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I guess this is the story that set the stage for the Iron Man movie. This was a weird collection. It collects Iron Man #’s 193-200 and if you think that the rotating cast of comics are crazy today you are in for a surprise here. There’s only one writer (Denny O’Neill) but there were FIVE artists over these eight issues. Luke McDonnell starts this off for three issues (193-195), Rich Buckler tosses in two issues (196-7), Sal Buscema stops by for an issue (198) as does Herb Trimpe (#199) and Mark Brights sends us home with pencils for #200. Luckily, the inking duo of Akin & Garvey keep all these different artists looking the same style. The whole 8-issue arc spans from April to November 1985. To set the stage for this series we have a despondent Tony Stark giving up his armor and his buddy James Rhodes is wearing the suit.
We start with Tony refusing to wear the armor, even to help Tigra and the West Coast Avengers. It seems that Dr. Demonicus has attacked her plane and Hawkeye and Mockingbird need to go help. Tony comes into their headquarters wearing his original silver armor and unmasks to reveal his identity to them. That was a rather uneventful unmasking if you ask me. So Tony goes with them to help Tigra but won’t actually engage in combat until a giant lizard attacks. Tony dumps him in the water but has to get rid of his armor to avoid drowning. Meanwhile, Rhodes is looking for help for his headaches he’s been getting since donning the armor. He goes to Pym for help but gets side-tracked into some weird dimension with a common crook that really didn’t lead anywhere. Rhodey goes to the Shaman for help and they take a spiritual journey through another weird dimension (where Rhodes learns he thinks he’s not worthy to don the arm and once admitting it he’s fine) where the armor is left in that dimension. Let’s not forget about Demonicus! He’s found the silver armor and puts it on only to get vanquished by Rhodey and Tony wearing a ridiculous costume. For a guy who doesn’t want to wear the armor anymore he’s been in it almost every issue. Issue #197 is a Secret Wars II tie-in and an average one at best. Tony and Rhodey defeat “Thundersword,” a guy who somehow got the power of the Beyonder. The real thing in this story that we’re following is Obidiah Stane kidnapping Bethany Cabe, the start of his ploy against Tony Stark.
The previous issues were really just a few panels of set-up. The next three are the real big Iron Monger stories. We see the origin of Obidiah Stane in #198, an origin he tells to Madame Masque. He wants to see the utter defeat of Tony and stealing his company wasn’t enough. He wants to drive him back to the bottle. He sends out one of his machines to attack Stark’s little business he has going. That fails when Rhodes and Stark (who dons the armor again) destroy it. Issue #199 is just packed from the beginning, with Stane upping the ante and kidnapping even more people and destroying Stark’s Circuit place and killing one of his employee friends. This finally pushes Stark over the edge but not into darkness and the bottle. No, Stark dons a NEW armor and heads out to settle the score with Stane. Stark saves all his friends and Stane reveals his ultimate back-up plan – The Iron Monger. This was built using old notes of Stark and the armor is formidabe. Stark is able to defeat Stane but Stane doesn’t want Tony to get the final word so he ends his life much like his father did.
-The Bottom Line- The last three issues were great and made a great 3-part series. That was the problem with this book. It was a 3-issue arc stretched out over 8 issues. The issues were included for the few panels that saw Stane kidnap people with Stark. I actually thought there were pacing issues throughout. I felt that the build took too long and that everything was wasted on #200. Stane using the Iron Monger armor on Tony easily could’ve been spread out further and if this were written today could’ve been a full 6-issue arc of its own. I mean, they made a 2-hour movie based basically on this story. Denny’s writing kept things going and I think that it was more wanting a big anniversary issue that led to the rush of the last three stories. The Secret Wars II story being thrown in didn’t help things and #197 should’ve been what was 198 with another issue to develop the Iron Monger story and fight. The art was also jarring in some places. There were just way too many artists on here to really get a good flow going. One thing I have to compliment the art on was Issue #200. I loved the ending to chapters 1 and 2 and how they mirrored each other. Don’t get me wrong, #’s 197-200 were great, it just felt so long to get up to that point that I can’t really recommend this collection. Just doing the numbers you have 8 issues which you could probably pay a song for on Ebay while this collection’s MSRP is $30 (though you can do better on places like E-Bay and Amazon). I’d definitely recommend getting the last three issues but as a whole this collection just falls flat and suffers from too many pacing issues to make it really enjoyable.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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