Rate it: Iron Man by Kieron Gillen

I thought it was...okay.

Gillen did a serviceable job but at times it felt like his heart wasn't in it compared to some of his other titles. I feel like part of the problem was Gillen being more at home with titles where he can go more "indie" or creative compared to Iron Man, where it felt like it was too mainstream for him, if that makes any sense.

The adoption retcon, which was probably the biggest thing he did on his time on the book, being an issue or not is probably dependent on the person, but personally I don't think very much good has come out of it in the long run aside from Arno Stark.

I like Gillen, but this run was pretty cheeks. Didn't add much aside from Arno (who I liked back then but is already way better in the current book) and that Secret Origin arc is the only story that I think is really solid, even if the flashback gets silly with the grey aliens or whatever and it's too long. The first arc is pretty vapid, and how a concept as good as Rings of the Mandarin fell through with eight of the characters who got the things being such terrible choices will always confound me. Malekith and Mole Man were the good ones, btw, but MM barely got any play. Time for OCs! The Hulk crossover was great, but I don't really think of it as part of the run. If Rings of the Mandarin nailed it, I'd chock the whole book up as a win overall, but it doesn't so I don't. Better Tony stuff was happening in Avengers and it's the weakest Iron Man run of this decade.

Now go read some Slott/Schiti, whippersnappers.

I'll put it like this. He did 3 things that [B]DID NOT NEED TO BE DONE![/B]

1.) Adoption Angle
2.) Fridge Maya Hansen
3.) Turn the Mandarin rings into Green Lantern rings

His rings of the Mandarin story was god-awful. He completely doesn't get what makes The Mandarin work to begin with: that he's a cunning, savage, incredibly determined master of science, finance, political subterfuge, military tactics, and mystic martial arts. You can't just jack up the rings power to insane levels and give them to random mooks and have that work. The rings were never why Mandarin was a threat to begin with. Gillen fundamentally didn't get that. He seemed to think Mandarin was some force-of-nature type villain, so he just gave the rings to a bunch of people and had them all do force-of-nature stuff. It was boring as hell.

To put it another way: imagine if someone decided that Kingpin's laser-cane could annihilate cities. Then that someone gave a bunch of laser-canes to random people and tried to sell it as a Kingpin story.

The adoption thing was a fundamentally interesting idea, but Gillen didn't seem to know what to do with it past inventing it. Slott has done waaayyyy more interesting things with Gillen's idea than Gillen ever could have. Gillen invented it, but Slott improved it so much he might as well have invented it.

Gillen's run had my interest though to start with he committed the cardinal sin of regressing Iron man. He took the Bleeding Edge and replaced with (a good but) inferior suit under the pretense that it being modular gave it a bit more kick when half the time he's not using those features anyways.

Extremis is good but the fridging of Maya Hansen is something I raise a brow at. I didn't read much of Director of SHIELD at the time but now that I have, I find it a weak usage of the character especially seeing how easy it is for Tony to take down the Extremis enhanced goons. You'd also think that Tony would be a bit more skeptical following the last time Maya "died" so in hindsight its a weak setup if only to tie into Iron man 3. While I liked the movie, the synergy here doesn't start us off great. However the one-shots for what they are had been pretty good. You can read them for the most part on their own and or a full story.

His trip into space though with the adoption angle..., it didn't benefit the story. Granted he wasn't responsible for creating the idea nor is he responsible for Rocker mom and her continued usage against the fanbase pushback, but Gillen fucked up. It wasn't a good decision and as much as I genuinely like Arno over Gillen's run (only to be turned into a villain out of nowhere now) I don't believe the adoption angle was necessary to push it. Either Tony was born later or that they had thought Arno lost or maybe Howard's drinking led Arno to be raised by Morgan..., the setup for this was beyond ridiculous. Death's head is fun here and 451 is a great villain but he's killed off at the end. We also got a cool giant space Iron man.., but it's gone. Yeah it's not great.

The Mandarin stuff I enjoyed and was far more invested in that especially seeing how everything came together for the final battle. Malekith not so much and I've never found him to be particularly that engaging no matter where I find him. I just can't get into the character. That being said, Thor: The Dark World was released in the same year as Iron man 3 so that's pretty much why he's here.

The art is alright but I have to detract points for any run that uses Greg Land. Artists can work their whole lives and never trace nor have to use porn to do it, but here Greg Land is working on Iron man.

B-
Not great, not bad, a cut above other books even at the time and I was sad to see it go. But better things have come since and while I can't say any particular Iron man run is truly superior to it or worse than it, Gillen's run does have a quality standard to it that's lost on later runs. Despite the synergy it felt like he could have all the pieces fall into place and while Land sucks, the art accentuates the book rather than carries it. What I mean to say is despite the strangeness of the plots, I bought it. He knew how to script a story no matter how strange it was and it didn't feel like he didn't understand the voice of Tony. He's pretty much hurt by the intro of the adoption angle nobody wanted or since despite Slott's insistence of using it, and the usage of Greg Land. Other than that it's a pretty serviceable run with some issues.

I liked it quite a bit early on but as it went on, and it got into the adoption angle, it became a real push to make through to the end. I wasn't particularly irked by the adoption reveal itself (not crazy about it but I wasn't aghast at it either) but the way it unfolded was just not engaging. I ended up selling off the whole run so I can't go back and revisit it and see how it holds up but, based on my recollections and the fact that I was so unattached to the run that I had no problems letting it go, I'd give it a C overall.

While some (including myself) didn't like the fact that Tony was adopted, you guys have to admit that the story arc itself was really well written and interesting, and the twists were unexpected.

[QUOTE=Wall-Crawler;4309692]While some (including myself) didn't like the fact that Tony was adopted, you guys have to admit that the story arc itself was really well written and interesting, and the twists were unexpected.[/QUOTE]

....the exact opposite, actually. I thought the core idea of Stark being adopted was really interesting, but the execution was awful.