Iron Man: Extremis

Collects Iron Man 1- 6 written by Warren Ellis with artwork by Adi Granov

According to British writer Warren Ellis his job at Marvel consists of being the mad scientist in the basement messing around with things and reinventing them. He took a number of D-list characters and created the brilliant Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. (love that title!) and he was also the writer behind the recent shake-up in Thunderbolts. He states that his job isn’t creating anything new, as he has other outlets for that. This also means that he only works on titles for very limited runs as was indeed the case with Thunderbolts and even more so with his brief six issue run on Iron Man a few years back.

Iron Man needed to be brought into the 21st century and since Ellis is the King of Technobabble (not necessarily a bad thing) he was the natural choice for the job. As a result Iron Man: Extremis feels a bit like a pilot episode for a TV-series more than its own entity. Ellis is planting the seeds for future Iron Man stories and he does a very good job at it, but there really isn’t much of a story here.

But Ellis does manage to reinvent Iron Man in a big way. No longer is Tony Stark the Bruce Wayne of the Marvel Universe, as he is now the proud owner of actual superpowers! And that is quite a big thing for Iron Man. Some people might argue that it’s too big a departure from the original concept as Tony was always a real human being with flaws, trying to atone for past sins. In Ellis’ version he is a futurist trying to control the escalating evolution of technology, which has in some ways become a danger in itself. Caught between the military and the corporations (which may be the same thing in the world of today) it’s a constant struggle for the future and his own soul.

It’s heavy stuff.

The story is very simple: A domestic terrorist is injected with the latest in nano-tech turning him into a virtually unstoppable super soldier. As the mad man is heading for Washington to get his revenge, Iron Man has to stop him. In order to do this Tony has to make a tough choice. But we all know that Tony Stark is the one man in the Marvel Universe who is not afraid to make the hard decisions! And this time it changes him forever! No really. It does.

I imagine that this story would have felt rather decompressed in single issues, but it flows nicely in a trade. As a superhero story it never gets terribly exciting, but as a smart, modern, contemporary science fiction story it works like a charm. It feels a bit like a short story by William Gibson, which in my opinion is also a good thing as he has an uncanny understanding (and fascination) of the shadowy side of the corporate world and the dangers of technology. And so does Ellis. If you watch JJ Abrams TV-show Fringe you might recognize certain themes similar to the ones in Extremis in the show: Technology is growing at a dangerous rate and people have become mere ants compared to the corporate leviathan.

So the themes of Extremis are very clever and topical, but what keeps the book from being more than “just a good read” is the lack of an actual storyline. Ellis seems content with reinventing Tony Stark and Iron Man while hinting at certain themes. Which is why the book reminds me of a pilot for a TV-show: It is only the beginning and meant as a teaser. Only Ellis never follows up on it himself.

The artwork from Adi Granov is very good. The action scenes seem a bit static, but he handles atmosphere and talking head scenes brilliantly. The characters do seem a bit passionless, but that might come from Ellis’ script and be the intended tone of the story. The story is hardcore science fiction and about Tony Stark becoming part machine, so the coldness of the dialogue and artwork works nicely with the overall theme of the story. Granov is also the artist behind the forthcoming trade paperback Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas written by Jon Favreau, the director of the wonderful Iron Man movie. I assume that will be a more colourful and silly read, which should put Granov’s ability to draw human emotions to the test.

The colouring is also very good and deserves a special mention.

Overall Iron Man: Extremis is not the best thing since the iPod, but it is an interesting new beginning for the character. The other guy writing reviews for this blog (apparently it’s “his blog”. Whatever!) seems to love the run by the Knaufs which followed directly after this “Pilot episode”. I will have to give it a go.

Rating: 6/10

Review by Michael Lindal (self-proclaimed fill-in artist)

Iron Man: Hypervelocity

Collects Iron Man: Hypervelocity #1-6 written by Adam Warren and drawn by Brian Denham.

I will admit that I bought this book by mistake. I saw Adam Warren's name on the cover and figured 'I haven't seen anything drawn by that guy in a while, he should be interesting on Iron Man, I remember that Teen Titans thing he did, that was pretty good' and quickly put it into my virtual shopping cart. The word to hang onto here is 'drawn', because Iron Man: Hypervelocity isn't drawn by Adam Warren, it is written by him. And although I have enjoyed his Dirty Pair stuff (and that Teen Titans thing) I don't remember liking it particularly because of the writing, rather I was impressed with his manga-inspired yet very personal art. If I'm not mistaken, he was also one step ahead of the pack when it came to utilizing computer graphics in comics, I remember his Teen Titans as a good example of this.

But this is a review of Iron Man: Hypervelocity, and unfortunately I cannot offer the same kind of praise for this book. But first things first. Iron Man: Hypervelocity originally came out in the beginning of 2007, and it takes place before Iron Man: Extremis, but was actually published after. Go figure, smells like editorial shuffling around if you ask me. The gist of the story is that Tony is attacked and badly wounded by unknown baddies, but in preparation for just such a situation, he has managed to make a software copy of his own mind and uploaded this into a new version of the armor, enter Tony Stark 2.0. I kind of like the idea of the story this far. But then it turns out that the baddies are a group of angry mecha, the cyborg remains of some evil experiment, who are now dedicated to getting back at the world when they're not busy having mecha rave parties in sunken ships. And then the story sort of falls apart.

The mecha baddies fool Shield into thinking that the Iron Man armor has gone rogue, so it can only sit down for very few moments at a time. When things are at their worst, the armor is hacked by the leader of the mecha, a weird chick cyborg that goes by the name Absynthe, and the armor has to come up with one clever trick after another to survive while having drawn out virtual conversations with the Absynthe chick. I guess this could have made for a good story, but the execution just isn't there. It took me a long time to get through this, it simply wasn't entertaining enough to keep my attention.

I have several issues with this book. The story is messy and far, far too wordy. Warren uses lots of fancy tech terms, which can make a setting seem well developed when used with care, but here it's just too much for my taste. And robot rave parties, come on... The art is not very good. For a story like this they could at least have found someone good at drawing mechanics, but Denham seems to prefer just covering every single piece of machinery with as much shadow as he can get away with. Even the baddies are just dark human silhouettes with shiny characters on them. Some of his human characters show a lot more promise, but not enough to save the book. And then there's the little things, like the page where the editor has obviously asked someone to draw in a seat belt in the picture of the Iron Man armor driving a car. Yes, I understand that people should be wearing seat belts in their cars, but this is an Iron Man armor! Stark isn't even inside the armor!!! Jeez...

In the end Tony Stark 2.0 is blown to atoms by a massive nuclear device, and that pretty much sums up this book. I am left with the feeling that it would have been much better if Warren had drawn it himself, and this is substantiated by the page layouts by Warren at the end of the book. As it turns out, the pages by Denham are simply copies of these layouts with nothing added or removed, and if you ask me they should just have had someone ink these pages and used those instead. If you're looking for some good Iron Man, I suggest you try the Knauf's excellent run. If you're looking for good Adam Warren stuff, I suggest you try his Dirty Pair or maybe some of his newer stuff like Livewires or Empowered, although I haven't read this. Meanwhile, I suggest you just forget about this book.

2/10

Iron Man: Haunted

Collects Iron Man #21-28 written by Daniel and Charles Knauf with art by Roberto de la Torre, Butch Guice and Carlo Pagulayan & Jeffrey Huet and Iron Man: Director of Shield Annual #1 written by Christos Gage and drawn by Harvey Tolibao.

This is the third book in the Knauf's Iron Man run which so far has been an interesting take on what may be the most powerful super hero in the MU right now. This run has been tightly focused on portraying Tony Stark as a human being, that is bringing to the fore his personal problems while also crafting stories about international terrorism, science and money gone wild and the return of an old arch-villain, the Mandarin. The plot has been carefully planned since day one, and the quality of the stories have been getting better and better.

Haunted is a super hero action thriller in eigth chapters which starts out as a New Jersey murder mystery and develops into an international terrorist crisis. In this book we finally get to learn what exactly the Mandarin has been scheming all this time, and we're also presented with a very satisfying showdown in the end. In this book less pages are spent on Stark's mental health, and more pages on minor characters and plot. I am impressed with how well the genre transition is handled here, the change feels completely natural, although I must say I enjoyed the first part of the book the most. The small time Initiative super heroes that are entangled in the murder mystery are really well portrayed and give the story an extra level of depth. They feel as if they were taken straight out of a 'super heroes in the real world' setting, and in certain ways that part of the book reminded me a little bit of the Watchmen, at least in terms of atmosphere.

The Knauf's writing is good, they handle both plot, characterization and dialogue really well, and seem to be very conscious of the direction they're taking the book. In Haunted I especially enjoyed the way minor characters, such as the Initiative heroes mentioned above, Dr. Samson, Maria Hill, Duncan etc., are portrayed. The mood of the book is also very consistent, and somewhat darker than most other Marvel books. I think this is keeping in tradition with former Iron Man runs, especially his periods of drunken misbehavior, while also giving the book a modern feel.

The artists do their part to create a story with well portrayed emotions and dramatic action while packaging the whole thing in a somewhat dark and moody, and entirely fitting, atmosphere. Although a lot of ink is spent on shadows, we are blessed with the absence of violent cross hatching that some artists like to put all over the page. The outcome is a lot more realistic look than what you see in most other super hero books. The visual cohesiveness of the book is not really hurt despite the artwork being done by three (four) different artists. Part of this may be due to the colors being excellently handled by the same person, Dean White, all the way through.

The annual is a somewhat different beast than the main story. This story, which is about Stark dealing with Madame Hydra in Madripoor, is a much more lighthearted fare. It's actually ok in it's own right, although it is standard super hero fare, which I think exactly was the purpose with this story. Annuals come out during the summer holidays, and sometimes it's nice to read a story that you can enjoy without exercising your brains cells too much. I think what I remember this story best for, is that it contains an incredible amount of boobs and butts even for a Marvel book, but I guess this just cements Stark's status as the playboy of the MU.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I would say it is the high mark of the Knauf's run so far. I would recommend it to anyone with a taste for dark stories, where dark doesn't mean lots of senseless killing but dark in the sense of mature storytelling with elements of suspense and drama and with a focus on atmosphere and characters that are not always either happy or angry. Come to think of it, this book really isn't very kid friendly, maybe that's why I like it. If you choose to read it, you should definitely read the two other Knauf books, Execute Program and Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., first, as they are all pretty tightly connected.

8/10