Bit of a light comics week this week for me, which is a boon this month as money’s tight following my trip to London. The standout issue from the few I picked up though, was definitely Iron Man: The End.

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. Originally pitched back in 2000, Bob Layton and David Michelinie’s story was the last Iron Man story. For various reasons, the project never went ahead, however Bob Layton did eventually make the plot outline available on his website for anyone who was interested. I really enjoyed the story from the outline, so was very happy when I heard that it was finally going ahead.

The story focuses on an elderly Tony Stark as he struggles against the realisation that he’s getting older, and that a lifetime of superheroing has caught up with him.   He’s attempting to complete one last big project, his gift to the world.  The world’s first orbital elevator that will allow cheap travel to the stars for all of humanity.  Its his final legacy to mankind, but the project has been riddled with problems that continually force Tony to don his Iron Man armour, despite his ailing health.

Its a great story, with Tony struggling against his old age and having to try and accept that he can’t keep doing what he did in his 30s.  He’s on medication for a condition that resulted from the continual knocks he took as Iron Man, and his judgement is slowly, resulting in some near-catastrophic mistakes.

I loved some of the ideas with the future armour as well.   While the reconfiguring armour was used a lot in the cartoons, I loved the  liquid armour idea, and how when he wasn’t wearing it, it formed into a briefcase.  A nice nod to how Tony always used to carry his armour.  

This is very much the final story of Tony Stark as Iron Man, and while it doesn’t mesh with some of the other looks to the future of Iron Man we’ve seen (thinking specifically of the Iron Man 2020 stuff from years ago) its a great read, and makes for a brilliant final story (of course, the nature of comics means this is really more of a “What If” type affair.  It’ll be endlessly contradicted in years to come).  Its poignant and hopeful, with Tony looking to the future.  Which is entirely appropriate for the character.

Maybe its just the purist in me, but this looks horrible. Teen Tony just brings back long-supressed memories of The Crossing.

Whereas Marvel rules the roost in the movies, DC has tended to clean up in the animated market.  Admittedly this is a snap judgement based on one trailer, but I can’t see this changing things.

Well, as a treat to myself following my IT disaster, and since I was in the shops buying a fresh copy of Oblivion anyway, I picked up the Iron Man movie game.

Ok, so I know. Its a movie tie-in. Possibly the only thing that tends to be worse is a movie tie-in to a video game. However, I found this one to be a lot of fun.

While it borrows from the film plot, the game embellishes it a lot with elements from the comics. Of course, if it had more strictly followed the plot of the movie, there wouldn’t have been as many chances for big fight scenes, but this allows the game to have its own identity.

The action picks up in the caves in Afghanistan. Tony’s already been captured and has just finished building his Mark 1 suit. Level 1 is a tutorial to the basics of moving around as you escape from your captors. Level 2 finds Tony back at Stark Industries. He’s announced (as in the film) that he’s no longer going to manufacture weapons. However at this point we deviate from the film. Angered by the lack of new weapons, one of Tony’s biggest customers, the Maggia stage a raid on his warehouses for any remaining supplies. Fortunately Tony’s in the area conducting flight tests on his new Mark 2 Iron Man suit.

Level 3 introduces the Mark 3 suit from the movie, which remains the default armour for the rest of the game. Further levels explore Tony ridding the Maggia of his weapons (which reminded me a lot of the Armour Wars), meanwhile Obidiah is revealed to be in league with AIM, and is working with them to reverse engineer the remains of Tony’s Mark 1 armour (again, similar to the movie).

The game uses this plot to introduce more armoured enemies. The Titanium Man turns up, as one of AIM’s first attempts to duplicate the armour, and further levels see Tony trying to shut down AIM’s operation, before learning of Obidiah’s involvement and confronting him in his Iron Monger armour.

The graphics are great. The movie suits are well captured, with the flaps in the Mark 2 and 3 suits used for flight captured, and there’s a small element of free roaming as you fly around levels dispatching villains, although this is still fairly linear, with fixed objectives, compared to say, Spider-Man 2, where you could happily ignore the missions and spend all your time web-slinging around New York (heck, that was the best part of the game).

At your command you get a variety of weapons including the trademark repulsors and uni-beam, along with the more regular missles and gattling gun. Through use of these different weapons you can slowly level each up, gaining new varients, or boosting the stats of the existing weapon.

The great thing though, is the unlockable armours. As you complete certain levels, you’ll unlock different armours you can use when replaying missions. There’s 6 available on the PC, with the first 3 being the movie suits. From their they’ve included 3 classic suits from the comics: the original tin can from Iron Man’s first appearance, his classic 70s red-and-gold armour, and, a personal favourite, the silver centurion armour. I’m always a sucker for this kind of thing and its great fun attacking Maggia’s Flying Fortress in the Silver Centurion suit.

The game’s probably not going to win many awards, but I found it a lot of fun. The graphics are great, the story’s had a bit of effort put in, and there’s certainly a kick to be had flying around as Iron Man, laying waste to AIM’s evil beekeepers with your repulsors.

I’ve put together a quick gameplay video showing off the different suits of armour and a couple of the levels in the game. Enjoy

Well, I’m just back from seeing Iron Man.

That was easily one of the best comic book movies to date. Robert Downey Jnr *is* Tony Stark in the way that Christopher Reeve was Superman. The film wisely kept itself centred around his performance as we see his decadent lifestyle (the scene on the private plane was a classic), followed by his drive to correct his mistakes.

The script stays faithful to the tone of the comics while chopping and changing some elements to work as an origin story. Obidiah Stane is reinvented as a life-long friend of Tony’s father, who runs Stark International alongside Tony. This change works well, as the character stays true to his comics-self, while the changing of his relationship to Tony allows them to spend time on other parts of the film.

The key thing about this film though, is that its fun. There were so many sequences where I was killing myself laughing (the scene on the private plane, the various boot-jet tests). But the humour doesn’t undercut the characters. There’s a great balance going on between the humour, the character work, and the action.

This summer’s off to a great start with Iron Man.

A new Iron Man trailer has turned up on MySpace. We see a lot more of Stark in this one than the superbowl spot, and he gets some excellent lines

We were out watching Cloverfield last night, and got a really good bunch of trailers. Including this new Iron Man teaser:

I love the idea that the repulsors started life as flight stablisers. It makes a lot of sense.

The first official pics of the movie Iron Man armour have been released. I like it. Its very similar to Tony’s current suit in the comics, which I’ve slowly gotten used to.

However, I’d missed this previous shot that was released:

That rendition of his grey suit looks spot on to me. I must admit, with a director that obviously seems to care a great deal about the source material, a fantastic actor as the lead, and now these pictures, I’m really looking forward to this film.