INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #1Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Salvador Larroca
However, if you absolutley love the current title, don't feel pressured to pick this book up, as it has no ties, whatsoever, to the current book. Where some people might view this as a Mighty Avengers style addition to the Iron Man: Director of SHIELD's New Avengers, it couldn't be any further from the truth. Where those are different, yet basically the same, Invincible and DoS are on completely different ends of the writing and story focus spectrums. Similarly, if you loathe the current title, you probably owe it to yourself to give this one a shot, as it might be right up your alley if you dislike the political, noir thriller stlye the Knauf's are employing.
Alright, now that I've laid some groundwork, how was the book? To be frank, I'm not sure. Did I like it? Yes, I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it. At least, enough to come back next month for more. But was it a great book? I can't really say. It has the markings of a great book with beautiful art and great writing from Fraction, but I found the pacing a little off and, considering this isn't a new character or anything, it seemed like there was a little too much handholding in terms of story and plot development and more focus on explaining Iron Man and Tony Stark to people. This isn't an origin rehash issue by any means, but there's a lot of inner monologue text boxes giving us insight into who Tony is, what his fears are, what makes Iron Man what he is and so on that frame the story.
Basically, there's a rather strange set of suicide bombers in an African village. The three men had movie Tony Stark-like glowing circles on their chests and all started glowing before exploding in the equivilent of nuclear bombs without the fallout in this small area. The rest of the issue deals with the slow paced narrative on Tony Stark, his reactions to the bombings and fears of the Iron Man tech being outdated or becoming easily reproduced so that anyone with the money can practically use it.
The only other thing of note is Ezekiel Stane. He's been seen in the now defunct Fraction-written The Order, but now seems to be set up as the main villain for this title by Fraction. He was the one behind the new weapons used by the suicide bombers and has, himself, developed new weapons that seem to be variations of Extremis, in that they are organic based and allow him to generate repulsor-like blasts from his finger tips, survive falling out of a building and so on.
It's hard to describe what happened in this issue, as it's very much a talking heads story with little to no action or noteworthy developments other than the initial bombings and Stane's brief appearance, but I am intrigued and want to see more. I get the feeling this is so slow due to the whole fitting the trade sized stories, but will wait a few issues before judging it as such. For now, it's a new and very different Iron Man book compared to Director of SHIELD and I believe it's something everyone will have to check out themselves to decide if it's for them or not. Don't worry about having to buy two Iron Man books a month to understand what's going on or anything like that, as this stands on its own and as different as night and day to the current book. Right now, my money is on DoS as the better book, but I'll give this a few issues before making any official statements.
Verdict - Check It. I think some will love it and some will hate it. It's a very slow paced first issue, but has the makings of being a great title. However, time will tell.
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