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.

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.

I was going to put up a post about War Machine #1, which I greatly enjoyed, but regular commentator Pie Man 70 has covered it in his post here:

http://pieman70.blogspot.com/2009/01/war-machine-1.html

And since he’s the bigger War Macine fan I think I’ll just wimp out and link to his blog post and our comments instead

However, for a short review I really enjoyed it. Its edging onto a MAX title for me, as Rhodey quite brutally wipes out a militia at the beginning, and there’s some not-so-subtle hints as to how much becoming a cyborg has messed him up psychologically.

Its nice to see Dark Reign being felt as well, with Osbourn’s appearance towards the end. Although its only just started, I’m quite enjoying the idea of Osbourn being in charge, and all the heroes having to deal with it.

I’ve been really enjoying the Weapon of SHIELD storyline in Iron Man at the moment (their Secret Invasion crossover, since Tony’s tied up in the main SI title). I hadn’t realised how much of a setup for the monthly it was though (ok, it should’ve been obvious). The fact that Rhodey’s keeping the satellite Tony had setup incase of emergencies seems like a good HQ for him. The fact that it can transform into a giant War Machine armour for him is just fun

It sounds like Greg Pak is intending to keep a lot of the feeling of the original War Machine ongoing though. In that series, Rhodey ran an agency called World Watch, who operated to try and raise awareness of, and ultimately stop and prevent atrocities around the world. Of course, what his co-workers didn’t realise until later on was that, when things got really bad, Rhodey would don his armour, and wade in and sort the mess out himself. This series sounds similar, being grounded in more real-world atrocities that Rhodey will work to stop. Only this time, operating on his own, without the benefit of the diplomatic organisation behind him.

I’m looking forward reading this.  Once again my attempts to reduce my number of monthly titles fail.