Gambit 13, Iron Man 258.4, Fury MAX 12

Gambit 13
Asmus (w) and Pinna and Martinez (a) and Rosenberg (c)

With Fence near-dead in his warehouse, Gambit sets out to steal some tech that can hopefully save his friend's life. Unfortunately, that tech is owned by Tony Stark and it'll require Gambit breaking into an apartment armory of his and getting out of there with a suit without being spotted. Of course, things don't go quite as planned as alarms trigger when he gets in and Pepper sends Rhodey in to check and Rhodey discovers Gambit in a suit, using an override Fence gave him to enter and use the suit. Gambit is powering it himself, which is interesting, and manages to stun Rhodey long enough to get out of the armory and start flying away. Rhodey's suit is far better than the one Gambit stole and his isn't self-powered. Rhodey, now knowing that Gambit is inside the suit, tries to get Gambit to power down peacefully before resorting to blowing him out of the sky. Fortunately, he has gotten far enough away that he crashes down in Fence's warehouse and Rhodey sees the injured man and wants to help keep him alive. It seems like they got there in time but something sinister is still up as Fence has apparently hacked the Iron Man network and is beginning to transfer data out of there on behalf of some silhouetted probably-villain.

One of the things that I think slows this book down so much is the amount of mid-fight banter that takes place in every Gambit fight scene. There's always a ton of dialogue as characters aren't sure whether they want to quip or explain themselves or cryptically not explain themselves or do any mix of the three. It's not so bad that it makes the books, which are usually at least interesting if a little predictable at times, unreadable, but it definitely slows the pacing of the books down. This book started with a real spy feel to it and it seems like that's not a bad angle to take with a character like Gambit. In that case, I would say the over-explanation hinders the momentum and the tone of the series. Still, there are usually enjoyable pieces spread throughout each issue and I'd say the series is still worth reading, particularly if you're a Gambit fan, as it winds down.

Iron Man 258.4
Michelinie (w) and Ross and Layton (a) and Sotomayor (c)

The Iron Man 258 saga wraps up as Tony enacts his plan to defeat the Entity. Hammer lets Iron Man into the space station as he reveals that he is, in fact Tony Stark. They manage to send a low-tech message to Rhodey to tell him to meet Tony back at the sewer entrance hideout, where Tony gives Rhodey a different suit, one that more closely resembles his own. The plan is to distract the Entity while Tony gets in and injects it with a virus that would destroy it. They get to Stark Enterprises and are met with a slew of defenses as well as a couple special Iron Man suits directed by the Entity. As they begin to successfully fight off the Entity's defenses, the Entity brings foreign missiles online. Hammer warns the duo that the fight has just gotten far larger and Tony decides to rush through, no matter the cost. He manages to get through the building quickly enough to inject the Entity and end the threat. However, now Hammer knows who Iron Man is and Rae is still dead. Not everything is a victory for Tony Stark upon the defeat of the Entity but, as Rhodey says "that needs to be enough."

It occurs to me I probably could have gone back and read the storyline preceding this one but I'm afraid I would have fallen into a Starkhole and never climbed out of it. Once you start reading a comic storyline all at once, you may not ever stop. However, it would have probably given me more relevant things to talk about in this reviews, including how well it fits into the story and how well it works with the Tony of the time. However, it's just as well as most readers probably don't have access to the preceding and following storylines so we should probably just judge this arc the way it stands on its own. It's not easy to ignore the fact that this is a weirdly timed story. Iron Man is currently in the 500s somewhere, I believe, so it's a bit strange to double back and tell a story the slots so specifically into time actual decades ago now. Sure Iron Man is probably the focus character of May for Marvel (two-thirds of my Marvel calendars had Iron Man on them this past month; the third was Thing, inexplicably) thanks in large part to the third movie coming out, but it's still a bit of an odd choice to give readers this storyline at this point. It's not so odd because, frankly, I found it more compelling than a retelling of his history or something like that that tends to come out as new readers enter stores, but then, I'm a comic fan. Oh well, I shouldn't nitpick. For Iron Man fans, it's worth picking up this arc. It's an interesting enough story and it moves smoothly enough. If you've been an Iron Man fan since the days of Michelinie and Ross, you probably don't need me to tell you to get this book because you've probably gotten it already. Modern day fans without an eye for the past probably won't care for it but Marvel wasn't expecting that anyway.

Fury MAX 12
Ennis (w) and Parlov (a) and Loughridge (c)

Barracuda's men stopped Hatherly on his way as a distraction and roughed him up a bit to bring back to Fury, who is primed to gun down the whole camp. Barracuda explains what's happened and how little the army and the potential war and communist aggression means to him. All Barracuda has ever been interested in is the money and the drugs that he can get out of this deal and there's no way for Fury to stop it. If he tries to shoot them, he's so outnumbered that someone would kill him and, though it might have made something of a small dent, it wouldn't stop anything. They can't kill Fury because he's a legend and a high-ranking official so it would bring even more people down to their operation. So all Fury and Hatherly can do is leave. Hatherly announces to Fury on the plane that he's quitting when they get back because he can't stand the kinds of things that these secret wars are causing. Secret wars mean no accountability and that leads to people like Barracuda. When Fury returns to Pug, Pug denies him the chance to go hunt down Barracuda or to reveal anything. Too many people in Congress and the military are involved or complicit in someway so he can't expose the operation and Barracuda and some of his best men have all taken off from the location, mailing copies of evidence to some of those complicit in Washington with the threat that they'd send more to the mass media if anything happens to any of them. Fury has to accept it. If anything goes south for Pug, he loses his votes and his money and everything else; if anything goes wrong for Fury, he loses his war. Fury can't do anything. He and Shirley have a bit of a falling out as well as they both acknowledge that they've each been trapped by Pug and as Fury is kind of a jerk to her anyway. Fury waits a few years and finds Barracuda and breaks all of his limbs with a bat, which is something that isn't quite a solace.

The next issue is the final issue of Fury MAX, which makes me a bit sad. I'm not fully sold on the MAX line as a whole but I'm absolutely sold on Nick Fury's character time and time again and I think that this character as part of the MAX line makes total sense. It doesn't NEED to be completely explicit content in every issue but Fury's a violent character and he has a lot of darkness to him. Some of the most interesting characters in literature are the planners and the thinkers. Fury has always been one of those types and a well-written Fury is an incredibly compelling character. There is definitely a lot of darkness there though, particularly in his willingness to sacrifice to bring about the best outcome. He's not a guy that necessarily frets over the cost of getting the job done, he just gets the job done. However, in the way that Parlov his illustrated him, Fury MAX really brings out his age and the weight of his decisions over time. It's a solid read but it's definitely a specific solid read, as anything in the MAX line. I'm still sad to see it go. A lot of the books we've seen ended recently (or that we've seen cancelled recently, whether they've ended yet or not) have been books I'd categorize as "different" in some way or another. As much as I like Marvel's line of comics as a whole, it's sad to see so many road-less-traveled books fall by the wayside because it seems to signal that the only books that can survive are the ones that they know can survive.