I haven’t been feeling right since the near flooding of my street last week, hence the no Origin Stories or Planetary Series Review (or if you follow my other blog, no new Invulnerable pages). Add to the not-rightness the fact that I waited till the last minute to complete a couple of work projects, means I’m stressed and more than a little tired. I don’t want your pity, I just thought it would be thoughtful of me to explain my laziness and the down and dirtiness that will soon follow this epic paragraph of the whine.
The Invincible Iron Man #1 (*)
Not a good couple weeks for Iron Man… in the comics at least. Obviously, the movie has been doing tremendous business at the box office. Well, Marvel was prepared this time. Released during the movie’s fist week at the B.O., The Invincible Iron Man is meant to hook new readers stumbling into their local comic store, high off their asses on movie adaptation. Good news for those folks, especially if they liked the movie, this comic has more in common, continuity-wise, with the movie than it does with the post-Civil War Marvel Universe. I don’t normally consider myself a continuity stickler (shit, I know a lot of stuff but that doesn’t mean I don’t welcome change, mo-fo!), but I hated this book. This book has nothing to do with the current depiction of Tony Stark in the pages of Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers books. Sure, sometimes it’s nice to have multiple POVs on a character, but in this instance its way too jarring. There seems to be a pattern forming here… Punisher War Journal is trash compared to the MAX Punisher as well. Isn’t Fraction writing that pile? Other stuffs that sucked:
1) Suicide bombers using Stark-Tech… this is not a new idea.
2) Tony Stark sleeping with hot chicks… not too bad, its way worse in “Viva”.
3) Tony Stark considers having a drink in his caption boxes… WHA?!?!
4) Dum-Dum is alive and not a Skrull… ok, ok. I can let this one go.
5) Yet another AIM splinter group… KILL ME NOW!
6) Jim Rhodes wearing the wrong armor… ARGH!!!!
7) Pepper Potts… too forced. Matt Fraction Ihateyoudie.
8] Matt Fraction, you are not Warren Ellis.
The only idea in this book that wasn’t stainy was Stane. Him, I like.
Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #2 (***)
Oh, God… what happened? The first issue was so much fun! Oh, that’s because Doom was actually in that one! WTF Michelinie?!? I don’t give a flying monkey shit about Iron Man fighting his lamely rendered demon father! I want witty/funny/entertaining/awesome Doom/Stark banter! Fix please! Less FAIL!
Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas #1 (**)
…which brings us to the disaster that is Viva Las Vegas. Wait, disaster is too harsh. The art is great, isn’t it? You know, the dark haired tattooed beauty on the cover reminds of a girl I know… maybe I’ll give the book to her and tell her Adi Granov used one of her pin-ups as photo reference. Heh. Anyway, we’re in Vegas and Tony has lots of sex. WOOO. And then some lizards attack and Pepper Potts is acting all lame and lo and behold, Fin Fang Foom is the villain of this piece. Don’t care. Hmm, now that I think about it (really, really hard I might add), Viva feels like Invincible’s issue 0. UGH. UGH, I said!
Marvel, why do you blow so hard? At least Viva is a mini, so I won’t have to put up with Favreau’s writing every month, but why oh why did you put Invincible in regular continuity? Why not simply publish that Ultimate Iron Man ongoing? God knows you’ve been dying to! I guess I could just stop buying it… nah.
read/RANT! 
I agree on THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN, a lot of it just felt too forced. I tried IRON MAN: DIRECTOR OF SHIELD for the first time last week and thought it was a lot better handled.
hey, BTW, i listened to your cast last week and i really liked it! great work.
Much thanks! It’s about as low tech as you can get, but it’s a lot of fun. To be honest I was inspired to start it by Battle of the Century which was the first comic review cast I ever listened to. I was very disappointed when it stopped and said to myself, “screw it! I’ll make my own!”
Anyway, back to Iron Man, the Pepper Potts scene just made me feel uneasy. Must every woman turn into a slut in Tony Stark’s presence? Is that a new superpower of his?
you’re shitting me! we stopped doing Battle of the Century because i watched one of the iFanboy video casts and thought to myself, “shit, if we can’t be this good, what’s the point?”
yeah, i liked her better when she wasn’t such a girl. Fraction wrote some good Potts on The Order, which was about the only good thing good about that comic.
HA! For me, listening to my first iFanboy podcast (after I finally decided BotC was dead) just spurred me on further!
Anyway, I got over it when I found that you were leading this blog review site. How do you do so much content? It’s amazing! Or, it may just be that I’m too lazy. That’s a definite possibility! 😉
dude, no jokes, your podcast is better than the iFanboy pick of the week casts. like, i still love the video casts they do, but i can never really get into their podcasting groove.
so much content? i’m pretty sure i cheat it quite a bit! and, well, it might be that you’re lazy. 🙂
Well thanks again. And apparently Kamiza agrees with you. We’re in talks to become a part of Realms Radio!
Well, that’s great news! hope it pans out.
Well Iron Man is one of my favorite characters(yes even now) so I’ve been loving all this attention iron man has been getting. As far as these comics: I think you were a bit harsh on Invincible Iron Man. It wasn’t as good as the last few director issues I’ll admit, but for a first issue it wasn’t terrible. I think for some reason you suddenly have a mad on for Fraction and I don’t know why. Did he beat you up or something? You listed him as one of your favorite writers on Battle of the Century. Issue 2 of legacy of doom wasn’t as good as the first one it’s true, the ghost dad moment was a bit too much, but hey Michelinie is an old school writer and things back then were a bit goofy by todays standards. The issue still kicked ass with the Doom parts at least. Doom with excalibur=awesome! On to viva….yeah I don’t know what happened here. Great art, great writer=issue I finish in two minutes and “leaping lizards”, WTF!!!! Favreau is known for his great dialogue and we get this crap? Very sad. I don’t even think I’ll look at the next issue. Very sad.
yeah, Fraction used to be one of the good guys. now, he’s one of the worst writers at Marvel when he’s not writing with Brubaker. i think it all started to turn with The Order. honestly, he might be writing too many books. i’m not reading Casanova but Steve says it’s awesome.
Matt Fraction work-for-hire = garbage
Matt Fraction creator owned = epic
i wonder why?