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Iron Man by David Michelinie & Bob Layton (& John Romita Jr.) Omnibus, Vol 1 (Review/Retrospective)

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.

It’s hard to believe, given the high profile the character has attained since Robert Downey Jr. first played Tony Stark in Iron Man back in 2008, but Iron Man used to be one of Marvel’s second-tier characters. Of course, like any other comic book character, Iron Man has had his ups and downs. There have been solid runs by great creative teams, and disappointing stories told by writers and artists unsuited to the character. However, Iron Man never really had one of those iconic comic book runs of the seventies and eighties, the kind of high-profile character-defining run like Walt Simonson’s tenure on Thor or Frank Miller’s work on Daredevil or Chris Clarement’s extended run on the X-Men franchise.

Perhaps the closest to such a run from the Bronze Age is the work by David Michelinie and Bob Layton, who actually enjoyed two extended runs writing for the character at the end of the seventies and into the eighties. This gigantic omnibus collection includes the first of those two runs, which were bisected (mostly) by Denny O’Neil’s extended time on the title. While it’s not as cohesive and solid a run as any of the aforementioned examples, it still demonstrates a solid understanding of Iron Man, and features two of the character’s most iconic stories.

You have to whip it...

You have to whip it…

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The Amazing Spider-Man by David Michelinie & Todd McFarlane Omnibus (Review/Retrospective)

The Amazing Spider-Man by David Michelinie & Todd McFarlane Omnibus is a fun comic book collection. Todd McFarlane was one of the rising stars at Marvel in the late eighties, and it’s no exaggeration to suggest that his work on The Amazing Spider-Man (along with Jim Lee’s work on Uncanny X-Men) had a massive influence on how the company would develop during the nineties. McFarlane’s artwork still looks absolutely superb, but it’s easy to forget that McFarlane worked for an extended period with author David Michelinie, crafting stories for the iconic web-crawler. While the stories and characterisation might not have been as strongly influential as McFarlane’s artwork, they still remain impressive until today. This might not be the finest or most important collection of Spider-Man adventures ever collected, but it reads incredibly fluidly and has a great sense of fun behind it.

Itsy-bitsy Spider...

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Non-Review Review: Iron Man 2

Legacy. It’s all about legacy. What we leave for our children and what we inherit from our parents. Sometimes it’s bitterness and hatred, sometimes it’s more than we think. Iron Man as a concept is inherently linked to the Cold War and American foreign policy, so it’s a fitting theme for the sequel to tackle. Fathers and sons dominate the film, as does the simple and haunting fact that the now is shaped by the then. Some of us get to change the world, some of us simply leave big smoking craters behind us. Even the bad guy, a Russian, consciously evokes conflicts fading from memory that shaped our modern world.

Sometimes you just need to slow down and take a break...

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