The Awkwardness of Exes

     At long last, in the newest issue of Invincible Iron Man, Tony Stark’s past has caught up with him.  In the midst of a confrontation with Rescue (Pepper Potts) while still wearing the Crimson Dynamo suit, Tony suddenly remembers Pepper and stops freaking out.  Turns out that his memory loss is so bad that forgot that he made Pepper a suit.  He’s even forgotten about Happy Hogan.  Meanwhile, Maria Hill meets up with Black Widow and begs her to take her to Captain America.  Black Widow refuses, resulting in a chase across New York City.  H.A.M.M.E.R. agents swoop in to take Maria into custody, and the Widow decides to help her.  Back in Russia, Madame Masque ties up Pepper and starts torturing her.  She then takes off her mask in front of Tony to ask him if he ever really loved her and what her face really looks like.  Seems we’ll be getter an answer to this long-standing question next issue.

     Madame Masque is probably one of Tony’s three greatest enemies, along with the Mandarin and Obadiah Stane, the Iron Monger.  She’s also one of Tony’s biggets love interests, along with Pepper.  I’m glad that someone is treating her properly for the first time in years.  I’m really excited to see what Matt Fraction is going to show her face as, and I’m really excited to see where this is heading.  World’s Most Wanted may still be good, but it’s starting to stagnate, and I think that this new development may solve that problem.  As I said before, I think that this was a story arc that should have been six issues, but Fraction is making it twice that size, so it feels unwieldy.  I also can’t wait to see what Bucky does with Maria Hill.  He never had to deal with her when she was in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D., so I imagine that this will be an interesting interaction.  Salvador Larroca’s faces are still very much improved from how they used to be.  But to be honest, as I mentioned before, his panels often look very static.  This series needs a new artist after this arc.  Still, Matt Fraction continues to prove that he has an unparalleled grasp on Tony Stark in these pages.  I just wonder how he can get himself out of this jam.

Plot: 8.8      Art: 8.6      Dialogue: 8.6      Overall: 8.6

This Feels Familiar

     It may be by a different company, but Captain America: Reborn feels so thematically like both Green Lantern: Rebirth and the Flash: Rebirth.  All of them are about bringing back their titular characters and examining their legacy and their future.  That’s okay and all, since both of those two DC series are stellar comics.  In the first issue of the story that will see the Steve Rogers Captain America brought back in some way, Steve has become unstuck in time as a result of the Red Skull and Arnim Zola’s plan and Sharon Carter’s interference from back in the Death of Captain America.  Bucky and Black Widow infiltrate a H.A.M.M.E.R. ship with help from Nick Fury, and Sharon Carter and the Falcon visit the Mighty Avengers, specifically Vision and Wasp (Hank Pym) to get some help with the confusing machine stuff.  Bucky and Black Widow end up getting attacked by Ares and Spider-Man (Venom), and we find out where Arnim Zola’s been hiding: Thunderbolts Mountain, under the careful protection of everyone’s least favorite psychopath at the moment: Norman Osborn.

     Technically, this issue is very sound.  It’s building on elements that have been clearly presented throughout Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America.  However, this series is definitely inferior to both of the previously mentioned DC miniseries, and it’s inferior to most of Ed Brubaker’s work thus far.  The entire Slaughterhouse Five-esque unstuck in time thing is a very bizarre way of bringing Cap back.  I still do trust Ed Brubaker on the execution, but this is just another contrived way of bringing a character back from the dead.  There’s time travel, which is always confusing.  And then there’s the question of where exactly Cap is coming from.  Is this Cap from the moment of his death, bouncing around through his past?  If that’s so, then how is it that Cap is dead in the current time?  Are there two Caps as a result of the Red Skull and Zola’s fiddling?  I’m not sure.  At any rate, it’s contrived.  It’s something that doesn’t fit in the street-level kind of world that Ed Brubaker has constructed. 

     As for the art, this is why Bryan Hitch couldn’t be bothered to finish his work on Fantastic Four.  It’s as good as his normal work, which is pretty dang good.  And the transition between him and Butch Guice is rather seemless.  I just don’t think that Hitch fits with this series.  I know Steve Epting is working on the Marvels Project, but he started this whole story with Brubaker, and he should finish it.  At the very least, Guice or Mike Perkins should be the main artists here.  Or someone else whose art looks like Epting’s.  Even Luke Ross would be fine.  In conclusion, this is an underwhelming experience.  I hope that’s just because this is the first issue, and things will pick up later on.  In fact, I almost count on it, since it’s Ed Brubaker.  But I doubt my complaint about the art will change.

Plot: 8.4      Art: 8.8      Dialogue: 8.8      Overall: 8.5