’s atmosphere, cutting fiery trails as they crashed down all over the planet. Unbeknownst to Oron Man, these are artifacts called down by the Serpent, an Asgardian deity of evil newly freed from his ancient imprisonment. Seven devastating weapons to arm and empower his chosen servants, the Worthy. One crash site was Paris, France, and one of the Worthy was Paul Pierre Duval/The Grey Gargoyle. With his newly strengthened powers, the Grey Gargoyle froze everyone in Paris he made direct eye contact with in stone. Tony hired Bethany Cabe to be the head of Security at Stark Resilient. After finding a lack of life signs in Paris, Iron Man investigated and found the superpowered Grey Gargoyle. The two fought, and Tony was overpowered. He was joined by Doug Johnson/Detroit Steel from Hammer Industries, but Johnson was defeated and turned to stone and crumbled, and Tony barely managed to escape. Tony realized to win this fight, the heroes needed stronger weapons. Tony decided to make a sacrifice in order to draw the attention of Odin: his sobriety. Odin brought Tony to the workshops of Svartalfheim to work with the dwarves to craft weapons for the heroes of Earth in their battle against the Serpent. Sasha Hammer and her crew in mechanized armor were given the mission of recovering the Detroit Steel armor from Paris and were instructed to kill anything that moved. Pepper flew to Paris in her Rescue armor to try to save any survivors that might still be roaming the streets unfrozen. The Serpent had a dwarf snatch hair from Tony in order to empower the Golem. Tony continued to get drunk with the dwarves. Tony was attacked by a Mud Sprite and was able to defeat it with the help of the dwarves. Rescue and the Hammer Corps fought the Grey Gargoyle, but Sasha Hammer abandoned Rescue in the middle of the fight. Tony finished building the weapons and he and Thor returned to Earth to aid the Avengers in defeating the Serpent and saving all of reality.

            Okay, that’s the synopsis of this book in a way I feel is the best I can describe it at this particular point in time, so now let’s move on to my personal input segments of this review. As always, we’ll start by my answering the question of: did I like this book? In general, I enjoyed it. But those first two words are key words. I enjoyed most of this book, but there were a few things about it I didn’t like. Let’s break it down story by story. I loved the “Mandarin: The Story of My Life” issue. It was interesting getting a huge section of the book devoted directly to the villain, and his displays of narcissism and egotism throughout the course of the issue were highly entertaining to me, I was hoping through the whole issue to watch it all unravel around him, and I will say, the ending had quite a twist, and I was satisfied. “The New Iron Age” was not my favorite story, I feel like it could have done without the whole future section, it didn’t have any impact on the rest of the book and felt unnecessary after finishing the issue and continuing to read the book. The Iron Man/Spider-Man story was fine, I had no problem with that, and if Matt Fraction had just published the issue as only that story, I feel like that would have sufficed. But I get that this was issue #500 and they had to make a big deal out of it and include extra content to make it all kinds of special, but it honestly was meaningless as Ginny Stark was not featured any further in the book, and forcing investment in her felt like a waste and a disappointment. And as for the time jump, the future dated was 2052, meaning in twenty-seven years from the point of my posting this, this future will be outdated, but I know that seemed like quite a long time away back in 2011. “What it Was Like, What Happened, and What it’s Like Now” resonated with me, being a recovering alcoholic myself, and the flashbacks of Tony’s life in his speech were informative to read and furthered my knowledge of Tony Starks’s history. “Fix Me” was actually my favorite story in the book. Doctor Octopus is a Spider-Man villain, so seeing him taunting, blackmailing, belittling, manipulating and humiliating Iron Man was actually rather refreshing. I don’t mean it was a good thing, I just mean it was interesting to see a villain who is usually consistently pitted up against one hero being given the chance to menace a different hero for a change. And it was shocking that Iron Man actually couldn’t beat Doctor Octopus because of the mind game that Doc Ock played against Tony Stark, and that this was a totally different kind of antagonism that Doc Ock has with Spider-Man, so this makes me curious to see Iron Man take on more of some other heroes’ nemeses in future installments, just to see the dynamics a foe swap has on their super battles. “How I Met Your Mother” was something that I felt was also unnecessary as it supposedly explained the first meeting of Howard and Maria Stark, but it honestly just seemed preposterous the way it was written. And “Fear Itself” was a story I enjoyed. Granted back in 2011 I was not an active current reader of Marvel Comics, so “Fear Itself” is an event I can’t claim to know much about, so what I understand of “Fear Itself” comes from surrounding series as I have never actually read the main limited series, but I have read some tie-ins. What I read of the event in this collection was enjoyable. I will say that I take offense with the title of this volume. The editors decided to call this “Iron Man: The New Iron Age,” which was actually just a one issue story. Compared to the three issue “Fix Me” story arc and the six issue “Fear Itself” and “Fear Itself #7.3: Iron Man,” I feel like it was the wrong title. I honestly don’t know why the editors didn’t choose to call this “Iron Man: Fear Itself,” that actually being the majority of this collection, it would have been a more sensible title. “The New Iron Age” honestly didn’t grab me when I first heard it, and I would much rather purchase a book called “Fear Itself,” that’s actually a much more appealing title in my opinion, but I purchase every Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection regardless of the title, that’s just my devotion to Marvel. I don’t know if Marvel is planning on giving another Modern Era Epic Collection a “Fear Itself” title in the future and didn’t want to give two volumes the same title or something like that. And as for the artwork, I enjoyed the work of Salvador Larroca in this book, but the other artists just didn’t do it for me. I’ve actually been an admirer of Larroca since 2001 from “X-Treme X-Men,” and I felt like his work in this book was adequate. Some of the human faces had unnatural features, but his action sequences and superhero and supervillain portrayals were stellar. Overall, this book was an enjoyable read, and I actually got so into it that once I started it, I actually couldn’t put it down and read the book straight through in about three hours.

            Okay, next up, we’re going to talk about accessibility. Essentially what I mean by this, for you people who have never read one of my reviews before, is this, if you know absolutely nothing about Iron Man or Marvel Comics, can you pick up this book, read it, and understand everything you’ve read by the conclusion of the book. I will say that this is a hard no. This collection is marketed as Vol. 5, and right now, as of my compiling this post, the only available volumes are 3 through 5, and if you haven’t read the previous two volumes, you’re missing so much of the story as this is a continuation out of the previous two volumes. Granted Vol. 4 was not a “To Be Continued…” kind of ending, this volume picks up after the events of it and continues threads begun in the past two collections. And if you’re not a regular reader of Marvel from 2010-2011, you don’t know “Fear Itself,” and that is a bit of a problem. Marvel Modern Era Epic Collections will often occur around events, but they won’t usually actually have the main limited series of the event collected in its entirety in that volume (with an upcoming volume of “Annihilation” being the only current exception on the horizon). In this volume, only “Invincible Iron Man” comics were collected, and “Fear Itself” was not included, so if you don’t know about “Fear Itself,” the editors did include a couple of “Previously in Fear Itself…” blurbs, but they honestly don’t complete the story, and if you want to know how the story ends, you’re going to have to get your hands on “Fear Itself” somewhere else. This book is not self-contained, and I would not recommend this as a starting point if you have never read a Marvel Comic book before.

            Okay, I’ve really been going on for quite a while now, I think it’s time we moved on to what is, essentially, the reason we’re all here; to find out just how good I thought this book was. Now, for those who don’t know how I work, it’s really quite simple. I give the book a numeric score on a scale of one to ten. One means that this book is a pile of trash, and every copy should be pulled off the shelves, burned, and Marvel should never reprint it. Ten means that this book is a mountain of gold and every copy should be bought off the shelves, read multiple times, and Marvel should reprint it on a regular basis. My score is based on a few factors. The two main ones are of course how I feel about the story and the art contained in the book itself. There are a few mitigating factors that fall outside of those as well that are sometimes outside the control of the editors, but include accuracy of the title, effectiveness of explaining the story within the book itself, my understanding of the storylines occurring at the same time outside of this volume, and the ability to meet my expectations of what the book will be based on the title the editors slap on the book. So for our factors on this, I mostly enjoyed the story, the art was hit and miss, the title was a misnomer, the book wasn’t self-contained, I don’t know “Fear Itself,” and this wasn’t quite what I was expecting based on the title, we are looking at point deductions, but it’s not a total hate party on this book. So, if I have to give this book a score in all fairness, and since this is a book review, I obviously do, I’d take all of these listed factors, chuck them into my metaphorical blender, push the blend button and mix them until they’re a pile of liquid goo, then take my metaphorical cup, pour the goo out into it, look at it, and it is… a six. This book falls on the side of slightly above average in my own personal opinion. It was a positive experience, one I will not mind going through again should another volume come out, since when a new volume comes out, I read all the connecting volumes to it, so if Vol. 2 or Vol. 6 come out, I will reread this book, and I do look forward to that.

            Okay, again, I’ve been blathering on for quite a while now, let’s get on with this. Next up on the docket is the recommendation paragraph. This paragraph is dedicated to answering three questions: do I, myself, Tim Cubbin, actually personally recommend this book? Who do I think is the best audience for this book? And do I think you should read this book now that you’ve read my review? The first question has the answer of yes. I do actually give this book my own personal recommendation. To answer question number two is a little trickier. Yes, if you are an Iron Man fan and a Marvel fan and a fan of Matt Fraction or Salvador Larroca, this book is probably a book you might be interested in, but I don’t know if you should read it unless you understand some outside knowledge. If you’ve read the earlier issues of Fraction’s run on “Invincible Iron Man,” then you are the perfect audience for this book. If you’re interested in reading the tie-in stories of “Fear Itself” then this is absolutely the right book for you. I think those two groups are the “ideal” audience, but for fans of the character, the universe, or the creators, this book is a good read for you. As for question number three, if you’ve read my review and now want to read this book, I would tell you that you would probably do best to read all of Matt Fraction’s run of “Invincible Iron Man” before reading this (conveniently collected in the Marvel Modern Era Epic Collections “Iron Man: World’s Most Wanted” and “Iron Man: Stark Disassembled,” if you want to read them most efficiently), but I wouldn’t tell you not to read this book ever, even if you’ve never read Iron Man or any other Marvel Comic books before, despite them having tie-ins to other Marvel characters and storylines. Fraction did a brilliant job crafting these stories and I feel they are well worth the read to anyone who wants to be a reader of the Marvel Universe or Iron Man.

            Okay, we’re at the point where I’m close to signing off. I do have a few things I need to say first. I’ll start with the fact that this blog has over 160 posts on it, over six dozen of them are reviews just like this one. I post on a very frequent basis, I collect every Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection and Ultimate Epic Collection after they are released as early as I can and if possible I write a review as early as I can after reading it, so you can usually expect at least one post a month. I can tell you there is another Modern Era Epic Collection coming out in five days from the composition of this post, so you can expect to see a review of that likely sometime within the next three weeks. For those of you who enjoyed this post and have more time to kill right now, keep browsing on timcubbin.blogspot.com for more reviews and content, and if you don’t have the time right now, feel free to come back another time. While the majority of this site is book reviews, there is other content on this site as well, including short stories, poetry, articles, essays, and editorials. I’ve been doing this blog for almost five years at this point, and I will keep doing this until I am no longer able to do it, so you can expect that to be for quite some time. Feel free to keep checking back regularly, there’s often going to be something new, and there’s already plenty to see as it is. If you want to, leave a comment, retweet, like, share, do whatever you can on this site, spread the word about me. Feel free to reach out to me and tell me what you think of this post or of my site in general if there’s anything you like, dislike, want to see in the future, or want changed, I’d love to hear from you, and if you read this book, I’d love to hear your opinion. I will state that I admit that everything on this blog is my own personal opinion as I interpret it and you have your own personal opinions and views on everything I post, and I welcome you to feel differently from me and say that I am totally off base with my assessment, whether I have information wrong, or if you feel like I’ve somehow misinterpreted what’s in the stories, or if you just disagree with anything I’ve said, like if you didn’t like the story or the art, or if you did like other things that I specifically said I disliked, or if you think “The New Iron Age” was a great title, or if you think this book was completely awful and a six was way too good of a score, or maybe a six wasn’t a score that was high enough, or you can just let me know if you agree with me about anything, I welcome to hear anything from all my readers and will take it all with complete acceptance and respect as you are entitled to your opinions on anything, I just ask you to respect that I have a right to have an opinion, too, so do not get hostile or openly attack me, just politely state you disagree with me and explain why you feel the way I do or respectfully explain what I have interpreted wrong as I would like to fully understand this story as it is. And that is all I have to say to you at the moment, so until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!