Reilly2040's Blog

Some good new comics this week along with Flash: Rebirth, the first of which is the long-awaited Power Girl #1.

Its no secret I’ve been looking forward to this. Power Girl’s been a fun character for a while, probably shining most recently in her pre-Infinite Crisis mini-series, that re-established her Earth-2 origin.

The series picks up with Power Girl having decided to rebuild her life on New Earth. After discovering (the new) Earth-2 has its own Power Girl (in the JSA annual) she’s realised she needs to build a life for herself outside of the JSA and so has set about rebuilding her Karen Starr secret identity, along with her Starrware company when New York is attacked by robots which seem to instil fear in anyone near them.

As an introductory issue this works well. I’ve only really read some of the early Power Girl stuff from the recent trade, and her later appearances around Infinite Crisis, but Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray do a good job of quickly re-establishing the character, who she is, and her motivations following recent events. Her company looks like it’ll be a good backdrop as well, with it being a large R&D company attracting its fair share of experimental technology and nutter scientists.

As always, Amanda Conner’s art is perfect for this series. Her art was the real highlight of the mini-series and shone in the recent Terra mini as well. She’s got a great style which really brings out the facial expressions of characters and really adds to that fun feeling and the more comedic moments in the series. The colouring is really brilliant as well and adds a lot of extra pop to the art.

Things are going from bad to worse for everyone in the Invincible Iron Man title. Despite escaping Namor last issue, Tony is finding his Iron Man suit increasingly difficult to pilot as his intelligence deteriorates. To that end, he is trying to put together the parts he needs for a scaled down version, when he comes under attack from someone looking to cash in on the bounty Osbourne’s put on his head. Thankfully its a rookie, so Tony easily out maneauvers him and escapes.

The main focus of this issue I found was more on the supporting cast. We deal with Maria Hill having stumbled upon the Controller, and more interestingly, Pepper, after she’s been detained by Osbourne and HAMMER last issue. Osbourne is keen to get his hands into Pepper’s armour, however its automatically shut itself down. Here we learn that despite finding Tony’s armoury in Avengers tower, Osbourne and his team are struggling to unlock Tony’s technology, and so Norman is incredibly keen to get Pepper’s repulsor unit. Again, we see Norman start to loose his grip, as he’s quick to start threatening Pepper’s family when she rightly points out that Norman’s allegations of her suit’s weapons are empty.  Its a great scene for Pepper, as she comes across calm and in control, despite being surrounded by Norman and his troops.   Of course, Norman is eventually forced to let her go, as her suit contains no weapons, and Tony ensured she was registered before he lost his position.

As I’ve said before, I’m really intrigued by how Matt Fraction plans to wrap up this story arc.  It really feels like our heroes’ backs are against the wall here.   This series is doing a great job of showing the danger everyone’s in from Norman’s authority and in these days where you’re used to the safe knowledge that our heroes will win through, I think its a testament to Fraction’s writing that I really am seeing no way out for Tony.

The final issue I’ll mention was Strange Adventures #3. Adam Strange discovers that the Weird (or at least, a being that appears to be the Weird) is behind the missing stars. After finding himself overpowered, he makes a beeline for Comet to recruit his help.   Arriving on Hardcore Station though, Adam finds it not as easy as he thought, and soon finds himself beaten and mugged for asking about where to find Comet.  I must admit, I found this quite amusing, and it did help to underline just how dangerous a place Hardcore can be.  Heck, even Comet spends most of his time in the Hole these days.   We’ve very rarely seen him using his flat.

The mystery regarding Synar continues.  We know his plans have gone wrong, as his essence has ended up merged with the Weird’s physcial form.  However there’s also what appears to be the Weird causing Stars to vanish, and a more familiar Synar turns up at the end of the issue in Comet’s flat.   Exactly what the ramifications of the events of the end of Holy War were clearly have yet to be fully explained.

Meanwhile there’s some nice scenes with trouble brewing on New Rann with Sardath and Alanna starting to really question Adam’s sanity over the missing stars.   Fortunately when Prince Gavyn finally has time to look at the readings as Adam asked, he also confirms the stars are going missing.  Obviously its all related to Prince Gavyn and Adam being part of the Aberrant Six, but what exactly the Aberrant Six are, I presume is going to be key to this series.

I’m still greatly enjoying this series.    The reduced cast has helped immensely, bringing the story squarely to focus on Adam and Comet, the two characters I enjoy the most.  Its given the book a tighter focus that I think was maybe missing in Holy War, which just had too many characters to juggle.

The latest issue of Iron Man has hit the stands, and things are still not going well for Tony.

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.

With me greatly enjoying the new Dark Reign issues of Invincible Iron Man, I thought it’d be an idea to catch up with Matt Fraction’s earlier issues, released this week in trade form.

The trade (which features varient covers, not something I’ve seen before on a trade.  Bit strange) covers Matt Fraction’s first arc, The Five Nightmares which sees Tony balancing his life as Director of SHIELD and involvement with Stark Industries, as Ezekiel Stane, son of Obidiah Stane finally enacts his lifelong plan to get revenge for his father’s death.

Its a great story.  I used to read Iron Man all the time, but after Heroes Reborn (I loved that take on the character), I fell out of collecting the book.  I briefly got back on board during the Secretary of Defense storyline, but then that was torpedoed by Avengers Disassembled.

This is the first time in a long time that I felt I was reading the Iron Man I remember.  Matt Fraction does a brilliant job of playing with how Tony’s mind works, through little scenes inserted into the story, where someone will say something, which gives Tony an idea as to how to solve some completely unrelated problem.   It also picks up on a well-visited aspect of Tony’s character.  His fear of the Iron Man technology falling into the wrong hands, that formed the basis as the original Armour Wars storyline.

Here we have Ezekiel Stane.  Son of Obidiah, and who has a genius-level intellict comparable with Tony’s.  While not as inventive as Tony, he none-the-less manages to reverse engineer Iron Man technology and incorporate it into suicide bombing, merging the bombers with repulsor technology.     Tony is once again forced to confront the idea that his technology is in the wrong hands, and this time its being used to cause countless deaths in acts of violence and terror.

Its a great opening to Matt Fraction’s run.  Ezekiel makes for a great foil for Tony.  Equally brilliant and younger, we have a great scene where Tony is playing chess with Reed, and Reed throws these facts at him.  Tony’s confidence comes to the fore as he beats Reed at all their games of chess simultaneously and says that’s how he’ll beat Stane.

And that’s what I truely loved about this story.  Yes, there’s a great villain, yes Fraction brilliantly plays the horror and scale of the threat this technology means, however what really makes this story is that the character of Tony Stark felt just right.   He’s a genius, he’s confident, and he’s also haunted, and absolutely terrified of what this thing he created can do.

Of course, with the benefit of reading the current issues, we can now see how Tony’s character is still being played with, with that very same confidence now being his downfall, and his intelligence being slowly taken away from him.  From what I’ve read so far, I really think Matt Fraction’s run on this title has the potential to be remembered as one of the really great runs.

I’m still trying to limit myself a bit with some of the Dark Reign titles, however this month I’ve still found myself picking up a few extra books, just to see the new status quo.

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?

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.