However just to be contrary, I’m going to review Iron Man first

Continuing on from last issue, Stark’s closest friends are gathered around his body as Rescue continues to recite Stark’s plan to bring himself back from the self-lobotomy he performed during World’s Most Wanted.  Interestingly Pepper’s reluctance to help last issue is revisited here in a way that makes complete sense as we see what exactly Stark’s rebirth will cost her.  Its a testament to Fraction’s writing and the development he’s done with the character that I really found myself feeling for her, and in some ways Stark’s plan seems cruel to her (although, of course, when it comes down to the crunch she signs up with little hesitation).

The contents of the mysterious hard disc Maria Hill retrieved during World’s Most Wanted are revealed, and while not being a great surprise, its perfectly in character for Tony.  In fact, despite being brain dead for the issue, Tony continues to get the best lines, via the holographic recording he left with Rescue.

Its also nice to see Ghost turning up here.  He’s a character I hadn’t really seen much of, prior to picking up Andy Diggle’s Thunderbolts run the other month, and he’s become a real favourite as mine.  There’s something wonderfully freaky about his design, and the way he operates completely under his own agenda under Osborn’s nose remains interesting (especially as that agenda isn’t the usual supervillain posturing).

There is also the symbolism at play here, as Fraction brings together the newly-Reborn Steve Rogers and Thor to help in Tony’s resurrection.  We’re seeing the big 3 Avengers come back together here, in preparation for the upcoming Seige event, and it does feel like something big is coming in Marvel just through these characters being together again.

While I wasn’t entirely sure about the ending of World’s Most Wanted, and this Disassembled arc from the solicits, I think its paying off nicely, helped in part by moving along quite quickly, obviously so we can have Tony back on his feet and in armour in time for Siege.

Over in War Machine #12, things aren’t looking particularly rosy for Jim Rhodes either.   While he’s not lobotomised himself, Osborn has captured him and has him on trial for war crimes and facing execution.

As a wrap up to the year of War Machine we’ve had this issue works brilliantly.  Osborn remains centre-stage as the villain of the piece and the main characters from throughout the run are all spotlighted with James’ mother visiting him in prison, Ares turning up to free his champion and team War Machine in their usual support roles.

Its actually a real shame to see this series come to an end, if only because this issue would’ve marked a major turning point that would’ve set things up to go off in a different direction to the first year of the run.  And with War Machine turning up in Iron Man 2 next year, you have to wonder how long it’ll be before we at least get a new mini-series.

I do like how Greg Pak turns Osborn against himself here.   There’s an interesting parallel between this and the ending of World’s Most Wanted, which in both cases sees Tony and Rhodey turn Osborn’s own arrogance against him (as we see with Osborn himself exonerating Rhodey from War Machine’s crimes).  In both cases, the resolution came down to the planning by the main characters, rather than a knock-down fight.  Which especially in the case of War Machine is an interesting way to go.

There’s also an interesting clearing of the decks going on across these titles in time for the new year and the new film.  It’ll be interesting to see how Matt Fraction continues to rebuild Tony for example, since he’ll now be free from Extremis, have a movie-styled repulsor unit in his chest, and have to rebuild Stark Industries from the ground up.  And how Rhodey will feature into the Marvel universe will be interesting to see.  If nothing else, it might be nice to have him feature in Iron Man for a while again (while Tony’s getting back on his feet).  Certainly I hope the character doesn’t languish like he did after his first ongoing was cancelled.

I must admit.  As much as I really enjoy Fraction’s work on this book, I’m unsure how I actually feel about this conclusion at the moment.  The run has been filled with great moments.  Pepper, Maria and Natasha make a great team, and the twist of Madam Masque being in the Rescue armour was a great moment.  Watching Norman crow about how good a day he was having while the three women were in his headquarters causing havoc (including J.A.R.V.I.S. trashing all of Norman’s captured suits of Iron Man armour) was great.

Another highlight was the final Tony/Norman fight.  By this point, Tony’s virtually incapable of putting one foot in front of the other, and is wearing only his original Iron Man armour, while Norman’s at the top of his game, yet despite everything being in Norman’s favour, we see Tony’s victory as Osborn is outsmarted, revealed on television pummelling the defenceless Tony and discovering that the information he was so desperate for no longer exists.

Despite this though, I’m left feeling slightly unsatisfied.  This story was 12 issues long, so while its no Clone Saga, that’s still a long story in modern terms, where most aim for six issues in order to fit trade paperback requirements.  Despite this long run though, it feels like we end on yet another cliffhanger.  Tony is now in a vegetative state, having erased the contents of his memory, and his body is a prisoner in the HAMMER helicarrier.  We still don’t know what’s on the hard drive Maria and co were so desperate to retrieve (although its a fair bet it relates to however Tony’s going to get out of this mess in time for the upcoming Seige event).   Despite the story’s length, there’s still the feeling that the main beats aren’t resolved, which is a bit frustrating.    Given the status at the end of the issue, with Norman having chased Tony around the globe for nothing, and having lost all his Starktech except for his one suit of Iron Patriot armour, it should’ve felt like more of a win for Tony.  Instead it all felt a bit “too be continued”, a real shame after 12 issues.

However, I don’t want to be too down on this.  I don’t doubt that whatever happens next is going to be very interesting indeed, as we see Tony’s friends getting in touch with Donald Blake, who happens to be the executor of Tony’s Estate according to his will, in addition to being the secret identity of a certain god of thunder.  So its obvious all we’ve really seen is the conclusion of stage 1 of a larger plan (again, we have Fraction playing on Tony’s ability to think three steps ahead).

This has been a great ride.  Matt Fraction’s done a great job of showing Tony’s descent as his intelligence slowly left him.  He’s also greatly captured Norman Osborn’s character showing how dangerous and deranged he can be (witness his right-hand woman freaking out over how Norman’s going to kill them all when he learns of Pepper’s escape).  There’s a great supporting cast in place here, and so all we really need is to see exactly what Tony’s got up his sleeve for how he’ll get out of this.  And then, of course, I have to presume that we’ll be getting one of those great Iron Man moments as we have the unveiling of a redesigned suit of armour (since the Extremis suit is now useless).  With the damage done to the character during Civil War (a good idea, badly handled in my opinion), its hard not to really feel for Tony as he desperately tries to string together a coherent thought while Norman is pounding on his armour, and that is possibly the greatest strength of this run.  Its made Tony Stark a character that you’re cheering for again.

However, with a train failure yesterday leaving me stuck in town for a while, I ended up picking up the last few issues of the Thunderbolts series to read while I waited for the trains to get sorted.   I hadn’t been too bothered about the lineup when the series had been announced (aside from Ant Man, I character I do enjoy), but I’d been hearing good things, and I like the writer Andy Diggle (absolutely love Adam Strange: Planet Heist).

Wow, was I impressed.  The cast of characters I wasn’t fussed about were actually a very interesting group.  The Thunderbolts have been setup as Norman Osborn’s own private Black Ops squad, so consists of a lot of Marvel’s Z-list psychos.   However Diggle also balanced them out with the Black Widow II being put in charge of trying to keep the psychos inline, The Ghost who’s there under his own agenda and Ant Man, a character that can easily be described as a self-serving sod, but not someone who’s actually evil, so finds himself very out of depth surrounded by some fairly twisted characters.

Andy Diggle gets a lot out of this cast, playing them off each other well, but also throwing in a good few twists as things go on.  There’s several members of the team like Ghost who’re there with their own agendas, and added into the mix is Songbird, longtime  Thunderbolt including part of the previous team that Osborn was in.   When he moved to take over, one of Osborn’s first orders of business was to try and kill Songbird as she was quite aware of how unstable he is.  However he didn’t quite manage, and so she’s out there waiting to move against him.

The four issues I’ve got reflect the end of Andy Diggle’s run, so a lot of these plot developments play out in them, however I think I’ll definitely be going back and buying the trades and reading his run from the beginning.   Given my Dark Reign pull list currently only consists of Iron Man (still a cracking book) and War Machine, this was a really nice read and a change from all the Blackest Night stuff I’ve been reading lately.

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.

Iron Man I’ve talked about in depth on the blog before, so I’ll not really go over that again, except to say that its been great.

The other main Dark Reign titles I’ve been buying have been War Machine, Dark Avengers, and lately Ms Marvel.

Dark Avengers has been a bit of a mixed bag.   In that, I love the basic idea for the series and the team composition, and I think that seeing how this team react to their new public personas should be interesting.  However the first arc has been tied up with a big fight alongside Doom against Morgana Le Fay.  For myself I’d rather have seen more about the team trying to settle into their new roles as the “official” Avengers team.  The Doom/Morgana storyline has been fun, but just not what I was expecting.

However Ms Marvel has currently been exactly what I was looking for.  With Carol Danvers seemingly (recent solicits have her back) dead, Moonstone is now the only Ms Marvel in town, and so has been headlining the book.

While its only been two issues so far, its been fun seeing Moonstone fit into the role of Ms Marvel.  Obviously the general public have no idea who she really is, so we see them reacting to her killing escaping villains for example.   The latest issue is the first of  storyarc that saw her go up against AIM.  Of course, Osborn wanted to offer them a deal, but the fun in this story is seeing the different viewpoints.  We have the version that Osborn gives to the public, but then we have Moonstone’s report to Osborn.  However this plays over the third version of events, which is what actually happened, so we’re seeing that Moonstone is more than happy to try and play Osborn at his own game.

Its this aspect that I think makes Moonstone one of the most interesting of the Dark Avengers.  The likes of Venom and Bullseye, its a question of how long Norman can keep them on a leash.  With Moonstone, there’s a feeling that she could be Norman’s equal in many ways, and will only be willing to play Osborn’s game as long as it suits her.

War Machine has so far been operating a story largely removed from Dark Reign.  Osborn did show up for a bit though, with War Machine telling him to stuff it, so its a bet he’ll have a larger role in later issues, and of course, Ares is part of the Dark Avengers (and to be honest, this series has probably had the best characterisation of Ares so far, its not to be missed if you like the character).  The latest issue sees Rhodey and his team about to launch an attack on a US military base where an Ultimo virus was being developed, so its a safe bet Osborn and HAMMER will be keen to get their hands on him.

However, there’s probably another aspect to it.  We’ve seen Osborn find one of Tony’s armouries in Dark Avengers, and retrofit (or at least copy, its not clear) one of the suits.  However we also know from Iron Man that while Osborn has Tony’s suits, he’s been unable to properly use them.  He can’t access the repulsor technology that is key to Tony’s technology.  He’s tried to get it from Pepper’s suit, and I wonder if he’s wanting to get at Rhodey’s cyborg body to try and unlock the Iron Man technology for himself.

Overall I’m finding Dark Reign a big success so far.  Marvel have been really great with their big events introducing big change to the Marvel Universe, whose impact is felt across the line.  First with Civil War, and now with Secret Invasion/Dark Reign.  There’s a very strong feeling that the Marvel Universe is currently a very dangerous place to be a superhero in.

The biggest issue this week for me was probably Ms Marvel #37. It represents a huge gamble by Marvel, and I must admit, I’m quite surprised and unsure of this direction. The final issue of the End of Ms Marvel arc sees Carol, who’s powers have been increasingly unreliable, forced to push herself to her limit against her opponent. Doing so however pushes her powers over the edge, and unable to control the energy, she explodes and dies.

While I’m not a regular reader of the Ms Marvel title (just picking up the odd issues that look interesting), I’m finding this move a big gamble by Marvel. With Carol dead, Moonstone will become the title character of this book. Carol had only really recently been brought back to the fore-front of the Marvel Universe as Ms Marvel, so to replace her at a point where she’s just regained popularity seems a strange move. Granted we don’t know quite where they’re going with this plot (other than Moonstone taking over the book), but I can’t help but think this has the potential to backfire badly. The next issue stands to lose the Carol fans unless there’s a big twist ahead (while Carol exploded, we’ve seen energy-based heroes come back after dissipating before).

Of course, its also likely that that this is exactly the kind of thing they’re planning, and by using Moonstone and Dark Reign as a focus point in this way, they’ll attract a lot of attention to the title before Carol comes back.   Heck, I’m blogging about it, and I won’t be the only one

On the DC side of things, I picked up Oracle: The Cure #1, and Wonder Woman #30. Again, I’m unsure where DC are going with Barbara Gordon and Oracle at the moment, so that means I’m approaching this series with a degree of trepidation, however its a solid first issue. With only three issues in this mini, I would have perhaps expected a faster pace in the first issue and a bit more happening, but nonetheless its always fun to see the Oracle/Calculator rivalry. I’ve mentioned before how much I love just the concept of Oracle, and so the Calculator as the villain’s equivalent has always been something I’ve really enjoyed. Here we see them both attempting to track down the remains of the Anti-Life Equation from the internet. While Barbara’s motives aren’t clear (possibly she’s after it to make sure no one else gets it), the Calculator’s seem to be tied in with his daughter being in hospital. I’ll definitely be picking up the remaining two issues of this series to see where it goes (indeed, this is probably the only Battle for the Cowl tie-in I’m picking up).

Wonder Woman #30 continues the Rise of the Olympian storyline. While I freely admit I’ve just been buying Wonder Woman for this story, which sounded interesting, I’m very much enjoying it. Unsurprisingly Gail Simone brings her usual excellent grasp of the characters as she turns Wonder Woman’s world upside down. In this issue, the focus is very much on Wonder Woman’s rage at what the society have done by unleashing Genocide, and her fury is brilliantly captured as she tears through the Society’s headquarters (the highlight of the issue for me was probably the image of Faust putting on his coat the minute he saw Diana approaching on the security cameras ). While not appearing in this issue, I’ve been enjoying Gail’s handling of Diana, Donna and Cassie in this story. Its nice to see the three of them together.

My Marvel purchases are rounded off with War Machine #4 and Captain America #48. War Machine’s a series I’ve been enjoying a lot, although it has to be said, some of its been a bit daft so far, with Jim’s new ability to rebuild himself from nearby machinary (the half-tank War Machine was so over-the-top it worked, but I think I’d like to see this ability used in moderation throughout the run).  There’s heavy Dark Reign influence here as well, with Ares forcing Jim to examine his motivations for his recent actions in probably the most effective scenes of this series so far.  While it would’ve been easy to just through in Ares as an obligatory Dark Reign tie-in, Greg Pak really makes great use of him, as we see him break through to Jim in a way none of his friends have been able to since Jim became a cyborg.  Jim’s conversation with Bethany where he says he’s ready to become human again works well, as it contrasts nicely with his denial of his humanity throughout the opening issues.

Captain America continues to be one of the best comics on the market.  The finale of the recent storyline sees Bucky, Black Widow and Namor teaming up to rescue the body of the original Human Torch, who’s been turned into a bioweapon by an insane scientist, determined to reduce Earth’s population.  Again, like War Machine, its the character moments that probably best define this issue, with Bucky determined to try and face some of the actions he committed while the Winter Soldier.   Saying that, I’ll be glad to see him back and continuing to establish himself as Cap in future issues.  I’m really loving the pairing of Bucky and Black Widow in this title as well.  These two characters work well together, and I similarly love the way Ed Brubaker has weaved in events from World War II throughout his run.  Its really given the title a sense of its history and helped give it a unique voice.

While Pepper is being introduced to her new armour (which is run off the miniature arc reactor in her chest and has an onboard computer called Jarvis, very movie), Tony drops in to see an old friend from the Order and say goodbye. Of course, in Tony’s wake, H.A.M.M.E.R. comes calling and interrogates everyone.

Worried for Tony after his visit, his friend sets about contacting Jim Rhodes through a contact system Tony setup incase things went wrong (this gets established during a flashback scene to Tony as Director of SHIELD introducing the system to everyone, as he’s preparing incase everything goes wrong, which we now know it did). Jim’s got no problem tracking Tony down, as Tony’s currently in the Busiek-era armour, which is no match for the technology in Jim’s more modern War Machine suit (or probably even Jim’s cyborg parts).

Of course, while Jim is just worried about Tony, Tony doesn’t want Osborn to see Jim associating with him, so immediately goads Jim into a fight in order to through Norman off the scent. Its a nice scene, with Tony obviously outmatched by the War Machine, Jim trying not to pull his punches, and Tony eventually out-thinking Jim, taking a hit that sinks him but breaching Jim’s armour in the process so he can’t follow him into the ocean.

Norman, of course, is watching all this via satellite. He contacts Namor and asks him to kill Tony.

Its a good issue. I was initially dreading another War Machine vs Iron Man confrontation, as I couldn’t really see why they would be fighting (unless Norman was manipulating Jim, which could’ve tied into current events in the War Machine title). However the way it was played here made total sense.

I’m interested to see where they’re going with Pepper in her own suit of armour.  We know from Matt Fraction’s recent Newsarama interview that its going to be more of a rescue suit than the weapon-focus of the Iron Man or War Machine.   However given that Pepper’s supposed to be saving Stark Industries, it’ll be interesting to see how this plot develops.

The big thing about this story line for me, is that I can’t really see a way out of it for Tony.  Matt Fraction’s been up-front with the fact that what Tony’s doing to himself is irreversible.   And we know he’s going to end up wiping a lot of his mind before this plot wraps up (since in the same Newsarama interview Matt Fraction also says Tony will be working his way through his old armours as he’s progressively less able to cope with the levels of sophistication.    With everyone in the world gunning for the information in Tony’s head and Tony’s intelligence being completely wiped I really wonder how this will end.   Maybe Extremis eventually reboots and will somehow restore the wiped information?  Or, being the ultimate strategist, will Tony eventually discover he kept a way to restore himself hidden away (and possibly wiped from his own memory)?  He does plan for everything afterall.

It’ll be interesting to see exactly what Tony’s status will be by the end of this storyline.   Will his intelligence and memories be completely restored?  Ok, its an easy guess he’ll get his intelligence back, as its a defining feature of the character, but how much of his memory will he also retain?  Will he still be modified by Extremis, or will that also be permanently gone, returning Tony to a normal human being?  Presumably we’re going to see an armour redesign as well, especially if Extremis is indeed toast.

For anyone expecting a big fight between the New and Dark Avengers, this issue is going to disappoint. The cover is in fact, the only place the two teams appear together. However, that said, this was still an enjoyable issue and the conflict actually played out in a way very believable, given Osbourne’s current strategy.

As shown in the preview, the New Avengers are watching the Dark Avengers’ press conference and quickly realise who and what they are, and they’re not happy. With the help of Spider-Woman they try and lure the Dark Avengers into a trap where they hope they’ll real their true identities during the ensuing fight.

Sadly, Osbourne’s ahead of them, and instead sends the Hood and his supervillains, throwing the New Avengers off, as its not who they were expecting to fight. The New Avengers manage to defeat the villains and escape, however Clint decides to take action himself, and goes on television to tell everyone the truth about the New Avengers.

Despite the lack of a fight between the two sets of Avengers, I still enjoyed the issue. Largely for one reason, and that was the dialogue. One thing Bendis does very well is the humourous dialogue, and that’s what I found so enjoyable. The preview included the New Avengers’ reactions to Wolverine’s son, however there’s loads of great little moments and lines like that littering the issue. A particular highlight for me was during the fight between the New Avengers and the villains, where each Avenger is given a page where we follow their thought through the fight. Spider-Man’s internal quipping about his iconic costume, and Wolverine’s “KILLKILLKILL!” thoughts got a chuckle.

Really, the only complaints I can level at the book is that we don’t get the confrontation we were expecting, and the number of guest artists gets distracting at times. If you’re following Dark Reign, then its definitely worth picking up.

Newsarama now have the preview for the issue up and I must admit the standout character for me has to be Spider-Man.  His various reactions to their “replacements” are genuinely funny.  I love his “Its not even the good Venom!” comment

The artist was surely having a laugh with the poses of Mockingbird and Ms Marvel though?

Talking of Ms Marvel, as someone who only reads very few Marvel titles, I am finding it a bit confusing that she’s ditched the costume and identity in her own book, yet is on this Avengers roster.   I presume that’s been explained somewhere though.

Despite the book being a bit pricey, it is over-sized, and I’m enjoying Dark Reign quite a lot, so I think I’ll definitely be picking this up on Thursday.

Out of all the books this month though, the must-buy really had to be Dark Avengers #1, which saw Norman setting up the new “official” Avengers team of the Marvel Universe.

In terms of the identities of the Dark Avengers, there weren’t too many surprises. I had been hoping for a twist and it not to be Norman in the Iron Patriot suit, but they’d all been pretty much guessed before the issue itself hit the stands (most being Norman’s Thunderbolts team in new identities).

The surprise was instead that these villains are actually assuming the identities of the heroes, with Venom now known as Spider-Man, Moonstone as Ms Marvel and Bullseye as Hawkeye. This is going so far as to have Moonstone taking over the Ms Marvel title (a move that could backfire if not written carefully). Of course, how this would really work in the Marvel U is questionable. Anyone seeing Carol Danvers flying around, or Peter in his red-and-blues are going to know straight away that they’re the proper versions and the ones in the Avengers are just fakes. It’ll be interesting to see how this gets addressed.

For me though, the big moment of the book was when Norman discovers one of Tony’s armouries hidden in Avengers tower.

Ignoring the fact that Tony was a complete idiot for leaving it there after Norman took over (although maybe he’s left some safeguards that’ll come up in future issues – Norman flying around in a nicked suit of Tony’s armour may bite him on the backside bigstyle), this is a huge event.

Tony’s always been incredibly protective of his armours. He went nuts during the armour wars after discovering that some of his (much older) Iron Man designs had leaked to supervillains. Now Norman Osbourne has access to entire array of armours, up to one of Tony’s most recent designs (going by the look of the Iron Patriot suit). The catastrophe for Tony this represents is huge, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how it gets addressed in the Iron Man monthly.

I’m quietly hoping one of the armours in that room is actually one of Tony’s old teleprescence suits. It’d be nice to see Tony turn the tables on Norman’s discovery by it giving him a “man” inside Norman’s operations at Avengers Tower.

One thing I will agree with Norman on though, is the scrapping of that red-and-gold helicarrier. That thing looked ugly. What was Tony thinking?