The Heroes Return Era of the Avengers

[K7P5V]

That was a real stupid move by Marvel. Waid and Garney were showing that once in a lifetime chemestry that leads to a legendary run, and Marvel saw fit to give them the boot to give the book to ROB LIEFIELD! I'm sure their enthusiasam wasn't quite the same when they were re-invited back to the book, and it showed. Waid's second run was good, but hardly as great as his first one was shaping to be. And, recently I've also been re-reading his relatively recent run with Samnee, and, while it's obviously of high quality, it really failed to excite me as his previous ones did.



Garney is still, and probably will always be, one of my favorites, but he really was on fire during that first run. Still, that first Sentinel of Liberty arc, featuring the Invaders, is one of my all-time favorites.

Peace

Same here. Initially, Garney was Awesome on the 1st volume of The Sentinel of Liberty! Too bad he wasn't able to do more, though...

[gurkle]

Bendis is wordy, but more in a cinematic/ widescreen style.

Busiek is also typically denser. There's a sense of more bang for your buck, but for me, Bendis is easier to reread.

Busiek's Marvel stuff is mostly written in sort of a modernized form of an old-fashioned way of writing, if that makes sense. The panels are packed to the brim with dialogue, captions and thought balloons, and the captions especially can read strangely today because a lot of them are describing what is going on in the panel (or rather between panels, a lot of "as the young mutant sorceress strides from the room..."). He has some tricks for making this sound more naturalistic than other writers, like his tic of having characters stammer or repeat words ("That -- that was --"), but it's not the way he or anyone else would usually write comics today.

Bendis has a lot of words but they're usually semi-naturalistic (or at least David Mamet-esque) dialogue, and he follows the modern rule of no thought balloons (except briefly in "Mighty Avengers") and no narration except from characters in the story. For all the grief he gets from traditionalist fans, he was a breath of fresh air at the time because it was kind of a new way of writing superhero dialogue, even though of course it's no longer new.

A "Thunderbolts" drinking game is taking a drink whenever the captions say something like "Songbird screams -- and the carapace she wears converts her scream to solid sound --" It happens almost once an issue or at least it felt like it. I like it, even reading it in collected editions.

[ARkadelphia]

The very concept of rereading Bendis sends shivers down my spine. Have a pretty good idea what Hell is going to look like for me now.

In all seriousness, this is definitely the era where I thought Avengers was really firing on all cylinders. It might not be my favorite (that's the Stern era of the 80s) but I felt like this maximized what you could do with the concept. I think the biggest reason for that is that Busiek, like Mark Waid and (at least for DC) James Robinson, knows and loves the history of these characters and the franchise and will incorporate deep cuts from the past without making it feel like fanservice, while still introducing new elements to the ongoing mythology. Sure, Justice and Firestar (or even Silverclaw and Triathlon) are never going to be thought of as classic Avengers, but it's not like their inclusion damaged the brand at all. I personally feel like that's the polar opposite of what Bendis did to the book.

(Side note: I'm a little sad we never got a James Robinson Avengers book. I remember reading an interview with him stating that he'd want to go with a lot of B-listers and deep cuts, citing Quicksilver and the Jim Hammond Human Torch as examples. That's a kind of lineup I'd love to see in the book but likely never will in these synergized, "pray we get some movie fans as readers" times).

I would have liked that too. I don’t know that I’ve read much Robinson, but I certainly liked his run on Scarlet Witch though not to the extent of the current series.

[Chris0013]

Since I’m going to check out Christopher Priest’s run of Black Panther, and his Captain America & Falcon mini-series, it’s worth checking out his earlier work with the Falcon, which also features a character which will be relevant to his Black Panther run.



The Falcon #1-4
The first issue has art by Paul Smith, who I love from his brief X-Men run, Nexus fill-ins and Leave it to Chance. The rest is by Mark Bright, who is solid.
It starts quite weird morally. A drunk kid is about to rape his girlfiend, when the Falcon stops him and encourages her family not to press charges, which fits with his civilian identity as a social worker. There is a sense of a guy trying to prevent someone from his neighborhood from becoming a lowlife, even if the story would be told differently now. An important context is that these comics are 40 years old. If you were to use Fantastic Four #1 as the start of a new era of comics, this is in the first third of Marvel. I’m not sure I should think about how old these comics are.

In the second issue, Falcon is attacked by a malfunctioning Sentinel, which I recall Jarvis addressing in the Busiek Avengers run. It delays him, which results in a tragic police shooting and a race riot, a story that is quite ahead of its time. Later issues feature the kidnapping of President Reagan, and a showdown with a major Spider-Man villain. It’s unrealistic even in the context of superhero stories, but there are some good sequences, and it’s legitimately thought-provoking.
B

Let's not forget Sam actually going into court and telling a judge the attempted rapist should not be sent to prison. That has always been a pretty low moment for me as far as Sam is concerned.


I would also say about the Heroes Return era...I was not a fan of how Busiek wrote D-Man at the beginning of the "Once and Avenger" story. I think that instead having him unwashed and being crapped on by people like Namor and Moondragon he could have had a better introduction in the story. Maybe getting cleaned up and Falcon bringing him a spare costume.

[Mister Mets]

Heroes Reborn: The Return #1-4
I wasn’t sure on whether to read this, since the Hulk, the Fantastic Four and even Spider-Man seem to be more important than the Avengers to the narrative. It makes sense partially. The Fantastic Four are here because Franklin Storm created a pocket universe. Peter David’s writing the Hulk, but part of the Heroes Reborn status quo was that Bruce Banner was divided into two universes. Spider-Man gets in two all-star quips, and it makes sense for someone from the 616 Universe to be excited that the heroes are alive and well, and ready to kick ass. But it is a bit weird to have such a minor role for the Avengers, when that’s 3 of the 4 Heroes Reborn titles (and 4 of 5 Heroes Return titles if you include the Jurgens/ Romita Jr Thor.)
The narrative is kind of epic. The Celestials are ready to be done with humanity, since their grand experiment was supposed to end when Franklin Richards got enough power to create a new universe. It seemed like something that doesn’t really work with the Marvel Universe at the time, but in fairness they’ve done more with the Celestials in the last few years, building on the reveals in the Earth X mini-series. These types of mini-series that are supposed to get characters from Point A to Point B have a tendency to suck, since there are inevitably artistic consequences. It’s more than a bit of a mess, although there is a larger point about the meaning of humanity and all that jazz.
B-

[Mister Mets]

Thunderbolts #9
This is an unusual standalone issue as Black Widow confronts two of the Thunderbolts to tell them an old Avengers story and give them some advice.The story itself (depicted in flashbacks by Roger Stern & Ron Frenz) is a solid one of a controversial Avengers team (Cap’s kooky quartet) souring the public
I would love some Cap’s kooky quartet project by Stern, Busiek or anyone involved here. The dynamic is so rich and so fun, with Hawkeye blustering into situations he doesn’t quite understand (making fun of the Hulk in front of Rick Jones), Scarlet Witch facing expats from a country Magneto attacked and Quicksilver underestimating his new team-mates. I do kind of love the audacity of using this as a platform for an untold Avengers story involving people who are not on the Thunderbolts, and set before the Black Widow joined the team. But the main story is solid, but it does also seed a potential conflict from Black Widow against the Thunderbolts.
A-



Captain America Volume 3 #1
Japanese nationalists trying to rid their country of globalization work pretty well as an opening enemy for Captain America in the relaunch, setting up decent action sequences in Tokyo and fun character work as Cap realizes that he’s not taken seriously. The issue pits him against one of Wolverine’s top foes, although it fits the narrative, and poses a solid challenge to Cap.
There’s a complication as Cap doesn’t realize how long he was gone due to Heroes Reborn, and something happens that is quite timely, and that would affect his reputation, and the way he is seen as a representative of America. The villains are also interesting, with one who poses a challenge to Captain America, who is not as impressive as the X-men baddie but that’s part of his story, and he gets a decent character arc after putting Cap in the type of impossible situation that works so well in good comics.
This is probably my favorite issue so far of the Waid/ Garney run. The coloring seems a bit inconsistent, but it mostly highlights Garney’s work. The storytelling is solid. The story is meaningful and well-told, without red flags that take me out of it. It’s a solid standalone, and sets up new threads pretty well.
A

[gurkle]

Thunderbolts #9
This is an unusual standalone issue as Black Widow confronts two of the Thunderbolts to tell them an old Avengers story and give them some advice.The story itself (depicted in flashbacks by Roger Stern & Ron Frenz) is a solid one of a controversial Avengers team (Cap’s kooky quartet) souring the public
I would love some Cap’s kooky quartet project by Stern, Busiek or anyone involved here. The dynamic is so rich and so fun, with Hawkeye blustering into situations he doesn’t quite understand (making fun of the Hulk in front of Rick Jones), Scarlet Witch facing expats from a country Magneto attacked and Quicksilver underestimating his new team-mates. I do kind of love the audacity of using this as a platform for an untold Avengers story involving people who are not on the Thunderbolts, and set before the Black Widow joined the team. But the main story is solid, but it does also seed a potential conflict from Black Widow against the Thunderbolts.

I love the story (and I don't always love Stern's Avengers as much as most people do, but he's in fine form here) but I do think it would have benefited from Quicksilver telling the story, since he was the only one of the Quartet who were still "alive" during the Heroes Reborn era. I admit that Black Widow is more relevant to the overall story, though, since she's been seen before and Pietro hasn't.

I don't think companies do this kind of "inventory story" any more, where they commisson a story that can fit in at any point in the run. Like the Mach-2 story in issue #26, they use a framing device from the regular creative team to situate it within the overall run, but obviously they could have stuck it in at any point where they needed to give the main team a break, since the story of villains trying to become heroes is not tied to anything except the overall theme of the book.

[Kurt Busiek]

I love the story (and I don't always love Stern's Avengers as much as most people do, but he's in fine form here) but I do think it would have benefited from Quicksilver telling the story, since he was the only one of the Quartet who were still "alive" during the Heroes Reborn era. I admit that Black Widow is more relevant to the overall story, though, since she's been seen before and Pietro hasn't.

I don't think companies do this kind of "inventory story" any more, where they commisson a story that can fit in at any point in the run. Like the Mach-2 story in issue #26, they use a framing device from the regular creative team to situate it within the overall run, but obviously they could have stuck it in at any point where they needed to give the main team a break, since the story of villains trying to become heroes is not tied to anything except the overall theme of the book.

For whatever it's worth, neither of those stories were inventory stories so much as "We can see a deadline problem coming at us like a freight train, so let's plan an issue to be written and drawn (or partially so) by others to buy us all some time."

The T-Bolts were very much inspired by Cap's Kooky Quartet, so I figured it'd be a good idea to draw that parallel directly, at a time when the Bolts are still unsure which way to go. We'd never actually seen the Kooky Quartet get a negative reaction -- once in place, the public just seemed to accept them, so it'd be a chance to show that things weren't that simple back then. And it allowed us to give half an issue to Roger and Ron while Bags and I got to play up the idea that the Black Widow was onto them but giving them a chance, in a story that was not only a lot shorter but had many fewer characters than usual.

[I'll also add that it never occurred to us to have Quicksilver tell that story, but thinking about it now I'd say that even if he didn't have his own series at the time, which would have made things more complicated, he's not smart enough to have figured out the T-Bolts' game, and even if he somehow had he's not nice enough not to expose them. Laying out the choice and giving them a chance is a pretty daring choice, and it strikes me that Natasha's got both the darkness and the hope to try to manipulate them into making the right choice, and then giving them the freedom to decide. And of the Quartet, the only one who'd do that would be Hawkeye.]

The Abe-in-prison story was done because we knew that the double-sized issue 25 was going to leave us further behind, so this was a way to make up for that. And since Abe had recently gone off to prison but we hadn't sprung him yet, it was an ideal time to see him. If we hadn't needed the schedule break, Bags and I would have addressed the same stuff as either a single issue or as subplots leading up to one.

So both stories fulfilled the basic schedule-saver idea of an inventory story -- but since they weren't actually inventory jobs, we could take advantage of what was going on in the book at the moment to make them more satisfying because they were tied in to current developments.

kdb

[Anthony W]

Bendis has a lot of words but they're usually semi-naturalistic (or at least David Mamet-esque) dialogue, and he follows the modern rule of no thought balloons (except briefly in "Mighty Avengers") and no narration except from characters in the story. For all the grief he gets from traditionalist fans, he was a breath of fresh air at the time because it was kind of a new way of writing superhero dialogue, even though of course it's no longer new.

Only in comics can leaving out things that are unique and native to your medium be seen as groundbreaking. But superhero comics and superhero comic fans and creators are renowned for their self-loathing. Let's ape something we can never be.

Wide screen comics was the pinnacle (or was it the nadir?) of that but at least it was better than Netflix comics....

As for Bendis Mamet influence? Bendis fans say this until they are blue in the face but I don't see it. What I do see is Joss Whedon, the great destroyer of comic writers.

[gurkle]

For whatever it's worth, neither of those stories were inventory stories so much as "We can see a deadline problem coming at us like a freight train, so let's plan an issue to be written and drawn (or partially so) to buy us all some time."

The T-Bolts were very much inspired by Cap's Kooky Quartet, so I figured it'd be a good idea to draw that parallel directly, at a time when the Bolts are still unsure which way to go. We'd never actually seen the Kooky Quartet get a negative reaction -- once in place, the public just seemed to accept them, so it'd be a chance to show that things weren't that simple back then. And it allowed us to give half an issue to Roger and Ron while Bags and I got to play up the idea that the Black Widow was onto them but giving them a chance, in a story that was not only a lot shorter but had many fewer characters than usual.

[I'll also add that it never occurred to us to have Quicksilver tell that story, but thinking about it now I'd say that even if he didn't have his own series at the time, which would have made things more complicated, he's not smart enough to have figured out the T-Bolts' game, and even if he somehow had he's not nice enough not to expose them. Laying out the choice and giving them a chance is a pretty daring choice, and it strikes me that Natasha's got both the darkness and the hope to try to manipulate them into making the right choice, and then giving them the freedom to decide. And of the Quartet, the only one who'd do that would be Hawkeye.]

The Abe-in-prison story was done because we knew that the double-sized issue 25 was going to leave us further behind, so this was a way to make up for that. And since Abe had recently gone off to prison but we hadn't sprung him yet, it was an ideal time to see him. If we hadn't needed the schedule break, Bags and I would have addressed the same stuff as either a single issue or as subplots leading up to one.

So both stories fulfilled the basic schedule-saver idea of an inventory story -- but since they weren't actually inventory jobs, we could take advantage of what was going on in the book at the moment to make them more satisfying because they were tied in to current developments.

kdb

Thanks for the explanation/correction, and you're right of course about Natasha vs. Pietro, plus Abe and Melissa have to be intimidated enough to believe that the person telling the story is not bluffing about soon having enough evidence to turn them in.

[Mister Mets]

The Avengers Volume 3 #1-3
After 33 issues of related material, I finally got to the opening arc of the Heroes Return Avengers in my read-through of the Heroes Return era of the Avengers. I remember liking this story, and thinking it’s probably worth including in an Avengers Top 10, or in a Busiek Top 10. I may have undersold it.
In the first issue, a new threat calls together all of the Avengers as monsters from different mythos attack all over the world, including an opening scene which shows what 18 Avengers were up to. More are summoned to the mansion, including future members Justice & Firestar, who were mainly there because one of their friends got attacked. One thing I just love is how even in this super-dense story, different heroes have their moments to shine. Even D-Man, who is generally treated as a joke. Justice might be the best version of a common comics trope of a future member working with the team on a special mission.

In the second half of the story, a magical villain has remade the Marvel Universe so that it’s a fantasy setting. It’s been done a few times and done pretty well (Marvel 1602 and an Uncanny X-men story with Kulan Gath come to mind) but never as well. Part of it may be that George Perez excels in fantasy just as much as he does in superhero action. Some of the members of the team remember the real world, and it’s connected to how seriously they feel about themselves as Avengers, which just works really well as an exploration of what it means to be an Avenger before the team is finalized. It is a bit meta, but it’s not indulgent (except in the way a delicious brownie is indulgent). The team-up of all the Avengers in Issue 1 takes a dark turn with most of the team possessed, which means they’re a challenge to the handful trying to bring back the world they remember.
Busiek & Perez work very well together. Both are great at scenes that are just dense, and adding little background details. I have the first year in an oversized hardcover, and it looks fantastic. There’s a panel where a villain eats an apple while dismissing an underling’s concerns that shows her attitude and arrogance. The Avengers have a sense of lived-in camaraderie, and history. It’s also easy to overlook how Perez basically redesigned every member in a medieval setting. Even cameo moments reveal interesting things about the characters.

There are some really impressive scenes, like the return of Thor- believed dead since Heroes Return, and another Avenger returning; setting up an excellent long-term plot. It's a hell of a start. And as impressed as I was with this read-through, I know that it's been better.
A+

Busiek seems to do at least three types of stories really well. One is a grand epic where one guy witnesses and interacts with multiple big events either across several years (Marvels, Secret Identity: Superman) or just at a pivotal stage like the first year (Astro City: Confession, Amazing Fantasy, Iron Man: The Iron Age.) He’s also great with shorter pieces about how someone’s affected by these grand forces (Astro City: the Nearness of You, the public’s varied reaction to the Thunderbolts.) The opening Avengers arc shows that he can be really good at big, dense events (My favorite in this category is the Ultron saga, which is my favorite of the era.)

[Mister Mets]

Only in comics can leaving out things that are unique and native to your medium be seen as groundbreaking. But superhero comics and superhero comic fans and creators are renowned for their self-loathing. Let's ape something we can never be.

Wide screen comics was the pinnacle (or was it the nadir?) of that but at least it was better than Netflix comics....

As for Bendis Mamet influence? Bendis fans say this until they are blue in the face but I don't see it. What I do see is Joss Whedon, the great destroyer of comic writers.

I'm conflicted here.

Widescreen comics are easier to reread. And there are some elements of older comics that are easy to get wrong.

But there's something satisfying about the density of a classic.

That said, there are dense classics that I love that I haven't reread in some time (Squadron Supreme comes to mind) because I know it's going to take a while.

For whatever it's worth, neither of those stories were inventory stories so much as "We can see a deadline problem coming at us like a freight train, so let's plan an issue to be written and drawn (or partially so) to buy us all some time."

The T-Bolts were very much inspired by Cap's Kooky Quartet, so I figured it'd be a good idea to draw that parallel directly, at a time when the Bolts are still unsure which way to go. We'd never actually seen the Kooky Quartet get a negative reaction -- once in place, the public just seemed to accept them, so it'd be a chance to show that things weren't that simple back then. And it allowed us to give half an issue to Roger and Ron while Bags and I got to play up the idea that the Black Widow was onto them but giving them a chance, in a story that was not only a lot shorter but had many fewer characters than usual.

[I'll also add that it never occurred to us to have Quicksilver tell that story, but thinking about it now I'd say that even if he didn't have his own series at the time, which would have made things more complicated, he's not smart enough to have figured out the T-Bolts' game, and even if he somehow had he's not nice enough not to expose them. Laying out the choice and giving them a chance is a pretty daring choice, and it strikes me that Natasha's got both the darkness and the hope to try to manipulate them into making the right choice, and then giving them the freedom to decide. And of the Quartet, the only one who'd do that would be Hawkeye.]

The Abe-in-prison story was done because we knew that the double-sized issue 25 was going to leave us further behind, so this was a way to make up for that. And since Abe had recently gone off to prison but we hadn't sprung him yet, it was an ideal time to see him. If we hadn't needed the schedule break, Bags and I would have addressed the same stuff as either a single issue or as subplots leading up to one.

So both stories fulfilled the basic schedule-saver idea of an inventory story -- but since they weren't actually inventory jobs, we could take advantage of what was going on in the book at the moment to make them more satisfying because they were tied in to current developments.

kdb

I enjoyed the Cap's kooky quartet comics. It was funny to think about them when there was a backlash to New Avengers, and it'd be interesting to see a new variation (probably for a max of one year before a more traditional team emerges.)

My apologies for what this thread may do to search results for your name.

The very concept of rereading Bendis sends shivers down my spine. Have a pretty good idea what Hell is going to look like for me now.

In all seriousness, this is definitely the era where I thought Avengers was really firing on all cylinders. It might not be my favorite (that's the Stern era of the 80s) but I felt like this maximized what you could do with the concept. I think the biggest reason for that is that Busiek, like Mark Waid and (at least for DC) James Robinson, knows and loves the history of these characters and the franchise and will incorporate deep cuts from the past without making it feel like fanservice, while still introducing new elements to the ongoing mythology. Sure, Justice and Firestar (or even Silverclaw and Triathlon) are never going to be thought of as classic Avengers, but it's not like their inclusion damaged the brand at all. I personally feel like that's the polar opposite of what Bendis did to the book.

(Side note: I'm a little sad we never got a James Robinson Avengers book. I remember reading an interview with him stating that he'd want to go with a lot of B-listers and deep cuts, citing Quicksilver and the Jim Hammond Human Torch as examples. That's a kind of lineup I'd love to see in the book but likely never will in these synergized, "pray we get some movie fans as readers" times).

I'm liking this set of comics, and looking forward to covering the Jurgens/ Romita Thor, and the Priest/ Sal Velutto/ lots of other artists.

One thing that works out pretty well is that the writers and artists have different styles so it won't be monotonous (and there aren't that many clunkers until I get to later Iron Man runs and the Chuck Austen Avengers.)

This is going to take me a few months, but I do think I'll follow it up with the New Avengers era. And I am looking forward to that. I like Bendis' writing fine, even if I preferred him on some other titles (Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil, Powers) and I'm also looking forward to rereading Civil War, Brubaker's Captain America and related projects, Brubaker/ Fraction's Iron Fist, Slott's Mighty Avengers/ Avengers Initiative, Fraction's Thor, Hawkeye and Iron Man, as well as Gillen's Journey Into Mystery. Someone on an appreciation thread recommended Brian Reed's Ms Marvel, so that will also be new to me.

[Anthony W]

I'm conflicted here.

Widescreen comics are easier to reread. And there are some elements of older comics that are easy to get wrong.

But there's something satisfying about the density of a classic.

That said, there are dense classics that I love that I haven't reread in some time (Squadron Supreme comes to mind) because I know it's going to take a while.

Wide screen comics just feel like storyboards to an unmade blockbuster IMHO. Then widescreen gave way to small screen where you got the same storyboard style but with a "smaller budget"

When I say smaller budget I don't mean that the comic was made cheaper the story was made cheaper. An example is Warren Ellis' work on The Authority versus his work on The Wild Storm https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/The_Wild_Storm_Vol_1 which was a reboot of Wildstorm. Everything looked so.... under budget.

[Mister Mets]

Thunderbolts #10-12
In the conclusion of the first year of Thunderbolts, the return of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers coincides with Citizen V/ Baron Zemo’s master plan as he’s granted paragon level security clearance just as the Thunderbolts are exposed as the Masters of Evil. The A-list villain pretty much has control of the world's military defenses, and his team-mates whether to stop him or rule alongside him.
Citizen V makes a big decision in response to earlier power-plays. Jolt questions everything with the realization that the superheroes she’s been working with are hardened criminals, but because she’s hiding from the rest of the team she gets a sense of them at their most vulnerable, and realizes that they’re more complicated. Some of the Thunderbolts liked being superheroes and mourn the lost opportunity. This is a tricky transition, going from the first era of the Thunderbolts, a story that had an obvious endpoint with the team getting exposed to what the rest of the series is about with villains seeking redemption. It nails that along with a satisfying superhero showdown.

Zemo/ Citizen V’s plans are ambitious, and it’s worth the year of a set-up. He could go even further, but he wants everyone to know he won. That moment, which reveals a lot about his character and may seem to hint at a potential defeat, leads to a cliffhanger where he gets the upper hand in the inevitable moment the superheroes strike. A twist involving the Thunderbolts’ control of Four Freedoms Plaza shows that things needed in other titles aren’t safe.

The final battle royales are excellent. It’s a showcase for Mark Bagley’s skills as a dynamic superhero artist able to depict the Thunderbolts, the Avengers and all the other guest starrs. A detail I like is the Thunderbolts don’t always know what they’re doing or why- doing the right thing is so alien, and that they’re able to take advantage of weird situations (like Beetle had left a back door in Techno’s files mainly because he thought reading the cast files was fun.)
A

[Mister Mets]

The surprise now may be that Kurt Busiek wanted to write Iron Man, but he had made his interest in Iron Man clear to Marvel editorial, so he wasn’t shocked that he was offered the title. The surprise was that he was offered the Avengers because George Perez (not a shocker that he was asked to be artist) didn't feel comfortable enough with Marvel continuity to write the title.
Iron Man’s a bit of the odd duck out in the context of Busiek’s work at this time. The Avengers was the big classic superhero team title- the Busiek/ Perez run consistently shows up in lists of the best runs in comics. Thunderbolts was bold and daring. Astro City was the indie critical favorite. Untold Tales of Spider-Man had a passionate following from Spider-Man fans who didn’t like the current books, and now removed from that context, it’s accessible Spider-Man stories. I really don’t know much about his run on Iron Man, beyond the Iron Age mini-series being a favorite, so I’m curious about what it’s like.



Iron Man Volume 3 #1
It’s an odd time for Stark, with some business problems after he was believed dead, which is an entirely plausible set-up to a new direction. Tony Stark as the world’s best-paid consultant is fine as a story engine. The Death Squad are generic mercenary enemies, but there is a good sense of desperation when Iron Man’s pushed to his limits, as well as a careful take on how Iron Man would operate moment to moment. I can also buy that a fairly routine adventure leads to a new epiphany for Stark.
The opening fits with how the media would react to someone like Tony Stark/ Iron Man not being dead. The armor is constantly evolving, which is an interesting dynamic for the superhero, and the new look is simultaneously classic (it feels right) and plausibly an upgrade over what he used in the Michlinie/ Romita Jr/ Layton line. An aspect of the character that got abandoned after the movie were how Tony Stark and Iron Man differentiated themselves as individuals.
The take on Stark is modern. This was when Marvel abided by the Comics Code of Authority, but Tony’s a little raunchy. Beautiful women will sometimes ask him for a tour of his bedroom. I like the cameos at Tony Stark’s party, which includes the Fantastic Four and Norman Osborn.
As an artist, Sean Chen is competent. He doesn’t exactly stand out in a crowd with Perez, Bagley and Romita Jr, but he doesn’t embarrass himself either.
B+



Iron Man Volume 3 #2-3
Stark solutions is a decent story engine, and works well as a way for Tony Stark to get into situations where Iron Man is needed, from either new characters or obscure silver age villains. Busiek & Chen continue to give a good sense of what Tony is doing moment to moment. This is a reminder that Iron Man wasn’t obscure: he was a top-five Marvel hero before Downey Jr. He’ll come up with unconventional solutions, that fit the character. And there’s a decent set-up to issues with the supporting cast.
This is not a bad comic, or close to it. But it’s a B, a solid effort by people who have done better. I will also admit that at this times, this Iron Man feels like Batman. Granted both of them are rich men who like hanging out with beautiful women, and can ski okay.
B