Black Panther Is Awesome Part 2: Wild Kingdom

X-MEN/BLACK PANTHER: WILD KINGDOM
(Black Panther #8-9, X-Men #175-176)
Written by Reginald Hudlin & Peter Milligan, drawn by David Yardin & Salvador Larroca

X-Men/Black Panther: Wild Kingdom isn’t exactly the best example of why Black Panther is awesome. As I mentioned last time one of the big reasons I like this book so much is that it feels like it’s firmly entrenched in the Marvel U without getting too detailed or confusing. That all gets hindered when you bring in the X-Men. I know a lot of people are all about the X-Men, but I still find them to be the most difficult franchise to get into thanks to the incredibly dense history. It’s not even that Milligan’s story is all that confusing, I just have a hard time placing this story in the long history of X-Men. You’ve got Gambit and Rogue on the same team, but what’s their deal? Emma’s there too, but is this still when Astonishing was going on? None of this really matters to the story, but it is distracting. I do like how both writers handle Storm and Wolverine though, two characters who will be important in their own ways coming up.

The story of this book is that the Red Ghost wants to start a new commie ape society in Africa. There’s something about mutant animals, which gets the X-Men interested. BP of course gets involved too because this is his turf. For those of you unfamiliar with the Red Ghost, he’s a communist scientist who can turn intangible and has created super powered apes who talk. There’s another scientist guy in the story who can absorb mutant powers.

I’ll be honest, the larger story here isn’t all that interesting unless you’re a huge Red Ghost fan (and I know some people out there are). What is cool about this story is seeing Storm and Black Panther together. Like I said before I don’t know much about either character aside from what I’ve read in this book, so I’m not sure if there were any previous hints of their relationship or if this is the first readers saw of it, but I like how they are around each other, especially considering how adversarial they tend to be towards one another. It’s cool to see the beginning of their love story (even if it’s not the chronological beginning).

Oh, Dragon Man’s in the book too which is pretty cool, but, again, the overall story isn’t all that interesting. As far as my collection goes, I’m not all too concerned about adding this one to my collection, unless I can get it on Sequential Swap (a great site to get rid of some of your old trades as well as get some cool new ones). But, don’t let that deter you from checking out my future installments of Black Panther Is Awesome, as Part 3 will focus on Bad Mutha, the arc that got me interested in this book in the first place.

Black Panther Is Awesome Part 1: Who Is The Black Panther?

I’ve gained a bit of a reputation around the hallowed halls of Wizard as the dude who LOVES Reggie Hudlin’s Black Panther comic. I came into it a bit late in the game (somewhere around the early teens I think), went back, got caught up and have been reading ever since. And, while I think the book got a bit weak in the over-long Fantastic Four issues (I might get to those eventually), I still think it’s a pretty great series overall both because it made me care about a character I didn’t really have any feelings toward one way or another (I never read the previous series’) and because it felt like Reggie was really utilizing the vast resources of the Marvel Universe without getting too bogged down in said history.

So, in this semi-recurring feature called Black Panther Is Awesome, I’ll be taking a trade by trade look at why this book rocks my world. So here we go with the first trade, Who Is The Black Panther?

BLACK PANTHER: WHO IS THE BLACK PANTHER?
Written by Reginald Hudlin & drawn by John Romita Jr.

Collecting Black Panther 1-6

Okay, right off the bat, I’ve got to say that this is one of the few cases in which I’ve really liked John Romita Jr.’s art. Usually it’s a little too boxy for my tastes, but for some reason it really works on this book.

Anyway, the crazy thing about the first issue is that it doesn’t even feature T’Challa, the current black panther, but instead focuses on three different Black Panthers from times past repelling foreign invasions, including a pretty rad fight between T’Challa’s pops and Captain America back in World War II that looks even more vintage thanks to Romita’s pencils (not sure how that works, but it does!). We’re made aware of these past battles thanks to a small group of American politicians and military dudes trying to figure out if Wakanda poses a threat. We’re also treated to a few small scenes of bad guys talking to each other, one of which turns out to be the Klaw, who, even I know, is the guy that killed T’Challa’s dad back in the day. I do have one complaint about these flashback scenes, though. The dialogue seems way to modern at times. It’s not a huge deal, but it is the kind of thing that could pull someone out of the story.

All of this sets up a few interesting scenarios. Who’s the bad guy recruiting Klaw? What will the U.S. government try and pull? And most of all, who is the current Black Panther? We’ve seen these past ones, so what’s T’Challa like? We’ll get the answers plus more questions as things move on.

Also of interest, the footage we’ve seen of the Black Panther cartoon, which will be on BET, looks like they just animated this first issue like those old motion comic cartoons from the 70s. As you can probably guess, I’m pretty excited about that series whenever it comes out.

You know what’s crazy about the second issue? Still no T’Challa as Black Panther. We get to see T’Challa challenge his uncle for the title of Black Panther and win which is pretty rad. Along with the scenes we also get some background about Wakanda where we find out that the Panther is the god of the people and also rules them as a king. We also get treated to some more pretty cool and sometimes brutal fight scenes between T’Challa’s uncle and the challengers.

There’s also an interesting set-up in the character of Shuri, T’Challa’s sister who also wanted to try out to become the Black Panther, but was stopped by a falling opponent of her uncle’s just as T’Challa jumped into the fray. There’s some more U.S. government stuff that gets a bit old as the series moves on, but it’s still pretty interesting here. Plus, Klaw recruits a bad guy/girl named Cannibal who seems to take over bodes based on physical contact. The seeds are planted.

The third issue is kind of an origin issue with some more team building on the bad guy’s side. It seems as though Rhino and Batroq the Leaper (minus the silly costume, but still sporting the accent) have joined Klaw’s cadre of evil somewhere in Africa. It turns out that Klaw is related to one of the dudes who we saw trying to invade Wakanda and getting killed. Klaw became an assassin hired to kill T’Challa’s dad, killed him and T’Challa’s brother only to get shot by a young T’Challa. Klaw went back to Belgium where they turned him into a cyborg killing machine. We also get a glimpse of what fueled T’Challa to become the badass dude we will eventually see in the book and got a glimpse of when facing off against his uncle.

The issue is capped with a few more additions to the villain crew in the form of the Vatican’s Black Knight, who even sports an ebony blade and a ruler of a neighbor of Wakanda who is on Klaw’s side. I’m not exactly sure how this fits into the actual Black Knight’s continuity, but they did a call out to it in the most recent issue of Captain Britain (a really great book, highly recommended to all).

Finally, in issue four we get to see T’Challa in his Black Panther gear as the bad guys finally begin the assault. I don’t want to get in too many of the details because they’re pretty cool, but we get a great look at how the population of Wakanda looks up to T’Challa and how he, in turn, respects them. We also get treated to an example of the Rhino’s toughness and an aerial dog fight with the Black Knight, plus the reveal that Radioactive Man is also on Klaw’s Crew.

Issues five and six really display the throw down between BP and his people and Klaw’s Crew (I like that name, they should get uniforms made up). The U.S. government even gets involved by deploying a group of cyborg soldiers that seem to have an awful lot in common with Deathlok, though the connection isn’t made on the page. Oh, the Panther also has a freaking flight cycle. Awesome!

In the end, Panther faces off against Klaw, while his sister takes on Radioactive Man and Cannibal takes over his cousin in America (he’s a diplomat of some kind). So, even though the good guys (and girls) prevail in their own way, there’s still some lingering trouble.

So, what do I like about this book (aside from what I already mentioned)? Well, I’m pretty fascinated by Wakanda as a setting and Hudlin sets things up really well. You get to see both its technologically advanced side but also it’s older, warrior and honor based culture. It’s a really cool setting that really serves T’Challa later on and shows how he truly is a product of his environment.

I also really like this collection of somewhat classic Marvel villains. You’ve got Rhino, Klaw, Batroq the Leaper and Radiative Man all teaming up in a way that doesn’t seem forced at all. Plus, I didn’t even realize it until just now how little Black Panther is in the series and I was still really really into it. It’s pretty cool.

Okay, this was a really long post, but I had to get in why I think BP is so awesome. Look for more installments later as I’ve read the first four Black Panther trades, but haven’t read the X-Men/Black Panther trade in a while (I might just skip that one to save some time).

Trade Post: Thor & Dark Phoenix Saga

Today we’ve got a pair of Marvel trade reviews for your reading pleasure:

THOR VOL. 1 (Marvel)
Written J. Michael Straczynski & drawn by Oliver Coipel
On paper, I didn’t think I’d like JMS’s Thor. I’ve never been a big fan of the character and JMS disappointed me with Rising Stars after which I kind of stopped reading his stuff (also because I’m not a big FF or Spidey fan, though his Midnight Nation is rad). Also, I remember reading in Wizard a bunch of years back (I think right before I got my job) that Mark Millar and Steve McNiven were going to work on a Thor book where all these different Asgardian weapons started falling to Earth and new people were picking them up and becoming Don Blake/Thor-like pairings. That sounded pretty rad, but it never happened. Then that Thor clone thing happened in Civil War, so I was pretty much done with the idea of Thor.

Even with all that, I still started reading Thor when it came out and I was shocked to realize that I really liked it. I can’t even really describe why I like it so much. I think it’s the basic simplicity of a character that’s been around for decades. Even though Thor’s trying to find his fellow Asgardians in human form, it doesn’t feel too bogged down in continuity. I also really like how he just decided to set up shop in Oklahoma as a floating castle-city. It’s a really cool visual which is made all the cooler by Coipel’s slick art. I can’t remember if I’ve read any books he’s drawn before, but I’d definitely make a point from here on out.

Unfortunately, I missed one issue in the first six and got off the story, which is a bummer because now I’ll either have to find all the issues in the Wizard library (a veritable wasteland) or just read the trades as they come out which will take a while. Oh well, I’m still down with the book and from what I hear it’s still doing well, so hopefully it’ll be around for a while.

X-MEN: THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA (Marvel)
Written by Chris Claremont, co-plotted and drawn by John Byrne

I’ve talked a lot of X-Men trash over the years. Partly it’s because I’m a dyed in the wool DC fan. Part of it is that I’m not a big Chris Claremont fan because of his run on Gen 13 (I was a HUGE fan of that book back in the day). And partly because I’m kind of sick of people saying how great it is.

But, all that being said, I figured I should at least give it a shot and see how it is so I can make an educated argument as to why I don’t like the book (if in fact I don’t). Well, I was surprised that I didn’t hate the book. I don’t think it’s anywhere near the level of Dark Knight or Watchmen, books that I’ve heard it compared to before, but it’s pretty good for a comic from 1979-1980.

Part of the problem is that I knew exactly what was going to happen and there were very few if any surprises. I guess I can thank my beloved X-Men animated series and reading various reviews and write-ups in Wizard for that. Anyway, sometimes you know how something’s going to end, but the ride is still fun. Unfortunately, I kept getting let down by moments that I’ve heard were supposed to be awesome. The one that really sticks out in my mind is the couple of issues in which Wolverine gets knocked through the floor of the Hellfire Club and then comes back and kicks ass to save his teammates. Sure there are a couple of cool moments, but most of the issue is spent watching a Revolutionary War era Cyclops fighting in mind space or something. The final fight with the Imperial Guard is kind of boring as well. Plus John Byrne’s very pretty art is often covered with dialogue that explains exactly what you’re seeing the characters do on the page.

Like I said the story’s not bad, especially if you haven’t had nearly every beat of the story ruined for you and also if you have a predilection for Silver Age-type stories, but it doesn’t really make me want to read the rest of this era of X-Men, though X-fanatic and Wizard World guru Brett White suggested I read From the Ashes which is on my list. We shall see I guess.

Iron Mongering: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. & Secret Invasion War Machine

In my ever-expanding quest to read more Iron Man comics I decided to give a few recent trades a shot, which brought be to Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Secret Invasion: War Machine. I wanted to read all of the post-Civil War Iron Man books, but couldn’t find them in the library, so this will do.

IRON MAN: DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D.
Written by Daniel and Charles Knauf, drawn by Roberto de la Torre
As some of you may know, I was involved in the weekly Civil War Room review column on wizarduniverse.com lead by former Wizard staffer Rickey Purdin. I enlisted thinking it would be a seven week commitment (that’s how long it was supposed to take to come out right?). Well, it turned into an over year long commitment in which I read 99% of the Civil War related comics (thank you vacation). Anyway, because of all this, I feel pretty confident in saying that Iron Man was not a well handled character at the time, at least in my opinion.

So, with that in mind, I was pretty apt to skip Iron Man’s post-Civil War comic which saw him in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. an organization most well known for being lead by one of the coolest characters in the known universe, Nick Fury. But, alas, that didn’t keep me away forever.

This trade is a pretty interesting one. The writers Knauf spin an intriguing yarn with plenty of espionage and superheroics all the same. I really like how Tony has built Iron Man-like armor for his S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. That’s a cool touch that really makes sense. Also, I like how Dum Dum Dugan doesn’t like Tony’s way of running S.H.I.E.L.D. (like a business instead of a military organization). There’s some pretty cool moments between the two of them as their relationship grows over the issues.

The book, which collects Iron Man #15-18, also features the return of the handless Mandarin who gets the alien power rings surgically inserted into his spine. I really wish I had the next few volumes to read between this and Secret Invasion to see how that played out. Some day I guess…

All in all, good stuff. Maybe not an easy entry point for new readers, but it’s a good read for the initiated and also reprints two older stories, one starring Nick Fury, the other Iron Man. There’s also reprints of some Marvel Spotlight: Civil War stuff and Marvel Handbook stuff, so that’s a good deal.

SECRET INVASION: WAR MACHINE
Written by Chris Gage and drawn by Sean Chen
This book collects the repurposed Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. issues (#33-35) which were dubbed War Machine: Weapon of S.H.I.E.L.D. while Iron Man was stuck in the Savage Land for six months.

I actually really dug this story. It’s one of the cooler Secret Invasion tie-ins, far as I’m concerned. What you get is Jim Rhodes, a.k.a. War Machine, getting a distress call from Tony telling him that StarkTech had been compromised by the Skrulls, but luckily Rhodey (who’s apparently a cyborg who looks an awful lot like Cyborg now) doesn’t have StarkTech inside him, so he’s cool. Tony also leads him to a satellite that’s shielded from everyone that also transforms into a giant robot that Rhodey can control.

The story also has a pretty good tussle with the Winter Guard, some cool Super Skrulls that actually get identified (why couldn’t they tell us who made up ALL the Skrulls?!) and a character by the name of Suzi Endo who is apparently known, but not by me. I wish this book would have come with some kind of intro or a Handbook entry on some of the characters to let me know what’s up with them, but I got the gist of it. I haven’t read the new War Machine book, but this definitely makes me want to, especially if it has a satellite that transforms into a giant robot!!!

Trade Post: Marvel Mania

Time for some merry musings about a myriad of Marvel’s most moving…comics. Wow, that’s harder than it looks. Stan Lee should write an alliterative dictionary. Anyway, I’ve been catching up on some recent Marvel stuff that I missed out on the first time around, so here goes:

GHOST RIDER: HELL BEND & HEAVEN BOUND (Marvel)
Written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Roland Boschi & Tan Eng Huat
I’ve been hearing about how awesome Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider run has been, that it kind of takes a grindhouse approach to a character whose book wasn’t exactly setting the world, ahem, aflame. Maybe it’s because it’s been hyped up so much, but I didn’t find this volume, which collects Ghost Rider #20-25, all that awesome. Sure it was cool seeing Ghost Rider get mixed up with some ghosts on a highway and crazy nurses, but for me it never went beyond being just cool. I also couldn’t help but feel like these were all Hellblazer stories bounced to another universe and used on Ghost Rider. That’s probably not a fair comparison, but I do like the general approach to the character. Hey, I wouldn’t be reading the book otherwise.

Also, I’m generally not a fan of the art, but I think it works in a book like this. It’s kind of like how I wouldn’t normally like some of the artists who do BPRD or Hellboy minis, but in the context of that kind of book the art really works well. It’s pretty much the same thing here. All this being said, I will give the next volume a read, just to see how it goes, hopefully I’ll be surprised.

THE INCREDIBLE HERCULES: AGAINST THE WORLD (Marvel)
Written by Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente and drawn by Koi Pham and others
Man, this is a good book. I loved Planet Hulk as it was happening but wasn’t all that thrilled with World War Hulk (I’m not a fan of Romita Jr.’s). After all that I was kind of mad that Jeph Loeb was writing a Hulk book while Greg Pak, the guy who made Hulk awesome again got relegated to a Hercules book. I later found out that this was how Pak wanted to do things and heard good things about Herc, so I’m giving it a shot and unlike Ghost Rider, I’m 100% sold on Incredible Herc.

The book is great. Hercules is a pretty fascinating character, not just the wine swilling rogue we’ve seen in issues of Avengers past, but a really complicated dude who’s lived an amazingly long life. The writers really dig deep, but don’t pile things on too heavily and bury the fun. And there’s plenty of fun.

Herc’s chum in all this is Amadeus Cho, the seventh smartest person (first smartest kid) on Earth (I’d like to see the list in ranked order), a character I’ve grown to like in his few appearances leading up to and including WWH. Cho’s obsessed with shutting S.H.I.E.L.D. down because of how they treated Hulk, but Herc doesn’t want to destroy the good with the bad. Meanwhile, Ares is attacking Herc a lot, trying to put his arrogant, famous brother down.

My one complaint about Incredible Herc is that I’m not a big fan of Ares’ characterization. I really really liked Michael Avon Oeming’s Ares miniseries from a few years ago, but I feel like the character he set up there hasn’t really been used as much beyond “big huge bad ass” in later appearances. Here he’s a crazy, jealous dude who just wants to put Herc down. It’s kind of strange and maybe that’s how his character has been developed in books I haven’t read, but it just feels a little off to me and took me a bit out of the story.

I can’t wait to check out the next trade, which, I think, will be Secret Invasion stuff. I read one issue when it came out and really liked it, but it was part 2 or 3 and I missed the rest.

Iron Mongering Part 4: The Many Armors of Iron Man

As I’ve mentioned in previous Iron Mongering posts, I really want to see a Michelinie and Layton Essential, Visionaries or even an Omnibus or two. Many Armors is nothing like that. Instead it’s a grab bag of issues by different creators introducing various Iron Man armors (a space armor, the stealth, etc.). Sounds like it could be fun right? Well, it really isn’t unfortunately. My biggest problem with the book (which collects Iron Man #47, 142-144, 152, 153, 200, 218) is that, like with Demon in a Bottle there is no indication as to what’s been going on with Iron Man around the time these issues came out, so you’re just thrown in and have to figure it out on your own. And while the stories themselves may be kind of interesting, I really felt like I was missing a lot.

Generally I don’t like trades like this with various issues from various teams about various stories, but the ones that I think did it best was the Green Arrow/Black Canary For Better Or For Worse which did the above, but also included little prose paragraphs before each story to explain what had happened in the years between the stories. Maybe if MAOIM did that for a later edition it would be a more enjoyable book, but as it is, it really isn’t. It does REALLY make me want to see some Michelinie and Layton trades collecting their epic runs. I’ve got my fingers crossed. Maybe in time for the Iron Man sequel.

Oh, which reminds me, reading the first issue in this trade, which retold Iron Man’s origin spurred me on to watching the Iron Man DVD, so, that’s a least a point in the plus column. That movie’s rad.

To My Astonishment

Wow, I was going through my posts and found this one that never went life for some reason. I think I wrote it originally back in August, but it could have been even further back than that. Enjoy!

I realize it’s been a while since I did an actual comic review. I’ve been reading mostly newer stuff lately and trying to catch up on more recent books that I missed, but I did grab all four Astonishing X-Men trades from the library the other day after. I had read the first three and part of the fourth, but wasn’t really seeing what all the fuss was about and got pretty displeased with the incredible lateness of the book, so I stopped reading. And while I did like the series a little bit more the second time around, I’m still not blown away like everyone else.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Whedon crafted a good story and I like Cassaday’s art enough. But neither one of those excuse the lateness of the book. I know it doesn’t matter now that the whole thing is out in trade (and probably an omnibus at some point), but it still bugs me when creators make a splash with a book, get fans excited and then keep you waiting for four years to finish a 25 issues story. It’s the kind of book I would have dropped if I was buying it and didn’t get to read them for free at work.

Okay, aside from that, I did have a bit of a hard time not seeing shades of Buffy in every issue of the book. Em and I just finished watching the series again (look for something Buffy-related coming soon) right before I started re-reading the first trade. Sure these characters stand on their own and maybe Cassaday even took some of his cues from the show (the way he draws Beast with his glasses, instantly makes me think of Giles). But, after the first few pages of the first issue, all that kind of fell away. I still saw elements of his Buffy characters in the X-Men, but it’s obviously not a direct lift or transference. Even though certain bits of dialog brought me right back to Buffy episodes. It could also be argued that the Buffy characters were influenced by the X-Men. Who’s to say?

Also, I do have to say that I’m not much of an X-Men fan. As my faithful reader(s) know(s), I was a DC kid growing up, so my experience with the X-Men were the occasional grocery store comics I’d pick up and the cartoon (and reading Wizard back in the day). Because of this, I find their history nearly incomprehensible at times. That being said, I think this is probably the most accessible X-Men book I’ve ever checked out. Whedon and Cassaday both boil the characters down to their basic natures, both in content and appearance, so that you can figure out what they’re all about in just a few panels. I even handed it to Em after the first two trades were out and she loved it, though I did have to hear her continually ask about the next trade for like two years. She has also re-read them and, with the exception of a few questions about the Legacy Virus and Cassandra Nova, didn’t have any trouble with the plot.

I also appreciate the whole “let’s make the X-Men a real life superhero team” idea that gets a bit lost in the middle of the series, but then comes back later on. One of the many things that has bothered me about the Marvel Universe is how bigoted the general citizens can be toward mutants and not towards the Avengers. How do they know that Cap isn’t a mutant? Come on, get over it already. And for his part, Whedon tried to get people over it, by getting the “feared and hated by those they’ve sworn to protect” bit out of the way after the first arc. Kudos for that. And double extra kudos for leaving guns all over the different issues and firing them off in the end (most specifically, the big giant weird sentient Genosha-killing Sentinel). And super kudos for putting some genuinely funny moments in the book. The scene with Kitty falling thrown the floor into the TV room while her and Pete…celebrated his return, made me actually laugh out loud (yes, that an LLOL, a literal LOL).

I also appreciate how Whedon adds to the mythology without muddying up the already cloudy world of the X-Men and the Marvel U in general. You’ve got Danger, the Breakworld, Agent Brand, S.W.O.R.D. and maybe Armor? I’m not sure if Morrison invented her in his New X-Men or not, but Whedon obviously took a shine to her and gave Wolverine another Kitty Pryde/Jubilee girl partner to pal around with when X-23 gets to be too much of a psychopath.

All in all, like I said above, I think this is a good X-Men story. It almost reads like “All-Star X-Men” because it basically glosses over everything that happened in the Marvel U in the four years it took to tell the story. There’s no mention of the Decimation and only one line about Civil War. Now, I’m not one to say that these big events MUST interfere with a big-time writer’s story, but it would at least make sense to get a mention of the 198 or something. And, I’m sorry to say, but I don’t see what the big deal about Cassaday’s art. My friend Rickey Purdin has promised to sit down with me and go through the trades to try and change my mind, so we shall see. And really, I’m only disappointed in that because I think Whedon could have done some really fun things with those events AND I think the Marvel U and the X-books could have benefited from a more timely involvement.

We (Comic Book Detective Matt Powell and King of the Internet Jim Gibbons) were all talking about this book at lunch the other day and came up with the idea that it would be cool if Whedon “executive produced” X-Men the way he does TV or the Buffy comic, writing the important stuff, letting other writers flesh things out and approving everything that gets done. We all felt that, given a more regular shipping schedule, Whedon’s run would feel a lot fuller and more well-rounded like our favorite seasons of Buffy.

Iron Mongering Part 3: Michelinie and Layton Pot Luck

As those of you who have stumbled across this here blog probably realized, last week was absolutely dead in my little corner of the internet. That’s because we were working on finishing the next issue of ToyFare (or “closing” as we call it) before Wizard World Philly which was last weekend. I had a pretty good time, you may have read some of my toy-related stories on the main page or even seen some pics of me hosting the First Annual ToyFare Hall of Fame Awards or on the TTT panel which was a lot of fun (huge thanks to anyone who found their way here because of that panel and thanks to Ben and Justin for hyping it). So that leads me to what will hopefully be the first of a few posts this week, another installment of Iron Mongering.

Instead of just picking up another trade, I decided to read some books I had in my “to read” pile (a pile that, I’m sure like most of yours, keeps getting bigger and bigger). A few years ago a buddy of mine by the name of James Walker was getting rid of a bunch of his comics and I grabbed a small stack of his Iron Man comics, which I sat down and read tonight. And awayyyyyy we go:

Iron Man #218-220, 223, 228 (1987)

Written by David Michelinie and Bob Layton
Drawn by Bob Layton, Mark D. Bright
Featuring Iron Man, Rhodey, The Ghost, Spymaster, The Captain

Okay, so even though these aren’t consecutive issues, I really dug reading through this hodgepodge of issues from Michelinie’s second run on Iron Man. I’m not sure what came before #218, but I feel like I was able to grasp what was going on pretty well. And I think this is a one-off story anyway, but basically Iron Man has to use his deep sea armor to grab a cannister full of some WWI biological weapon that sank on the Titanic.

As with the Demon in a Bottle trade, I really enjoyed these issues. The art by Layton and Bright still looks crisp even after being around in single issue form for 11 years. Michelinie’s stories still have their very literary feel and he easily catches readers up to what’s happening in each issue with no more than three panels, so kudos to him for that.

Which brings us to #219, which not only debuts a brand new villain but also strips Tony of his Magnum-like haircut and replaces it with a weird Jerry curl. How ’80s. This issue sees the first appearance of techno corporate espionage villain The Ghost who can either become invisible or become intangible, both of which make him a powerful and dangerous foe for Iron Man and Tony, which leads into #220 another great issue that pits longtime IM villain Spymaster against new kid on the block the Ghost while Tony stands there, seemingly helpless. Of course, Stark’s not really helpless as he uses Rhodey’s gun to keep Spymaster from shooting a strange spinning disc blade in the Ghost’s head. Which is great because SPOILER the Ghost ends up killing Spymaster by rematerializing him in the middle of a wall. Ouch. Even though I’ve seen this kind of move before, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it kill anyone, which was a pretty big surprise.

Unfortunately, I don’t have #221, which finishes the story, so I don’t know how things were left between the Ghost, who really wanted to pop a cap in Tony’s ass and the Man of Iron. So, moving on…

In #223, a character I’ve never heard of called Force leaves Justin Hammer behind and goes to Tony Stark for help getting out of his armor, which Tony as Iron Man gladly does. The dude inside of Force offers to give Tony everything he knows about Hammer’s operation, but instead Tony sends him to jail where Beetle, Whiplash and Blizzard (all three in trenchcoats and hats, you know how much I like that!) show up to kill him. I found this pretty interesting because I’ve basically thought of Iron Man as a huge jerk since I had to read every Civil War tie-in during WizardUniverse.com’s old Civil War Room column. Here I got to see Tony doing exactly what he thought was the right thing and it completely backfired in his face. Not sure what happens after that cause I don’t have the next issue, but #228 was pretty rad too

Haha, okay, I actually started writing this after reading everything but #228, so then I got to this part and I realized that #228 (which is the issue where Tony gives Steve Rogers, now going by The Captain, his new shield) is part 4 of Armor Wars II, so I’m going to hold off on this one until I can get the rest of the issues.

These few issues of Michelinie’s Iron Man that I’ve read bring me back to my earlier days of collecting comics. I used to pick up random books in the cheap racks of cons back in the day and if I liked them I’d go a little crazy and buy every issue in that particular series (which is why I’m about 7 issues away from owning every post-Crisis, pre-JLA Justice League book that came out). Now, I’m not feeling like I need to buy every Iron Man comic in existence, but I am feeling that old urge to pick up all of his and Layton’s issues. Before I go too crazy, I’m definitely gonna check and see what’s available in trade. All I know for sure are Demon in a Bottle and Armor Wars (which I want to read now more than ever). I’ll keep you posted on how that works out for me.