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Archie Goodwin’s (& George Tuska’s) Run on The Invincible Iron Man – The Invincible Iron Man Omnibus, Vol. 2 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Darren

To get ready for Iron Man 3, we’ll be taking a look at some Iron Man and Avengers stories, both modern and classic. We hope to do two or three a week throughout the month, so check back regularly for the latest update.

The second omnibus contains both the tail end of Stan Lee run on Tales of Suspense and the Archie Goodwin run on The Invincible Iron Man. To make matters easier, I’ve split the review in half. This half covers Archie Goodwin’s Iron Man.

Archie Goodwin is one of the best editors to work in comic books. During his time working at DC, the editor was responsible for The Long Halloween and also James Robinson’s long-running Starman. While Goodwin was an exceptional editor, he was arguably a weaker writer. As his run on The Invincible Iron Man demonstrates, Goodwin has a very clear idea of what concepts work and won’t work with the character, and how to start “fixing” some of the more obvious flaws present in the character from his inception during Stan Lee’s Tales of Suspense run. However, Goodwin isn’t quite as deft when it comes to story construction or plot mechanics. He lacks Lee’s flair for soap opera angst and interpersonal drama.

However, his run on The Invincible Iron Man remains quite impressive, and just as influential and formative as anything written by Stan Lee. I’d argue that Goodwin’s conceptual model of the character is a lot closer to the modern version of Iron Man, and that his version of Tony Stark bleeds through the work of later writers and also into the massive billion-dollar film franchise as well. So Goodwin’s work on The Invincible Iron Man is quite iconic. It’s just some of the nuts-and-bolts scripting that seems to catch him, from time to time.

That’s why they call him the Invincible Iron Man…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Archie Goodwin, avengers, gene colan, Invincible Iron Man, iron man, iron man 3, IronMan, IRONMAN 3, Pepper Potts, robert downey, stan lee, Stark, Tales of Suspense | 3 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Iron Man 3

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Darren

Where do you go after The Avengers? Marvel brought together four separate superhero franchises to produce one mega-blockbuster last summer, producing the most successful film of 2012 and one of the most lucrative films in the history of the medium. It’s a tough act to follow. If Iron Man 3 is any indication, it seems like Disney and Marvel understand how they want to progress from here. Shrewdly deciding not to compete with The Avengers on scale, Iron Man 3 is instead a character-driven action thriller specifically tailored for the character of Tony Stark, with writer and director Shane Black very clearly having his own idea for the hero who first launched Marvel’s shared universe.

While Iron Man 3 isn’t quite perfect, it’s a solid superhero blockbuster, and perhaps second only to Kenneth Brannagh’s Thor as the best superhero film produced by Marvel Studios.

Who da Iron Man?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: avengers, iron man, iron man 2, iron man 3, IronMan, IRONMAN 3, jon favreau, marvel, marvel comics, Marvel Studios, robert downey, Shane Black, Tony, tony stark | 4 Comments »

Earth X (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Darren

“Your kind does love to rewrite history, Richards,” the Watcher observes towards the end of Earth X, after we get an introduction and brief recap of the life of Tony Stark. Almost every issue of the collection opens with a review of an iconic Marvel character’s back story, as writer Jim Krueger and plotter Alex Ross attempt to tie the tapestry of the Marvel universe together in some way. It turns out that everything a character underwent wasn’t just their own personal development, but part of a broader tapestry of history within the Marvel universe. No character evolution, it seems, happens in isolation. Everything is interconnected, even if we (or the writers or the characters) never realised it at the time.

Earth X is really just an attempt to tie most of the Marvel universe up in one gigantic knot, to connect everything to everything else. In a way, published in 1999, it seems to foreshadow the current era of Marvel publishing, where absolutely everything within in the shared universe must somehow be connected to something else. Avengers vs. X-Men, for example, would connect the Phoenix from the X-Men to the Iron Fist mythology. Grant Morrison’s New X-Men connected the Weapon X project to the development of Captain America. The X-Men and the Avengers must be united as part of Uncanny Avengers.

In many ways, Earth X reads more interestingly as a treatise than as a comic story. It’s far stronger as a thought-experiment than an actual narrative. It’s more fun on purely technical level, watching Jim Krueger and Alex Cross connect all those dots, than it is as an adventure in its own right.

Stellar…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: alex ross, Avenger, captain america, Carmine Infantino, dc comics, iron man, IronMan, jack kirby, Jim Krueger, kingdom come, Kirby, Larry Lieber, Machine Man, mark waid, marvel, marvel comics, marvel universe, Steve Ditko, tony stark | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Iron Man 3

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Darren

While Iron Man 3 isn’t quite perfect, it’s a solid superhero blockbuster, and perhaps second only to Kenneth Brannagh’s Thor as the best superhero film produced by Marvel Studios.

Who da Iron Man?

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Ultimate Comics: Divided We Fall, United We Stand – Ultimates (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Darren

There was a time when Marvel’s Ultimate Universe was the place to be. Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates were among the best-reviewed and best-selling books published at Marvel in the early part of the last decade, offering a fresh new take on classic comic book characters, and offering readers an opportunity to engage with a continuity-free world just as the super-hero movie craze took off. I’ll always be fond of the Ultimate Universe, because without The Ultimates and Ultimate Spider-Man, I simply wouldn’t be a comic book fan today.

However, in the last number of years, for any number of reasons, the line has wavered a little bit. Despite attracting Mark Millar back to write Ultimate Comics: Avengers, and Brian Michael Bendis generating massive headlines by writing The Death of Spider-Man, it seemed like the publishing brand was fading a bit. There have been several attempts to re-energise the line. Divided We Fall is just the most recent one, a crossover between the three books currently making up the Ultimate imprint.

The story of America falling apart, told from three different perspectives, it’s certainly timely. And, as crossovers go, shrewdly constructed. While Divided We Fall suffers a bit from the fact that Marvel is no longer consistently collecting the books leading into it, it is still an interesting comic book story, and one that takes advantage of the Ultimate Universe setting to tell a story that would be impossible in the mainstream Marvel brand.

President Cap…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: arts, avengers, brian michael bendis, iron man 2, iron man 3, IronMan, mark millar, marvel, marvel comics, Movie, robert downey, Shane Black, spider man, ultimate comics spider-man, ultimate universe | 2 Comments »

Meme of the Moment: Honest Trailer for The Avengers

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Darren

Readers will know that I’m a big fan of geeky stuff. So I thought I’d pass this on. It’s Screen Junkies’ surprisingly reflective commentary on The Avengers, which opened up 2012’s blockbuster season with a bang. While I enjoyed it, I wasn’t as much of a fan of it as most, and a lot of the reasons are covered in the trailer. (In particular, the fact it completely invalidates the ending to Thor, the fact that Loki has no motivation for what he’s doing, and the contrivance of his plan to bring together the only people who could beat him.) It doesn’t quite cover the somewhat thematic and structural problems raised by Nick Fury, which the film alludes to, but never addresses – but it’s all in good fun. And well worth a look.

Although, to be honest, gentle tongue-in-cheek ribbing aside, I think I’m still in the minority in not quite loving The Avengers as much as everybody else. Again, not hating or disliking, but just not liking as much.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: arts, Avenger, IronMan, joss whedon, loki, nick fury, Television, thor | 2 Comments »

Righteous Fury: Nick Fury, The Avengers & Moral Ambiguity…

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Darren

I had the pleasure of seeing The Avengers for the second time last week, to try to make sense of my opinion on it. I still think that it’s an impressive action movie, even if it is a fundamentally flawed one. Strangely enough, though, I confess to finding the character of Nick Fury completely and utter fascinating, arguably the most complex character in the script. The problem, however, is that his complex moral ambiguity is very clearly contrasted with the idealism of his team of superheroes. However, I’m not convinced that they win the argument.

How does he patch things up with the team?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: arts, Avenger, avengers, captain america, dark knight, hulk, iron man, IronMan, joss whedon, new york, nick fury, Pepper Potts, samuel l. jackson, skrull, superhero, Television, thor | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble)

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Darren

The Avengers has a lot of geeky charm to it – the sort of giddy “this is so cool!” spectacle that appeals to the popcorn-munching child in each of us. That’s more than enough help it coast through a somewhat muddled first act, through a stronger second act and into a truly awesome finale. I think that the carefully choreographed large-scale action sequence that caps the film off might be worth a ticket alone. While there seem to be some very fundamental problem juggling a cast this large in a movie that technically a sequel to at least four films, Joss Whedon knows his audience well enough to ensure that most of the individual moments are satisfying, even if the overall film feels a tad uneven.