By Kieron Gillen, Luke Ross, Joe Bennett, Scott Hanna, Cliff Richard & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-616-8
Supreme survivor Tony Stark has changed his profile many times since his 1963 debut when, as a VIP visitor in Vietnam observing the efficacy of weaponry he had designed, the arch-technocrat wunderkind was critically wounded and captured by a Communist warlord.
Put to work with the spurious promise of medical assistance upon completion, Stark instead built a prototype Iron Man suit to keep his heart beating and deliver him from his oppressors. From there it was a small jump into a second career as a high-tech Knight in Shining Armour…
Ever since then the former armaments manufacturer has been a liberal capitalist, eco-warrior, space pioneer, civil servant, Statesman, and even spy-chief: Director of the world’s most scientifically advanced spy agency, the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate.
Of course, he was also a founder member of the world’s most prominent superhero assemblage, the Mighty Avengers, and affirmed Futurist; an impassioned advocate of inevitable progress by way of building better tomorrows…
For a popular character/concept weighed down with a fifty-year pedigree, radical reboots are a painful periodic necessity. To stay fresh and contemporary, Stark’s origin and Iron Man’s continuity have been radically revised every so often, but never so drastically as during his latest revamp – the final collected chronicle of which here re-presents Iron Man volume 5, #23.NOW – 28, spanning March to June 2014.
What Just Happened: following a few notable escapades in outer space, the once-jaded Armoured Avenger uncovered a few surprises in his own past (for which see the two-volume Iron Man: The Secret Origin of Tony Stark) and discovered that he had been adopted by industrialist Howard and Maria Stark to deceive a manipulative alien device with big plans.
Rigellian Recorder 451 – one of millions of sentient automatons programmed to travel the universe acquiring knowledge – had developed a programming flaw and struck out on its own, slowly furthering its own secret agenda.
The renegade had been working with his parents to genetically alter their unborn child and make it a technological super-warrior capable of defending Earth from exponentially increasing alien attacks that were to come as the universe responded to the deadly potential for destruction of Humankind…
Recorder never realised Howard was deeply suspicious and – after decoding the genetic alterations 451 had installed in the foetus – tampered with some of them…
Years later, after a spectacular struggle, Tony Stark defeated the deranged robot Rigellian and returned to Earth where further enquiries into his family’s shady history uncovered an astonishing, life-altering discovery kept hidden for years by his brilliantly paranoid father: Tony had an older brother who was the actual subject of 451’s genetic manipulation.
Arno Stark was a bed-ridden, technological genius who was forever trapped in an iron lung, locked away and raised in isolation at the Maria Stark Foundation Hospice, but now the brothers were gloriously reunited. There was only one small caveat to Tony’s unbounded joy. He was no blood relation to Arno, but apparently secretly adopted as a ploy to deceive the alien automaton…
With a brother even more brilliant than he, Tony began bigger, bolder enterprises such as the construction of a modular super-city to save humanity from self-inflicted extinction. The creative geniuses dubbed it Troy, but no sooner had they unveiled their Iron Metropolis than they were targeted by the alien super-weapons previously employed by arch nemesis The Mandarin.
The ill-considered location of their World of Tomorrow was Mandarin City: a private island off the coast of mainland China long ignored and avoided by the nations of the world since the death of the villain who controlled it.
It was the perfect site on which the Starks could make their vision live… but only after driving out the Triads and other vermin profiting from a legally tenuous citadel no world power was confident enough to annexe. The villain’s Rings, meanwhile, had somehow achieved a cooperative (to an argumentative point) co-consciousness and begun enacting their own destructive agenda by seeking out host-wearers whose personalities and ambitions were compatible with their own…
In London, radical journalist Abigail Burns was seduced by a sentient flaming Ring which deemed her worthy but her brief time as Red Peril led to mutilation and eventually revelation.
The other cosmic adornments also found troubled partners and began sowing destruction, countered by Tony, former War Machine pilot James Rhodes (now all decked out as the Iron Patriot) and immobile Arno, who took remote control of the city’s mechanical police force. Dispatching thousands of empty Armour suits as a Trojan Guard he saved lives and property and thwarted the Rings’ initial assault.
Unfortunately a far more arcane and malign player became involved when Dark Elf Malekith the Accursed then began slaughtering Ring wearers in search of a full set for himself…
Scripted by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by Luke Ross, Joe Bennett, Scott Hanna & Cliff Richard, the latest stage in the evolution of Iron Man takes up from where Iron Metropolitan dramatically paused as, in the Asgardian Nine Realms, Malekith gloats over the Rings he now grips in his cruelly taloned hand.
Later on Earth, when Iron Man tackles another deranged new Mandarin, the battle explosively ends when the Dark Elf ambushes the combatants and bloodily takes another Ring for his own.
Fed up with playing catch-up, Tony changes tactics and hires Shevaun Haldane (former Dark Angel and mystic mercenary) to act as his handler and advisor as he attempts to infiltrate his eldritch enemy’s magical home turf of Svartalfheim…
Unfortunately it involves leaving his best weapon behind as “cold iron†is anathema to Elves and they can spot him coming if he goes in fully kitted-up…
Naturally the mission goes wrong from the start and the covert intruder pops up in the royal throne room. Following a bombastic battle the technological mortal is soon being harried by the Wild Hunt through the outer reaches of a mythical hellscape…
Back on Earth Arno is proving to be as devious and many-layered as his foster-brother and enters into an unconventional political alliance with Abigail Burns even as Tony opts to sacrifice his intended escape route home for Shevaun sending in his fearsome Iron Man assault suit…
Soon the tables are totally turned. Although Malekith’s psychological assaults – claiming baby Tony might be an Elven changeling – hit home hard, the Fairy devil has no real defence against a mightily ticked off Iron-shod Avenger and his problems only multiply when the remaining six Ring-Wearers drop in, determined to maintain their new-found autonomy by destroying the magical abomination trying to control them all…
Besieged on all sides, the Accursed Elf is forced to capitulate and surrenders his four Rings and an escape route to the triumphant Tony, but as always has an ulterior motive and craftily takes something from the Maria Stark Foundation Hospice that may in time prove far more valuable and deadly than the trinkets he has grudgingly surrendered…
With four Rings in custody Tony, Arno and devoted inspirational AI H.E.L.E.N. begin reverse-engineering the sublime extraterrestrial devices and soon have enough data to construct a true counter to the star-tech’s unsurpassed might and collectivised intellect.
Their final solution then engages the enemy in the Mandarin’s City, miles deep under London where Ring-wearer Mole Man has convened a meeting of his fellow hosts to outline his plan for revenge. The meeting is cut short when Iron Man, Red Peril and Arno – in a formidable life-support battle suit – blaze in to end the threat but subsequently find one of their own is in the enemy camp…
Riotously wrapping up the blockbusting future-flavoured epic in spectacular, cathartic fashion, this action-packed Fights ‘n’ Tights rollercoaster splendidly closes one chapter in the ongoing escapades of the Golden Gladiator whilst setting the scene for more metal-machined marvels to come.
Bold, imaginative and supremely engaging, this expansive, explosive repositioning of the Stark dynasty comes with a cover-&-variants gallery by Mike Del Mundo, Christian Ward, In-Hyuk Lee, Jennifer Parks, Joe Quinones, Mike Perkins and Paul Renaud as well as the usual digital extras accessible via the AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
™ & © 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.