Avengers Annual 1, Iron Man 19

Avengers Annual 1
K. Immonen (w) and Lafuente (a) and Beredo w/ Loughridge (c)

Shang-Chi is taking some kids who may or may not have powers and who may or may not be delinquents of some kind (different Avengers seem to have different perspectives on the issue) on a tour of Avengers Tower. It's just before Christmas and most of the Avengers have gone elsewhere for the holidays, leaving only Shang-Chi, Captain America, Black Widow, Bruce Banner, and Tony Stark behind. Shang-Chi's tour is something of a failure, as all of the Avengers present a not so clean look at what it is to be super powered. Manifold turns up to help Shang bring all of the kids away but one, unbeknownst to the Avengers and the other kids, sneaks away and stays at the tower. Everyone sets off to their own holiday plans except Cap, who has volunteered to stay behind and keep an eye on the tower. He locks up and goes to help at a local kitchen, where he spends a good amount of time chatting with another vet about days gone by. He returns to the Tower later  and is alerted to a break-in in Tony's lab. The girl who stayed behind, an eager and excited girl named Zamira, has the power to manifest voices with alarming accuracy, meaning that she creates versions of herself that have the voices of the people they're meant to represent. FOR EXAMPLE, she manifests a Tony Stark who can access his lab with voice recognition and who speaks not dissimilarly to someone's perception of Tony Stark. Apparently she tends to lose control and create these voices when she gets anxious and she's super anxious now. Her voices run amok, issuing voice commands throughout Avengers Tower from Tony's lab. Cap goes to check it out and is quickly joined by Natasha and Hulk, both of whom ended up staying behind in the Tower after all. They try to calm Zamira down and, particularly Widow, try to get her to use her perceived liability as an asset. Tony, who also apparently stayed behind, joins in the action and things start to go crazy as too many voices start issuing commands and one of them accidentally sets off the self-destruct command. Zamira pulls herself together just in time to help set everything right, issuing other commands with other voices to stop the countdown. All of them clean things up and decide to spend the evening together, eating and talking.

It's a goofy issue, breaking very much from the current feel of Hickman's AVENGERS, but it's well-placed and extremely well-executed. I was excited to see Kathryn Immonen's name on the cover for this one, knowing we'd get a good dose of character and some solid dialogue. Between her fast-paced and chaotic story and David Lafuente's art, this Annual stands up on its own as a perfectly pleasant and easily read standalone story. I'm a big fan of showing off character and this one is pretty much just a showcase of that, giving us a really nice look at some of our core Avengers in their downtime. It's a little like DeConnick's AVENGERS ASSEMBLE in the way that it focuses on the more familial feel of the Avengers but manages to let itself be a little goofier and a little less story-driven. The story is still clearly important but one of the nice things about an Annual is that it doesn't require a story that's going to keep going beyond its one issue; sometimes you'll get one that sets up the future of a book but by and large Annuals tend to be a chance to let someone else take the characters for a spin and see what comes out of it. It was really nice to see a break from the super-serious feel of the current line of Avengers books and I hope, if it leads to anything, it leads to Kathryn Immonen on another book.

Iron Man 19
Gillen (w) and Bennett and Hanna (a) and Guru eFX (c)

Tony has a surprise for Pepper. Well, a couple of them. He introduces her to Arno and gives the briefest of explanations of what's happening. He also inadvertently introduces her to his newest suit operating system, PEPPER, which is a bit awkward (he quickly promotes PEPPER to running the new city and renames her HELEN, giving her a Troy to look after). He also tells her of his plan to take over and rebuild Mandarin City, feral since the death of Mandarin over a year ago (back at the end of Fraction's run on IRON MAN). She's worried about him and about this whole plan, which seems entirely like an overreaction to something deeper. He admits that she's probably right but isn't too bothered by it, preferring to overreact and do something good with it than to overreact and become an alcoholic again. She convinces him to hire her new fiancee as PR person for the whole undertaking, which would probably go relatively well if not for an attack by Mandarin Ring 1 (in the presence of Mandarin Ring 7 and Abigail Burns, who we met last time) at the time of his press conference.

Plenty going on in this series still but it's rather underlined by the somewhat sweet moments of this issue. There's a relief to Tony and Arno both knowing that they're overreaching a bit and that they're trying something so big, meaning that if they have a fall during this, it won't come with full issues of "oh my hubris!" but rather with something like "well, it would have been pretty cool if it had worked!" There are also sweet and very human moments between Tony and Pepper as he explains why it's maybe not as creepy as she thinks it is that he built and named his AI after her, something that we kind of already knew but that she deserves to hear as well. He, of course, does try to hide it from her, but it's sweet and creepy nonetheless. The idea, for those who missed it in the beginning of Gillen's run, is that Pepper is Tony's best friend and that he wasn't trying to replace her or obsess over her or anything like that, but that he needed something to remind him of her and to keep him balanced as he traversed the infinite space he was going to enter. Look, I think it's sweet, okay? There's also a moment in here where Tony's narration kind of apologizes for leaving Mandarin City in shambles and justifies it by saying "I was in space, guys." Anyone who's read even, like, one post from this blog will note my love of talking to an audience and referring to it as "guys" so WHAT AN EASY WAY TO WIN ME OVER.