Dark Reign rumbles on in the Marvel Universe, and it still sucks to be Tony Stark, as he’s quickly shot down after wandering into Russian airspace on his way to the latest of his private facilities.
The person doing the shooting turns out to be Tony’s old friend, the Crimson Dynamo who’s unimpressed by this person wandering into his country in an outdated armour that’s easily taken down. He’s even more surprised when he realises it is indeed Tony Stark in the suit.
This is something Matt Fraction’s doing that I really love. In the past, whenever Tony’s armour has been trashed, its been almost cliche that he’d spend 5-10 issues running around in the classic 60s armour, before its overwhelmed and he’s forced to build a new suit. This rarely made sense, as in some of those situations he could’ve easily gone with a suit more advanced. In this story, Tony’s reasons for adopting such an old suit make perfect sense, as his intelligence is compromised, and his reaction times slowed.
The other thing Fraction does which was previously ignored, is address that in the modern Marvel Universe, the 60s armour is rubbish. Yes, it looks good. But its old technology. In previous instances where Tony’s worn this suit as a substitute, he’s generally held his own to a point, until becoming overwhelmed. Here there’s no pretence that he can hold his own. He’s quickly shot down by the Crimson Dynamo and his armour rendered useless. Fortunately once the situation has been explained, the Dynamo is more than happy to lend Tony his armour to help him out.
We also go back to Pepper, who’s more than happy to flaunt Osborn’s authority in order to track Tony down. Sadly, she’s playing straight into Norman’s hands, as he’s been watching her, waiting for her to run to Tony.
Talking of Norman, there’s a great scene where he contacts the Russians for permission to chase Tony in their territory, only to be bluntly told to shove off. Its a nice scene, and its interesting to see that internationally, other countries seem to be well aware of Norman’s past, and don’t trust him one iota.
Meanwhile War Machine #7 continues Jim’s quest to shut down the research into the Ultimo virus. Having successfully distracted American Eagle in the previous issue to allow him to get to the US military base housing the research, Jim quickly begins dismantling their defenses only to discover that the head of Ultimo is being used to house the project.
Again, a real part of the fun here is the Dark Reign setup, mainly with American Eagle’s interactions with Norman Osborn. Again we’re seeing someone in authority tell Osborn to get knotted. Its a situation that’s sure to escalate, since as more and more people tell Osborn to take a hike, you can see him getting further and further out of control and throwing around his authority. As a direct result of this issue you see military personnel questioning exactly why there was an alien superweapon hidden on their base by Osborn. Hopefully these are hints that Osborn’s ascendancy to power isn’t nearly as all-encompassing as may have first appeared, and there’s still a good few people out there questioning what’s going on.
The other thing that really surprised me in this issue is the cliffhanger. Jim manages to hack the Ultimo project’s database and discovers the locations where Ultimo’s main processor has been stored (after being split up). To stop him, Osborn calls in his latest line of defense against Jim. Someone who looks a lot like Tony Stark, leaving the Stark Solutions offices.
I’m really wondering who this is going to be. Assuming I’ve not missed any issues where there was a clone of Tony kicking around or something, this is hugely interesting. ”Tony” is carrying his signature briefcase, so it seems to be hinting towards another War Machine/Iron Man confrontation, but what’s the twist here?
A really nice part of this issue is that we finally see the sequence of events that resulted in Jim’s injuries. Interestingly, he was serving as an advisor to the military (in something reminiscent of his role as a liason in the Iron Man movie). We quickly see Jim’s determination to save others no matter the personal cost. Its nice to finally see what actually happened there.
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