Avengers World 8, Iron Man 28

Avengers World 8
Spencer (w) and Checchetto (a) and Mossa (c) and Caramagna (l)

In Velletri, Italy, Starbrand has wandered off to find the voices he's been hearing only to find Morgan Le Fay, the sorceress behind the dead rising again. While she captivates him, Spider-Woman, Hawkeye, and Nightmask continue to fight hordes of demons and the undead, eventually sealing off their entrance before they stumble on the Euroforce team that had gone missing, prompting the Avengers' appearance. The Euroforce team is led by none other than the Black Knight, who reveals Le Fay's involvement, to Spider-Woman's chagrin (they have a whole thing). Anyway, Le Fay is leading her armies of the dead to the world of the living. Problems!

I've really grown to like the conceit of this book. Where Hickman's AVENGERS, while very good, has focused on the huge team dealing with big, sweeping problems that never seem really solved, Spencer is taking smaller, dedicated teams to more classic style stories. I've liked Hickman's work a lot but it's nice to see stories that are a little more self-contained and feel big, but not so broad. Each of the three stories Spencer is juggling has proven itself interesting and compelling. This issue, particularly with its narration captions that speak often of death and how its what the people deserve, has a sort of EAST OF WEST feel, another Hickman book that is absolutely incredibly so forcing me to draw comparisons certainly isn't a drawback. I mean, this book isn't blowing me away like EAST OF WEST but that's a pretty tall order. Still, lot of fun here.

Total Score: 5/5


Iron Man 28
Gillen (w) and J. Bennett, C. Richards, and D. Santacruz (p) and Hanna and Magyar (i) and Guru eFX (c) and Caramagna (l)

With most of the rings neutralized, Red Peril takes down Alec Eiffel, Iron Patriot takes down the Influence ring, Arno takes down the Exile, and Iron Man realizes that Marc, who is doing this because he loves Pepper and hates that Tony has treated her so poorly over the years, wouldn't actually threaten Pepper and blasts through the Liar ring's projection to hit him. Mole Man, the last hold out, tosses his ring away to avoid persecution, and the Starks recover them all. With everything turning up Stark, they call the Rigellians to come pick up 451. The Rigellians, super nice dudes, explain to Tony that it was actually something in 451's programming that upgraded the Mandarin rings to act the way they did and a mixture of Tony's position in the world and the original Mandarin's hatred of him caused them to attack him specifically. Everything's wrapped up as Arno secretly sends Abigail Burns the Incandescence ring, allowing her to continue being Red Peril and as Pepper breaks up with Marc, repeating that she doesn't need saving.

Kieron Gillen isn't necessarily known for his happy endings (though it's been seen at times before) but this is about as big a win as Tony could have hoped for (particularly as it seems the rest of the Marvel Universe is crashing down around him). Pepper dumped her apparently crazy/overprotective fiancee, the Stark brothers are as good as ever, 451 is off-planet and the Rigellians were like, super nice, and they've captured all of the Mandarin's rings. Pretty solid day for Tony as Gillen ends his IRON MAN run (though he will team with HULK's Mark Waid for ORIGINAL SIN 3.1-3.4, which will pit Hulk against Iron Man). As I thought with the last couple issues, this series felt like it was starting to wind down really quickly by the end, often going the route of telling instead of showing (which is pretty rare for Gillen, who tends to be acutely aware of that). Still a very good series overall though it's hard not to feel like it peaked with 451.

Total Score: 4/5

Captain America 21, Black Widow 7, Iron Man 27

Captain America 21
Remender (w) and Klein (a) and White (c) and Caramagna (l)

The Gungnir has fully deployed, turning into a giant robot over the small country of Nrosvekistan in Iron Nail's attempt to show SHIELD and America tyrannically and devastatingly eliminating an underpowered enemy. With Mindbubble out of play, the SHIELD agents onboard have started to wake up, though they're groggy from their time mindbubbled. Captain America continues to fight Iron Nail and manages to stall him a bit, enough for Maria Hill to tell him that he needs to destroy the Gungnir's power core. Cap races down, pursued by the Iron Nail, and weak and injured, manages to make one last throw to send his shield caroming into the power core and shutting down the Gungnir. Iron Nail manages to get some of his weapons into Cap, draining him of his life force and aging him incredibly before Falcon arrives to save him, though it affords the Nail a chance set the Gungnir to destroy, hoping to take everyone down with him. Falcon pulls Cap out as Ran Shen is engulfed in flames but  it may be too late for Steve, who recovers in a hospital bed old and frail.

There's a lot of strong character work in this book as Steve pulls himself together for a final attempt at shutting down the Gungnir. He yells at himself for letting this all happen on his watch, for not seeing that Nuke was clearly a part of a bigger scheme, and for losing himself in thoughts about Dimension Z when it was already past, that he would mourn his past while he lost his present. Poor Steve is just about the only guy whose gone through that sort of thing TWICE and now he's here and upset with himself for being sad about it. He remembers his role as the super soldier, as Captain America, the guy who gets the privilege of wearing the uniform, as he continues to push himself and continues to stand. It's meaningful and hopeful and restorative right up until the moment when Iron Nail ages him up (hard to say if it's aging him up or extracting the super soldier serum from him, all possible, though I don't know that the latter would age him so incredibly). It's a strong finish to the Iron Nail's arc and it's certainly going to leave plenty of story pieces to pick up as we move forward.

Total Score: 5/5


Black Widow 7
Edmondson (w) and Noto (a and c) and Cowles (l)

Black Widow's new target, a group of cyberterrorists, are making a buy in San Francisco, new home to former lover and ally Daredevil. Natasha remembers her days with Daredevil in San Francisco, where she walked the line between contract killer and hero and where he could read her like everyone else. She takes out the seller and poses as him to try to make the drop but she's found out quickly and ends up in a rooftop chase with a sniper who tried to take her out. She catches up with him and holds him at gunpoint, trying to get more information out of him but he doesn't know enough. Before anything else comes of it, Daredevil appears and intercedes, telling Natasha that he'll make sure the authorities take the sniper. He tells her to leave San Francisco as he cannot read her heartbeat any more, meaning he doesn't know if he can trust her and his job is to protect the city.

As Isaiah hopes for Natasha to make some friends, Natasha finds that maybe she's lost one of her oldest. It's a poignant and meaningful story and rather heartbreaking. It's the first time we've seen Natasha as she's viewed in the superhero community and the first time we've seen her in this series outside of her own bubble, where we know what she's doing and we root for her because she's our protagonist. Now Daredevil steps in and tells us that maybe Natasha's role isn't so sacred. There's a flashback to kick this one off as Natasha, years ago in San Francisco, lies to Matt about a job she's just done and he tries to get her to reconsider her jobs. Juxtaposed with this story where Matt can't afford to give her the benefit of the doubt, it's a little painful to watch. It also pretty starkly gives us the contrast between the Natasha of then (someone trying to shelve her killer past) to now (someone trying to atone for sins but unafraid to kill, which puts her at odds with so many heroes, including Daredevil). On top of ALL OF THAT, we get a bit more on Isaiah, a former mob man who somehow got himself and his sister out and believes himself indebted to Natasha, despite his sister's protests. Really excellent writing in this one and some of the best character work I've seen a single issue do. Oh, and Phil Noto is still on this book so it continues to be outstanding art.

Total Score: 5/5


Iron Man 27
Gillen (w) and C. Richards and J. Bennett (p) and Hanna (i) and Guru eFX (c) and Caramagna (l)

The Stark brothers have made their own ring and know at least some of the plans of the current Mandarins. All they need is someone who has interfaced with these rings to put their plan of taking down the Mandarins in action. That, of course, leads them to Abigail Burns, the Red Peril (I want everyone to know, right here and now, that I almost called her "Abigail Brand, the Red Fury" but DIDN'T EVEN STUMBLE because I knew how wrong that was and instantly course corrected both words. I wish I could also say I didn't look it up afterwards to be sure but I'm not that self-secure), who needs convincing but agrees when she learns that Nazi Alec Eiffel is one of the ring-bearers and she wants to stomp a Nazi. With her help, the Starks manage to find and take down the Mandarins pretty handily, except for the so-far-unrevealed Liar, who reveals himself to be Marc Kumar, PR person for Stark and fiancee to Pepper Potts (who can't have anything nice). Oh, and speaking of Pepper Potts, Marc has her hostage and forces Tony to a standstill.

There's a lot happening here to explain the rings and the Starks' methods for bringing them down and Iron Metropolitan (which is a full battlesuit and which is activated to stop Mole Man and his pals) which rather slows this issue down. It's a lot of exposition and a lot of soft science from all angles (we have to talk about the rings, about the plans that each known Mandarin has, about the way to stop them, about tech vs. magic, etc.) but I don't know that there's a better way to do this. I think if you stretch this issue out into two it doesn't work and I think if you sprinkle this sort of exposition across books, you forget the relevant parts by the time we reach the showdown. Gillen has sprinkled in some of this information already but it really is a bit of an information dump here (which is rare from Gillen) and it's a little hard to get through at times. Not a bad book by any stretch but certainly not as impressive as I'd like from this typically top-notch book.

Total Score: 3/5

Iron Man 26, Iron Patriot 3

Iron Man 26

Gillen (w) and Bennett and Ross (p) and Hanna and Ross (i) and Guru eFX (c) and Caramagna (l)

Malekith, unable to defend himself from the other six rings and their wearers, makes a deal with Tony: he'll give the ring up if Tony will get him out of the area safely. Tony is wary but agrees, preferring, as Malekith puts it, to win than to take revenge. Tony returns to Earth with the rings intact and hides them away in his encasement. something is happening with the Bride (from way back in the Extremis storyline) and it may just be tied to the fact that Tony has discovered that Arno is trying to perfect Extremis. It's a problem Tony will have to deal with later, though, as four rings has brought them closer to their own goals, which seem to be constructing a ring of their own.

The book is appropriately dark, both in tone and in art/color, for the sorts of shady goings-on that are happening here. Between Iron Man making a deal with Malekith to protect him from the ring-bearers and Iron Man discovering who some of the other ring-bearers are and Arno trying to work the kinks out of the extremely dangerous Extremis and the two of them concocting something to do with the rings, there are a lot of threads here and exactly none of them guarantee any sort of a happy ending. There are outcomes, potentially, that may be less terrible than others available, but many of the possible outcomes are very worrying for Iron Man and it's impossible not to recognize that to some extent in this story. Well done overall.

Total Score: 4/5

Iron Patriot 3

Kot (w) and G. Brown (a) and Charalampidis (c) and Cowles (l)

Rhodes nearly dies from his time underwater but his mysterious savior/possible attacker revives him with a jolt of electricity as a homemade defibrillator. Rhodes attacks him but is forced to stop when the armored man threatens James' father and Lila. Meanwhile, James' father throws himself at the kidnappers, who seem to have some personal issue with him, allowing Lila a chance to run. Back with the masked man, a former agent of SHIELD, James learns that the man has kidnapped him in the hopes that he'll assassinate the former president for him, throwing the country into a civil war over how soldiers are used.

It's a compelling enough story and, I'd say, the most compelling aspect of it is how fast each issue reads. I try not to compare a writer's work to his other work (I do this unsuccessfully OFTEN) but it's hard to separate that I haven't really liked Kot's work with Marvel to this point, mostly because I think it's trying too hard to hit too many points and it ends up slowing an issue down or needlessly complicating things. Here, Kot has an interesting story and seemingly complicated moral decision for our protagonist to make and he's keeping the exposition and the dialogue to a minimum, letting both the art breathe and the story to stand on its own. Each of these issues has read quickly but not because they're uninteresting or poorly written or anything along those lines. They're gripping and compelling and Garry Brown's art and Jim Charalampidis' colors work extremely well with the tone and the content.

Total Score: 5/5

Iron Man 23, Thor: God of Thunder 20

Iron Man 23
Gillen (w) and L. Ross (a) and Guru eFX (c)

Iron Man is on the hunt for the Mandarins out there and happens to find that one of them is the fired director behind a musical based on Iron Man that created Tony to be a pervert. Of course, Tony's people fired him and now a ring has made its way to the disgruntled artist. Tony tries to put him down softly but, before he's able to, Malekith appears and straight up murders the guy, taking the ring and disappearing before Tony gets his bearings. Tony now knows who's behind the capture of the rings and so he turns to his new specialist on magical affairs, Shevaun Haldane, Dark Angel. He explains to her that he doesn't want to go to Malekith expert Thor because then his attack on Malekith ends up being political between Asgard and Svartalfheim as opposed to being simply about the rings and he doesn't want to put that on Thor. Shevaun builds him a weapon that she thinks should render the rings inert temporarily and creates three magical one-use doors that will, if all goes according to plan, drop him in Svartalfheim, drop the weapon next to him, and return him home from Svartalfheim when it's finished. Wearing the stealth suit with the hopes that he can sneak through Svartalfheim without alerting too many people to his presence, Tony is sent through the first door only to find that he's been dropped right into the center of Malekith's hall.

Plenty going on right now and the book moves really quickly as a result, even despite the amount of explaining and backstory they have to give. On top of the A plot summarized above, there's a B plot involving a relationship developing between Arno and Abigail Burns, the Red Peril who just lost her hands to Malekith's attack. There's a good chance that none of this is ideal news for Tony but you can't help but feel good that Arno's making friends. Anyway, there's always the chance that a story like this, one that crosses a couple of different mythologies, can come off feeling really forced and leaving the audience feeling cynical about the motives behind the crossover, as it were. Here though, Gillen nicely threads the needle between the science vs. magic and the Iron Man vs. Malekith so that the story feels like a really solid one developing instead of some kind of weird opportunistic cash grab. Pretty neat, you guys.

Thor: God of Thunder 20
Aaron (w) and Ribic (a) and Svorcina (c)

Thor and Rosalind Solomon are out to stop Roxxon, whatever it takes, as Rosalind hates them and what they're doing to the environment and Thor is pretty sure that Earth hates them and also he likes Rosalind. Thor has taken several books out from the godly library he's visited in recent days about the death of many different worlds and he's prepared to do what it takes to bring Roxxon down. In this case, it means blowing up a few of their plants in an "Act of God" manner that means insurance won't pay for it. Of course, increasingly evil Dario Agger knows who is behind it and insists that his men find a way to hurt Thor, to strike back in this new war. Their suggestion to the evil man who is both nicknamed and physically, on occasion, "minotaur" is that they strike at Broxton, Oklahoma. MEANWHILE, in the far-off future, King Thor tries to talk with Galactus about maybe not eating Earth and then, when words don't work, prepares to fight.

There are parts of this story I like and am intrigued by and there are parts that I can't help kind of rolling my eyes at. For example, I like the idea that Thor wants to get into the conservationist mindset because he just straight up loves Earth and anything that harms it, whether it's Dr. Doom trying to take it over, Ultron attempting to kill everyone on it, or Roxxon actually killing it, is in for a fight. The idea that he'd be behind the "hey, let's make nature be great!" kind of fight is one that I both get and that I like for his character. On the other hand, Dario Agger is eye-rolling villainous. He admits that he's caused chemical spills just to kill wildlife, that he's introduced predators who don't belong in certain places to be in those certain places, and that he's altered several bears to completely deplete the salmon population in certain rivers, all so that Roxxon can provide the solutions eventually. While I don't doubt that there are evil people out there, this is so frustratingly comic book evil that I can't help but be a little disappointed by it. I tend to prefer my villains either untouchable and evil or even a little more complicated. It does seem as if they're ready to build up a sad backstory for him but I think it may already be too late. Anyway, King Thor calls Galactus rude so I GUESS I'm saying you should check out this issue?

Captain America 18, Iron Man 22

Captain America 18
Remender (w) and Klein (a) and White (c)

Mindbubble has control of Fury and, in turn, control of the Gungnir, a new helicarrier the size of a city and probably with the firepower to level more than just that. Maria Hill calls for all the backup she can get to try to stop Mindbubble. Fortunately for her, Cap and Falcon were nearby trying to spy on the goings-on, suspicious of SHIELD for having weaponry and villains that even Steve isn't allowed to know about. As they approach, they find themselves set upon by SHIELD agents thinking that the two heroes are Hydra. They take them down non-lethally and Cap steals one of their bikes to go after the helicarrier. On the way, Steve calls Jet, who had been interrogating a cyborg tasked with guarding Weapon Minus, and learns from her about Mindbubble, an ex-SHIELD scientist who had wanted to create a less violent alternative to warfare. SHIELD, of course, wanted an alternative to Weapon Plus, in case their experiments ever turned on them. Mindbubble used the super soldier serum and LSD to create a new concoction he hoped would be more peaceful. With no willing test subjects, Mindbubble used the serum on himself and quickly went crazy, turning on SHIELD and taking down a number of SHIELD agents before he could be restrained. Jet also informs Steve that Mindbubble's mindbubbles create a sort of dream map for the victim, placing him in the fantasy world his own heart desired. When Mindbubble is done with them, the fantasy turns dark and kills the victim. She advises Steve to kill himself rather than let the fantasy do it if he's mindbubbled. Steve arrives on the helicarrier with an entire SHIELD fleet on his tail as the issue ends.

Still a lot going on here though this issue does feel a little redundant. The Mindbubble origin isn't exactly foreign to us at this point so retelling it isn't too effective only a couple issues later. Also, much of this issue is fighting and a chase scene between SHIELD and Steve and Falcon. Despite all that, though, the issue is still entertaining and it moves really quickly for how much information is dispensed. Hill somehow remains the only one un-mindbubbled of the agents sent to take down Mindbubble and Fury and she sets the Gungnir to self-destruct though she's surprised and stopped by the Iron Nail amidst everything else that's happening. It's a solid issue and there are some nice moments between Steve and Sam. The narration continues to be fairly strong and sets up plenty of feelings for Steve, letting us know that he's got a lot to fantasize about when he eventually has to go up against Mindbubble and letting us know that he has just about exactly the right amount of trust in SHIELD. The colors on this issue were a nice departure from the grim and dark metal colors we've seen lately in this book, setting up the chase over plenty of orange desert making it seem a little more light than it had lately, even if it's only as an interlude between tense moments. I don't think you'll miss a lot if you miss this issue but it's still one worth reading. Can't complain.

Iron Man 22
Gillen (w) and Bennett and Hanna (a) and Guru-eFX (c)

It's Red Threat and Iron Man up against Lord Remaker and the Exile in a battle of Mandarin Rings and Stark Tech for the new city Troy. Abigail Burns has changed her mind about the city and fights alongside her hated foe Tony Stark to defend it but Tony's mind is on the Troy Core, the heart of the city and the last known whereabouts of Arno Stark, that Lord Remaker just destroyed. Tony continues fighting but is soon surprised when Arno emerges from the wreckage in his new battle suit, a giant Iron Man suit of his own design. The reinforcements force the Exile and Lord Remaker to flee. Red Threat tracks Lord Remaker in the city with her own ring and finds him dead at the hands of someone else, the ring gone. Just as quickly, her hands are sliced off and the attacker again disappears with the ring. Tony finds her and brings her to a hospital where he and Marc question her about the rings. She tells them that the rings just want to destabilize and cause chaos and that they seem to really hate Tony Stark. Therefore, their mission is two-fold: wreak havoc and wreck Tony. According to Abigail, this means Stark has painted a bullseye on Troy with his very presence. He acquiesces and holds a press conference to announce his decision to leave the city in the hands of the capable and mysterious new designer Arno. Meanwhile, new series villain Malekith counts the three rings on his fingers and vows to complete the set.

This is one of those situations where I hate hate hate solicits. I understand, to a point, the purpose of them. In this, the information age, no one wants to wait three months to find out what to expect from a new series or, for retailers, to know what's going to be on the shelves. Sometimes, books are able to guard their secrets in solicits but that's usually just for big events and deaths and things. This would have been a crazy reveal, one that really shakes up what's happening in IRON MAN and leaves a lot of questions to the reader. I try not to read solicits as often as I can but it's impossible at this point not to see some things, given the websites I frequent and the twitterers I follow. Even though many in the comics industry tend not to like solicits, they're forced to lean into them and advertise storylines in advance. I can't blame them for that; the news is out there, best to control it and answer questions the way you want them answered. In this case, I knew about Malekith joining the book a couple months ago so when a hand appeared and snagged Lord Remaker's ring, I wasn't at all surprised. It's too bad too. I kept thinking about this as I was reading, how curious I'd be if I wasn't aware of what was coming. GUYS, I think it'd be PRETTY CURIOUS. Still a good book and one that's well-written and exciting. Still a fun and exciting book as IRON MAN presses on.

Black Widow 3, Iron Man 21

Black Widow 3
N. Edmondson (w) and Noto (a and c)

Natasha's been hired to break a man out of a prison sentence in Argentina for crimes he did not commit. The job pays well and it's one that's not particularly hard for someone as good as she is. On her way out the door to head to Argentina from her Little Russia home, she comes across her neighbor Ana, who has a black eye from the husband Natasha has told her to leave. She has no time to dwell on this and goes to Argentina, successfully breaking her charge, a man named Angelo, out of the prison. She takes down every guard in their path non-lethally, refusing even to carry a gun in the situation, telling Angelo that these are good men just doing their jobs and that his wrongful imprisonment is no reason to take it out on them. She has to leave him at a riverbed for a moment while she attends to guards on foot and, while she's gone, Angelo murders one of the guards and tosses him into the river, telling Natasha when she returns that he slipped. When Natasha and Angelo meet up with Angelo's contact and their extraction, Natasha hears the man call Angelo "lobo blanco," the white wolf. As they begin to take off, she realizes who the man is, someone known as the butcher of Argentina. The crimes he was imprisoned for truly weren't his own but there were plenty he wasn't arrested for that were his own. She makes a snap call and drags Angelo out of the rising helicopter, landing them both back in the river. She stabs Angelo and lets the crocodiles eat him as she swims to shore. She's extracted from Argentina by Maria Hill as she's needed for a SHIELD op and requests to stop over at her apartment for some gear. While there, she pushes into Ana's apartment and pins down her husband, swearing to break his spine if she ever touches Ana again.

It's very, very rare to come across a book that I'm so enamored with so quickly, particularly one where I don't have a ton of familiarity with the creative team. I didn't really know Edmondson going in and I knew Noto but hadn't seen him be THIS good before. I think probably the last book that kind of had this feel for me was maybe NEW AVENGERS, which started so dramatically and felt so epic. Even books like X-MEN LEGACY (which I obviously adore but had a bit more of a slow burn for me) and YOUNG AVENGERS (which I loved out of the gate but also rather knew I would given the team behind it) didn't land in quite the same way this one has so quickly. Noto's art is absolutely gorgeous, Edmondson is telling a really compelling story and building a really amazing character out of Natasha, and, well, everything is just going really, really well. Natasha's narration again leads us through the story as she talks about how she doesn't really call any place a home, how she can't because homes are a distraction and she can't afford distractions in her life. Not having a home means that she feels she can belong everywhere but, as she points out, also feels that she belongs nowhere. It's such a wonderful and powerful idea for always traveling, always in exotic locales character and it's made even more tragic when she reveals that her real home is where she finds pain, that that's what's most familiar to her. It's a wonderful story and a wonderful book. GUYS, I haven't even talked about the fact that this is an amazingly strong female character who has spent three books doing nothing but being entirely amazing at her job, passing the Bechdel test, not being a sex symbol, and having real conversations with real people. GUYS. HOW AMAZING IS THIS BOOK?

Iron Man 21
Gillen (w) and Bennett and Hanna (a) and Guru eFX (c)

Arno and Tony have been trying and trying to track the Mandarin Rings but seem unable to find them when they're not immediately in use. The longer it takes, the more damage Troy suffers, particularly from the Remaker Ring, which keeps turning up to bomb parts of the city. Troy's PR head Marc Kumar meets with ex-girlfriend (and current Mandarin Seven) Abigail "Red Peril" Burns and tells her that she needs to stop acting the terrorist, a role that doesn't fit her. She swears the bombings haven't been her and decides to go see what's so special about the city. Iron Man tracks her and uses his stealth suit to follow her through the city. She finds that Troy is a self-sustaining, self-repairing city, capable even of taking care of its derelict population by creating energy efficient homes for them and everyone else. She realizes that the city she's been fighting against is actually nothing worth fighting against, that for as much as she dislikes Stark and what he stands for, this is a worthwhile place. Her ring leads her to two more rings active in the city, the Remaker, in the possession of the previous would-be warlord of Mandarin City after the fall of the Mandarin, and the Night-Bringer, in the possession of Victor Kohl, the jerk kid who felt so slighted by Iron Man after Kohl was responsible for killing his father in a drunken rage. The three talk and realize how their views perhaps don't really match up, including how the Remaker is preparing to launch a missile at Stark's current HQ, and prepare to fight one another. The rings then identify that Tony's in the room with them and he gets pulled into a fight he wasn't expecting while he's trying to get out to stop the missile and save Arno. The Night-Bringer won't allow him to leave in time and he ends up with a view of the building as the missile hits it, presumably with Arno still inside.

The fight against the Mandarin Rings escalates even further as Tony and Arno become directly involved. Well, even more directly involved than they were. We also get a better sense of the people behind a few of the rings and a better sense, perhaps, of why the rings chose these people. There seems to be some discord out there between the rings' new owners but, perhaps, also between the rings. Burns, for all of her hatred for the establishment and distrust of Tony, isn't a terrorist and has a real belief in her progressive views. The Remaker, meanwhile, wants only to have ruled the city or for no one to rule the city. The Night-Bringer is a punk kid who refuses to be held responsible for his own actions. And these are just three of the ten. Will Arno be okay? Will Troy survive its first arc? The next arc is called "Rings of the Mandarin" and will focus on one new ring-bearer in particular trying to gain control of the other nine. Gillen's already talked about the next arc and who that one new ring-bearer is (click that link to read his pretty good interview with CBR and find out who) and it's got me pretty excited about what's in the near future but there are still some pretty good questions for the immediate future.

Hawkeye 16, Iron Man 20, Indestructible Hulk 18

Hawkeye 16
Fraction (w) and Wu (a) and Hollingsworth (c)

Kate is still out in LA and still short on cash and most everything else. She finds a seemingly kindred spirit wandering the highway as she rides her bike down it and agrees to help him get back something he claims was stolen from him. She soon finds out that the old hobo is actually '60s musical sensation Will Bryson and that he's not actually an old hobo at all. Will claims that his brother Grey, his one time recording partner, stole the masters of Will's long-awaited masterpiece album Wishes and that he released them bit by bit to the public. Kate is quickly embroiled in this little family feud despite the urgings of her extremely reluctant police contact and vows to help Will get his recordings back and figure out who is, in fact, behind it. Kate's investigation leads her into a fight with Bryson nurses/bodyguards and eventually she talks with Grey and realizes he did steal it but that there's not much she can do about it, nor, perhaps, that she should do about it. Will holds a concert to play bits of Wishes and Kate attends with her new LA friends and, for a moment, feels like she's going to be okay. Then Madame Masque pops up behind her, whispers "found you" and disappears again.

I said last week that THUNDERBOLTS might just be the most fun book that Marvel is putting out these days. While I stand by the sentiment that it is certainly fun, it's hard not to read this book and hand the title right on over. If THUNDERBOLTS is the book that's trying to be the most fun (and pretty much succeeding), Kate might still be the most fun character, so I have to say that HAWKEYE might just win out. I think THUNDERBOLTS is going for a lighter feel in general than HAWKEYE (which might be harder to say right now considering we haven't seen a Clint-centered issue in a while) but geez, this book is a non-stop fun ride. Kate's voice is absolutely unique and delightful and the book manages to be chock-full of references without ever feeling bogged down. That's a really important and specific type of writing to hit and it's the difference between, say, the amazing Venture Brothers and the deplorable other reference-centric comedy like Family Guy or The Big Bang Theory. This is a lovely little issue and it again highlights the beautiful differences between David Aja and Annie Wu. Fraction answered a question on his tumblr that pretty perfectly encapsulated what makes this little switch-off so great, saying that if he was only going to be allowed access to Aja for the Kate stories he wanted to tell, he probably wouldn't have sent her to LA. Obviously Aja's art is amazing but it's incredibly different from Annie Wu's, though Matt Hollingsworth's colors also deserve mention for still linking the stories so well. Wonderful book, nice story, great character, and amazing art. Can't ever go wrong with this book.

Iron Man 20
Gillen (w) and Padilla and Hanna (a) and Guru eFX (c)

IRON MAN jumps into INHUMANITY as Tony and Arno continue searching for the Mandarin rings only to find one, the Nightbringer, alighting on a human with a whole flight of issues already. This human, Victor Kohl, has had plenty of personal problems and his most recent one, a distrust of his father and brothers and a suspicion that he's not really his father's son, is exacerbated when the Terrigen mists hit and his family all cocoon and he doesn't. The government comes to take the cocoons away and Victor watches the news, discovering that the Inhuman DNA is passed through bloodline so it appears he was right and he wasn't part of their bloodline. He drinks himself into a stupor and goes to attack the Inhuman Nativity Center his family was brought to. The Nightbringer finds him there and rests on him, happy with his desire for vengeance and his anger. As soon as the Nightbringer goes active, Tony and Arno spot it on their equipment and Tony goes to recover it. He and Kohl fight and Kohl damages the cocoons before Iron Man gets a clean shot off on him. Nightbringer recognizes that they're incapacitated and teleport away before Tony can get his hands on him. Transported underground, Kohl is surprised to find himself suddenly cocooning. When he breaks free in his new Inhuman form, Medusa arrives to show him the remains of his father's cocoon, destroyed by Kohl. She also informs him that his family was living in the same place when the Terrigen bomb was detonated and so had the same level of exposure and therefore all changed at once but he lived elsewhere at the time and so changed later but he's still of their blood. However, she admonishes him for killing an Inhuman and exiles him from Inhuman society. The Nightbringer convinces Kohl that it's really Iron Man's fault (not a hard sell for Kohl) and he swears revenge, taking the new name The Exile.

Pretty cool little tie-in here and one that manages to show us the Marvel Universe at large but still keeps the story rather contained to Iron Man's world. It's a nice play by Gillen as he constructs an issue that works to achieve both ends well. The sentient rings continue to be a really cool idea and the idea of Tony and Arno searching them out but only able to find them when they go active adds a layer of depth and intrigue that's worth acknowledging and that keeps the reader on his toes. There's also a nice talk between Tony and Arno about INHUMANITY which feels like something of an admission on Marvel's part that GEEZ it feels like this has been going on a while already and it has barely even started. There's also talk about Bruce Banner trying to find a cure (as we'll see below) and Tony wondering if it's really necessary to worry about. Lot of good bigger universe stuff in here, which is the sort of thing that Gillen's IRON MAN has avoided diligently and it's yielded good results, yet here we are with a solid tie-in that really works. Can't complain.

Indestructible Hulk 18
Waid (w) and Raapack and Sepulveda w/ Grummett (a) and Staples (c)

Banner's bomb goes off too low over Tulsa and things immediately descend into chaos. Hank Pym would have been caught in the explosion but managed to shrink down to microscopic size and actually avoid the particles as they flew by. It's a good thing he did since he starts to figure out what's happening before anyone else. The bomb itself integrated tech that Banner recovered from the Chronarchists int he hope that he could create time fields that would accelerate the Terrigen particles so they were spent almost instantly, keeping them from everyone else. It's a good idea and one that Pym particularly is impressed by but he finds a cocoon amidst the chaotic time fields and realizes it must not have worked. After everything is set straight again in the town below the bomb's detonation, the super scientists determine that there were too many variables with the Terrigen particles that no one could have foreseen. It doesn't make Banner feel any better. He plans to hitch a ride back with his team, who broke out of the lab despite Hill's orders, only to see them nearly go down before reaching him as Randall Jessup cocoons and turns into some sort of monster, which seems to emit some sort of almost sedative rays, to the point that he calms the raging Hulk back into Banner and throws him from the jet.

The bomb storyline was only a two piece arc but it worked for me. I think that I enjoyed the first part more, which really delves into what's happening with Banner and what's at stake for him pride-wise. Waid did a really good job (as he's done all series) characterizing Banner and giving us a sense of what these kinds of things mean to him (it seems like there are big changes coming for the series as it moves into its new ALL-NEW MARVEL NOW launch and I think Waid's done an excellent job facilitating the shift). This issue was a little more dedicated to the action and the science of it, which maybe slowed down the character-driven bits a little, though it does shine a bit of a light on Hank Pym's character for anyone looking for that. The transformation of Jessup is something that Waid's been working to but we'll have to wait until next issue to really see what it means. Entertaining and engaging book all the same.

Black Widow 1, Iron Man 20

Black Widow 1
Edmondson (w) and Noto (a and c)

Black Widow kicks off her new solo book with a couple of quick missions and a sense of how the book is going to play out. We join her in the middle of a mission as she convinces a possible suicide bomber with a gun who is hiding out in a hotel room, ready to detonate if it comes to that, that she is working on his side and that she was hired by his employers to get him out of the tight spot. She relaxes him with a bit of a backstory and a shared heritage (the bomber is also Russian). When he inevitably opens the door to her, she cuts the detonation wire and takes the gun from him before strapping him up to a rope to rappel him down the building with and pushes him out the window to the cops waiting below. Twenty hours later, she's meeting in Central Park with her lawyer/manager Isaiah to get her next assignment. They talk about her reasons for taking jobs and why she's not in it for money beyond the money she needs to repay debts and live life and so on. There's a nice moment where Natasha seems to zone out and watches a woman play with her red-headed daughter and her son. Another 36 hours later and she's in Dubai trying to stop an assassination by taking out the target's bodyguards, as well as the bodyguards of the man with whom he's meeting. Once everyone is down and Natasha has breached the room, she explains the situation to him and puts a bulletproof vest on him before shoving him in front of a window. The sniper planed across the way fires at him, hitting the vest, and Natasha shoots a rocket back. Fifteen hours later back in New York, she tells a not-quite-adopted cat the story and wonders if she's too far gone to pay back her debts.

Obviously this comic is taking a lot of its cues from The Avengers and the "I've got red in my ledger" mentality of that Natasha. Not to say that she doesn't have those feelings in the comics throughout her history but it's being brought into focus here and it's hard not to feel like it's trying to match the movie. That, of course, doesn't mean it's not a compelling story to tell. The more important thing to it, though, is the way that Natasha carries and conducts herself in the midst of all of this and that's what Edmondson, already, is proving he can do. This Natasha is already proving to have everything I like about Natasha's character and, as yet, none of the weird psychotic sort of tendencies that are sometimes ascribed to her. Occasionally people will write her with a sort of psychopathic cold-blooded thing that I don't think is fair but I think comes from the idea that she has been an assassin and a mercenary and everything else. Certainly she's not entirely normalized but some writers can make that lean a little too far and make her almost bloodthirsty. That very clearly isn't Edmondson's intent and he gives her a couple of really human moments throughout the book, between watching the mother and her children and her conversation (which is simultaneously sweet and no-nonsense) with a cat and a couple of wistful stares (between this book and one of the Marvel previews books lurking around out there). Also, I'm ashamed that I've gone this far in analysis and not mentioned Phil Noto's frankly incredible art. The only thing I'd really heard about the book before I read it was that everyone was saying how great the art was. I assumed it would be very good; people's word and Phil Noto's reputation and history wouldn't lie to me. But I'm not lying when I say every person was absolutely right, the art is amazing in this book. Natasha looks stupendous and very real, the supporting characters all have real personality built in, and the set pieces are gorgeous. Great, great art. Very fun book and a great way to kick off the new series.

Iron Man 20
Gillen (w) and Bennett and Hanna (a) and Guru eFX (c)

The christening of Troy has been interrupted by one of the Mandarin's rings, specifically, as Tony realizes, the Remaker. Unwilling to sit by and let it happen without her, Abby Burns (just got that, "burns") jumps in with her newfound Mandarin ring, the Incinerator (see, burns). The ring and Abby talk back and forth about ways to further destroy Stark and about how she's using the ring and so on before a ring-caused solar flare shorts out all electronics in the area (of course, not including Stark's suit, he's beyond that) and Tony has to flee to check on Arno. Arno is safe, having taken his own precautions against this sort of thing in the past, but Burns escapes and tweets a video of herself next to a space satellite. Tony vows to find her and to find the Remaker but starts to understand just what all of this means; the Mandarin's rings are loose. He and Rhodey pay a visit to SHIELD's high-security weapons vault to check on the rings and see that they're all there, but Tony quickly realizes that one of the rings, the Liar ring, is actually creating a false image of all of them; it subsequently disappears, leaving Tony and Rhodey to wonder where the rings are, who has them, how long they've been gone, and how long they've been apparently sentient. The rings, meanwhile, have decided to escalate things now that Incinerator and Remaker have shown their hand.

There's a lot going on and a lot to like in this series. The idea of the rings as sentient and dead-set on destroying Stark is certainly something that changes the playing field a bit and makes Mandarin an exciting and almost entirely new foe. There's also an undercurrent of mild suspicion around Tony that is both warranted and unwarranted. Rhodey points out that everyone's a little worried about what Tony's up to with this city and these new ideas and locking himself in his lab for weeks at a time, but Tony counters it with his usual "whenever I'm up to something new, the military worries, even though I'm pretty definitively one of the good guys." There are valid points to each argument and it's clear that this debate is one that Gillen will shine light on as we keep pressing. The art looks good and fits the issue well, particularly the action of the issue. There are some bits of the issue that I had to re-read because I started to gloss over them, particularly with Abby. She's a tricky character to read because she's suddenly so at home with this ring and so quickly adapting to possible supervillainy. She's also somewhat irritating, which doesn't help matters. Still, the good easily outweighs the bad here and it's nice to see a re-imagination of one of Iron Man's classic foes. But, you know, not like the re-imagination in Iron Man 3. Which was garbage.