Invincible Iron Man #500 Review, by Marc Alan Fishman – Snarky Synopses #2

January 23, 2011 Marc Fishman 0 Comments

Invincible Iron Man #500
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Salvador Larocca, Kano, Nathan Fox, and Carmine DiGiandomenico

Welcome back, ya’ll, to the second edition of the Snarky Synoposes. Once again, I am the sommelier of hand-crafted, well-tended, oak-aged snark… Marc Alan Fishman. On the table today, I’ve brought you all the 500th issue of the Invincible Iron Man. Oddly enough, the volume only started in July of 2008, debuting shortly after the Iron Man film had swept the nation in Robert Downey fever. Assuming that this issue is celebrating the 500th issue of Iron Man appearing in Marvel Comics in general. I say this, because the tail end of this issue features a few pages worth of teeny tiny covers, I didn’t count… but let’s assume there were 500? We’ll get back to that. How about we break down the issue itself, and get into the review huh?

So, numbering aside, the issue itself is approachable for those looking for a jumping on point, albeit if this were to be a “n00b’s” first soiree into the Invincible world of our armor clad adventurer… they may reconsider the investment into a new book. And trust me, as a long time fan of this series, that is a hard thing to say. Matt Fraction’s ‘Invincible’ series has been a wild romp through the Marvel Universe since it started. Choosing to make LONG sweeping story arcs (the series has only boasted 4 total arcs in 33 issues.) as opposed to the more traditional 4-6 issue arcs in today’s books… Fraction under-delivers for the first time since 2008. Within each arc, Fraction had decompressed Tony Stark into a truly complex hero. By building on Iron Man’s small rogues gallery, Fraction’s Iron Man had time to not only fight exterior threats… but his interior ones as well. Issue #500 seems to be a one-off (the first of the series) that attempts to celebrate the new-and-improved Iron Man mythos, but chooses to use the trope of the ‘future in distress’ story to do so. And sadly, it’s a bore with only a handful of interesting moments. All the work Fraction has done before this work, is barely touched upon, and the final product seems less like a celebration, and more a “phoned-in” filler. And to add insult to injury, the book is $4.99.

The plot itself isn’t much to write home about. Essentially we jump from the present day, where Tony Stark and Peter Parket discuss some ‘lost project’ Tony has rediscovered since rebooting his brain. They end up having to fight a small luddite cult (named for Stilt-Man of all people…) and Tony comes to the realization that his technology going public may lead to real future problems. This story is cut with a jump to the future (a possible future..?) where the Mandarin uses Tony Stark’s RT technology to destroy all but a few scraps of humanity. His end game, to blow up the planet, and move civilization to the stars… is opposed by Tony’s children Ginny and Tony Jr. Tony Jr. is “War Machine”, working under cover for the Mandarin, and Ginny is part of the plucky resistance. We’ve seen this stuff before. The post-apocalyptic war-torn world… the armies of Iron Man like shock-troops… the inner citadel where Mandarin is a man-god… bleh. From start to finish, Fraction’s plot seems to come out of the toybox of every crappy Terminator wannabe plot of the last 20 years. Even his amazing ability to write snappy dialog (and a pitch perfect Peter Parker) can’t mask a book that feels like a 10 year old’s birthday – cloying, predictable, with a few smiles when the good presents arrive.

The book artistically is still amazing as it’s ever been. The future sequences are drawn by Kano, in a gestural, heavy, rushed style, that doesn’t quite fit, but is interesting none-the-less. Larocca has been with the book since the start, and has grown in the two plus years on the book as a real visual storyteller. His characters show decent amounts of emotion, and the action sequences are as chaotic as traditional American action movies. His sequences in #500 continue to showcase his abilities. While some of his faces are a little forgettable… his pacing, backgrounds, setting, and “camera moves” make for a “widescreen” experience all the way. Even with the predictable plot, the book moves and reads like a movie or teleplay. It’s akin to watching the second Matrix movie; You’ve seen it before, it makes the previous book (or movies in this example) look 100 times better… but it’s still infinitely watchable due it’s slick style.

In the introduction I mentioned the book comes in at a posh $4.99. Given it is a “GIANT SIZE” anniversary issue, and the story itself feels long enough to ‘earn’ it’s price point… perhaps not in quality of material presented, but at very least length and scope. An “Iron Man 2.0 (War Machine) preview and cover gallery pad out the rest of the pages to the book. While the preview itself is of interest to those fans of Shellhead that DON’T get any other Stark books… the gallery is a complete waste. I could see in a digital format, having a gallery of tens of hundreds of covers ranging from the 60s to the present, where each cover could be blown up to iPad full screen size… this would be a fantastic bonus. But in print, unless one carries a pocket magnifier, it’s just teeny tiny thumbnails wasting space in the back of a pricy comic.

Suffice to say, if you’ve not entered the world of Tony Stark, and have any interest, I couldn’t suggest a better book to be picking up. If I were you though, I’d borrow this issue from a friend, and save the fin for belt of scotch instead. Consider this batch of snark rolled out, cut, baked, cooled and served.

Marc Alan Fishman is a digital artist, writer, and co-founder of Unshaven Comics. When Marc isn’t knee-deep in graphic design, he’s also a frequent contributor to ComicMix.com, an occasional stand-up comedian, as well as freelancer extraordinaire.