Invincible Iron Man #14

Pepper Potts, Iron Man's ever-loyal Girl Friday, has high-tech armor of her own these days. Her boss left a brand-new tin suit for her when he went on the run from Norman Osborn, in Matt Fraction's epic "World's Most Wanted" storyline. But she's no "Iron Woman." She's got no plasma discs or repulsor rays, she's not rocket-punching bad guys. And this is a beautiful thing.

When Tony Stark gave Pepper her first cybernetic implant, saving her life in "The Five Nightmares," Pepper insisted she'd be no man's weapon. Tony honored that request when he built her armor; there's not a single piece of armament in its array. In the latest issue ("World's Most Wanted" part 7 of 12), we learn that the armored Pepper has taken the name "Rescue," and that's just what her suit is built to do. She's search & rescue extraordinaire. A friend asks her what's she's been up to. "Held up a stilt mansion in an earthquake. Stopped a few rockslides. Caught an airplane," Pepper says. "Two airplanes, actually..." And the list goes on.

In a previous post I complained about Marvel's recent questionable practice of creating new female villains by reinventing old male ones. But Pepper Potts' Rescue identity is a counterpart heroine done right. Rather than being a pale shadow of her male predecessor, she has her own unique approach to super-heroism as well as an unique goal.

I shouldn't really be surprised. After all, Fraction began Pepper Potts' evolution into a superhero in The Order, and the Iron Man concept lends itself well to reinvention. Tony has space armor and undersea armor and Hulkbuster armor. Soldier Jim Rhodes is armed to his iron teeth and calls himself War Machine. Now there's Rescue, a great addition to the Iron family.

I can't wait to see where Pepper, Tony, and the clan go next. Well played, Fraction.

- JC

New Avengers: The Reunion #4

I have a little ritual, probably not an uncommon one; every week after I pick up my comics from the shop, I rank them for reading in the order of my excitement, from the least anticipated to the most. Every once in a while, though, an issue comes along that I am so eager to read, so nervous about its consequences for the heroes, that I just have to forget the system and throw it on the top of the pile. New Avengers: The Reunion #4 (Jim McCann) was such an issue.

Marvel's preview solicitation promised we'd see "an emotional choice [that] forever alters the course of both Ronin and Mockingbird's lives." But in just the few months since I'd read their initial reunion in Secret Invasion - and especially after 3 1/3rd issues of McCann's series - I wasn't sure I wanted the course of these lives to be altered. I wanted Marvel to put a marriage back together for once, instead of tearing it apart. Because apparently being married makes you automatically old and unhip or something.

I needn't have worried. McCann found the perfect way for everyone to have their cake and eat it too. At the end of all the fistifcuffs and fireworks, Bobbi (Mockingbird) and Clint (Ronin) acknowledge the legal dissolution of their marriage, the troubles in their past and the ways they've both changed in their years apart. At the same time, they recognize their obvious desire to be together, to fight side by side and work things out. A couple who were married nine days after their first meeting, they decide they're now dating for the first time.

It's a brilliant finale: upbeat, triumphant even, without being smug or pat or too easily come by. It doesn't try to paper over the problems Clint and Bobbi had in past stories, or wash away the psychological trauma inevitable after deaths and resurrections and alien captivity all at once. It takes the whole wacky, wild, and sometimes deeply flawed history of these characters into account, but keeps the hope that mistakes can be learned from. Not easily, not always quickly, but we can move forward, live better and love better, if that's what we truly want.

- JC

Thor 7-12 & 600[*]

I really want to like J. Michael Straczynski's current Thor series. There are some fantastic reworkings of Norse legend in these issues, really made to shine by Olivier Coipel's and Marko Djurdjevic's art, and great contrast and comic relief as the operatic Asgardians get to know their new neighbors in small-town Broxton, OK. Unfortunately, the book is hamstrung by two fatal flaws: wildly unbalanced characterization and rampant misogyny.

To his credit, JMS has come up with a genius twist on Thor's half-brother Loki. And I'm not talking about the boobs here. Yes, Loki now has the body of a woman, but that's just packaging to help the God of Lies sell his** newest scam: the trickster now speaks only truth. He's just as deceitful and manipulative as the Loki of old (however he may claim to have seen the error of his ways), but now accomplishes his ends by deploying the sharpest facts at the worst possible times.

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that the writer finds Loki far more interesting than his actual protagonist. Thor spends way too much time (in the comic that bears his name) standing around, looking stoic, and failing to react as Loki schemes Asgard out from under him. Loki's truth-as-weapon schtick is clever, sure, but the execution is hardly so clever that Thor and his fellow Asgardians shouldn't see through it. They've endured how many of Loki's plots and betrayals by this point in their immortal lives? It's one thing to set your hero up for a thrilling comeback; it's something else again to make him look like a bland chump.

Far more disturbing, however, is the portrayal of women in the book. There's not a single female character here that gets to be anything more than an object of desire for the men.*** Thor's warrior-beloved Sif is trapped and helpless, imprisoned by Loki in a dying woman's body while he himself wears her form. Nurse Jane Foster, one-time flame of Thor's alter ego Dr. Donald Blake, announces she filed for divorce "for no good reason" on the day Thor returned from the dead, and expects to lose custody of her son over this. Clearly JMS sees Foster's marriage and child as mistakes to be corrected; he probably sees this as a perfectly old-fashioned and romantic way of going about that. It's not. It's ridiculous.

The Asgardian Lady Kelda carries on what should be an adorable courtship with a Broxton mortal, but when she invites the lad up to her city, does they share in the wonders of an ancient city? No. She takes him back to her room, lounges in scant clothing, and hurls provocative entendre. And don't even get me started on the two page spread of Prince Balder on his throne, surrounded by bikini-clad Asgardian women who apparently have nothing better to do with their time than pose around the latest royal endowment.

I know some comic fans still have a soft spot for the Conan tales of old: when men were men and women were gorgeous, undressed, and wanting to be with men. The artistic merits of Robert E. Howard and his illustrators is a whole other debate, but I for one don't feel this kind of wholesale belittlement of women deserves a place in the modern Marvel pantheon. And I must admit, I'm rather astounded that it's Straczynski who is failing so spectacularly in this way. A man who wrote Mary Jane Watson and Aunt May so well; the man who created Babylon 5 and gave the world Susan Ivanova****. This is the same guy, really?

But then I remember, he is also the man who gave Gwen Stacy her "Sins of the Past." Oy.

- JC


[*JC proposed the subtitle "More Merry Marvel Misogyny," but then changed his mind. I think it's well earned. - RD]

** Yes, I'm continuing to refer to him as a him, because a) consistancy makes my head less hurty and b) gender and biology are not necessarily the same thing. Loki may have changed the latter, but I'd argue the former remains the same. So he's still a he.

*** And no, Boob-Loki does not count.

**** Ivanova is God.

House of M: Others

Since my original House of M post, I've been tracking down the various tie-in issues and miniseries from that event, to see how they might alter my impression of the story as a whole. And ultimately I've found it's not just the changes from the Marvel universe we know that make the House that Bendis Built so intriguing. Often it's the things that haven't changed at all.

Bruce "Hulk" Banner spends his alternate reality vacation (Incredible Hulk, Peter David) in Australia, bonding with Aborigines who are helping him make peace between his "two minds," and claims he's never been happier. So his dream reality doesn't involve a reunion with his deceased wife Betty?

Similarly, in the main miniseries, Jean Grey is still dead, and Scott Summers is instead married to Emma Frost - something even Emma wonders about when their memories are restored. I was all set to blame Jean Grey's "Live, Scott, live!" brainwashing from the end of Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, and then I read Christos Gage's House of M: Civil War miniseries, about Magneto's rise to power in the Houseverse. Here we learn that even in this Magnus family fantasy world, Magneto's first child (Anya) still died, his wife Magda still left him, and Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch still grew up orphans. And I started to wonder.

Perhaps the writers were suggesting that most of us, on a day to day basis, don't really wish for a life so different from the one we already have. The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver didn't sit everyone down and ask them for their alternate reality wish-list, they had a telepath scan everyone's minds. So the lives they made were just a little better than the ones people had been living before. Lives people believed they could have, with just a little luck, or a little more work, with a few telling exceptions.

In House of M: Iron Man (Greg Pak), Tony Stark's dead, demanding father is alive again, but a villian, so Tony can face and reject him on his own terms. And in Mark Waid's House of M: Spider-Man, Peter Parker was married not to Mary Jane but to his murdered first love Gwen Stacy (and they have a son!), and Gwen's dead dad and Peter's Uncle Ben were both alive again as well. The tragedy of Peter is that he lives his whole life in regret, carrying ghosts everywhere he goes. It's enough to bring Gwen, Captain Stacy, and Uncle Ben back to him in the House reality, but when the world is restored, Peter is left wondering what it means that Mary Jane was left out of his other life and mourning a son he never actually knew. Even Peter's dreams, in the end, are just another reason to be emo.

Wow. When I put it like that...I'm kinda depressed now. Get over yourself, Spider-Man! Go look at pictures of some Giant Flemish Rabbits: http://z.hubpages.com/u/109006_f260.jpg or something.

- JC

speaking of gender

There are probably many reasons girls don't read comics. For one, the stories get kinda samey, and it's a lot of money to spend each week that could better be saved for, I dunno, rent or groceries or ice cream. Better persons than I have no doubt explored all of the possibilities. But the one thing that makes me yell at the page and vow to swear off the entire genre? Boobs drawn by women.

I was reading the latest Runaways, which includes two short stories written and drawn by different people. The scripts are good to great; as long as you know the characters, Runaways isn't hard to write. Chris Yost ("Mollifest Destiny") threw a dozen X-Men/Molly gags together and had me laughing at every panel. James Asmus ("Truth or Dare") showed how much more interesting sleepovers might be if real teens had super powers. But the art in both stories didn't thrill me, and at one point was both annoying and disgusting.

In "Mollifest Destiny," the artist did a fine job with the boys, Molly and Klara, and most of the X-Men. Emma Frost, who is always drawn like a slut*, has a pose so physically improbable that I stared at the page, wondering if she'd had a few vertebrae removed for some reason. But the panel that made me scream and curse was a shot of Nico and her massive breasts, helpfully displayed by a corset.

What massive breasts, you say? Nico is a teenager. She doesn't have massive breasts. And even if she did, she's usually covered from elbow to knee at least. She makes her own clothes, remember? Her outfits often feature long coats, skirts with pants underneath, and big boots. I SAID BIG BOOTS.

So imagine my total dismay when I learned that the artist of this short piece is named Sara Pichelli. A woman.

It's bad enough that most comic artists pander to their audience, drawing women with impossibly large and bouyant breasts, painfully small waists, and body fat ratios so small they would never menstruate. (Not that geek boys, or any boys for that matter, think much of menstruation.) But when women do it, it's somehow worse. Especially for a book about young people, I would think an artist could say, for once I don't have to sketch proportions that would make Da Vinci cringe! Hooray! But no, Pichelli seems to think that it ain't a comic book unless it has boobs, so let's make sure the geek boys have something to think about later, in bed, alone.**

I'm not saying that images of beautiful women are bad or wrong or don't belong in comics. I can appreciate a good female form (and did so plenty before I hooked up with JC***), and I understand that a little cheesecake is expected in comics, even more so than on TV and in movies. But when even women bow to the convention of drawing characters with exaggerated features, what makes us think men won't have unreasonable expectations for women in their lives? When Wonder Woman, who has been wearing a bustier for almost 70 years, can't get a decent script or an artist willing to draw her some pants, where can comic fans who are more interested in the story than the skin find a decent book?

It looks like I'll have to raise my kids on old Power Packs and Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Even Archie screwed up by picking the wrong girl. And I trust that their father will stand as proof that not all men want the supermodel body type. Which is lucky for me, and JC seems to be happy as well. ****

- RD

*And that's a valid lifestyle choice, but f#ck Emma Frost. It's not necessarily about zomg she's taking Jean's place, it's just that I've never seen anything to make me think she doesn't suck as a leader.

**Which is also a valid lifestyle choice. And if they keep looking for women who look like the ones in comics, they'll stay that way for a very long time.

***A very valid lifestyle choice. Ask any of my ex-girlfriends.

****To be fair, I do have big boobs.

Standout Scenes

I can only think of three occasions on which I've bought a comic for a single scene. It's not uncommon for a standout scene to sway my decision to purchase a book, to prove to me that the writer or the story has something special to offer. (The "you cut down the tree, but you still miss its shade" scene in the first issue of Brett Matthews' Lone Ranger, for instance.) But to buy a single issue of a comic, without picking up the larger storyline of which it is a part, simply because of one scene so good that I needed to have that in my library, that's only happened to me thrice.

The three scenes in question:

1) X-Men #59 (Scott Lobdell) - Jean Grey-Summers finds her husband Scott hiding out in a movie theater, watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Many readers think of Scott Summers merely as Cyclops, humorless general of Xavier's army; it's great to see him in a quieter moment, to recognize he has hobbies and passions that have nothing to do with the X-Men or the mutant cause.

2) Marvel Knights 4 #4 (Roberto Aguire-Sacasa) - Reed Richards talks a jumper down off a ledge. When Reed makes a promise to the jumper, and assures him that not even Dr. Doom or Galactcus could keep Reed from fulfilling it, we know this is no exaggeration; Richards is as honest as his legs get long.

And lately, 3) Ultimate Fantastic Four #58 (Joe Pokaski) - A flashback shows how Reed Richards and Ben Grimm became friends. We know their unlikely bond is going to carry them through the direst of circumstances, including the failed experiment that traps Grimm beneath the Thing's rocky hide.

None of these scenes has anything to do with super-powers (unless you count Reed taking a giant stretchy step up to a ledge) or saving the world. They're simple stories, well told: a wife learning something new about her husband, the compassion of a stranger, two boys each finding a brother in the last person they'd have expected. None of these moments would be out of place in a stage play, yet they're all the more meaningful for being set against the colorful, hyperbolic backdrop of comic book super-heroics.

- JC

[He's not mentioning how big a part simple comic scenes like these have played elsewhere in his life, like when he had to show me a panel of Reed and Sue talking about kissing after our first make-out session. I'm not even joking. - RD]

Marvel Gender Benders

So I've been catching up on Mike Carey's X-Men: Legacy this week ("Sins of the Father" in trade paperback, the "Original Sin" crossover with Wolverine: Origins in hardcover), and just learned that there is now a female clone of X-Men arch-foe Mr. Sinister running around the universe called, wait for it, Miss Sinister.

Really, Marvel? Really?

She boasts Mr. Sinister's trademark pasty complexion/red forehead diamond, but displays none of his mystique (no pun intended) or scientific prowess. Where Mr. Sinister was a grand manipulator, playing a mad game of destiny dominoes to suit some vaguely Darwinist agenda - a cloning here, a misfit massacre over there - his feminine successor seems so far to be little more than a third-rate telepath in thrall to the Hellfire Club's Sebastian Shaw.

Of course, she's hardly unique; these trans-gendered villains are popping up all over the place. Spider-Man has recently been targeted by a new Kraven the Hunter, who happens to be the 12-year-old daughter of the original. Another old X-Men villain, the illusionist Mastermind, has two daughters running around, both having inherited his powers and squabbling over his name. Daredevil is sparring with a Lady Bullseye, and Thor's trickster-god brother Loki has actually become a woman himself.

Some of these characters feature in some very well-told stories. But looking at the trend on the whole, I can't help but wonder what message Marvel thinks it's sending by replacing a bunch of aging male villains with female proxies. Do they think this is fine feminism, to show sisters doing it for themselves just like the boys did it before them, with the boys' borrowed identities? If Marvel has a Femme Fatale quota to fill, wouldn't they get more points by creating some villainesses that are actually unique, with their own abilities and backstories? Or do they think the fans won't get excited about a new villian if she doesn't have some familiar hook, a connection to what's gone before?

Tell me your thoughts. I'd love to know what others are making of all this. In the meantime, I'll be over here trying to guess who Marvel will boobify next. Victoria Von Doom? The Queenpin? Magneta*?

- JC

*In fanfic she would be called Magenta and she would spend all her time hanging with her BFF Rouge.

X-Men:First Class: Finals

Jeff's Parker's four-part X-Men: First Class: Finals miniseries bids a fond farewell to a classic Marvel flashback, fills in a long-neglected gap in X-history, and neatly sets up Scott Gray's upcoming Uncanny X-Men First Class. In the days just before Wolverine, Storm, etc. burst onto the mutant scene in "Giant Size X-Men #1," the original five X-Men are preparing to leave Xavier's School with college degrees and head out into the real world. But wouldn't you know it? Some mysterious adversary is forcing them to confront old foes (all from Parker's series) one last time.

Along the way, Parker drops in answers to questions fans have been asking since the 60s and 70s. Presumably. I wasn't born then. We find out why the X-Men switched to more individualized uniforms, why Professor Xavier went from running a school for "The Strangest Teens of All!" to overseeing a pseudo-military team of adult mutants from around the world, and even how a classy girl like Jean could possibly have designed the suspendered nightmare that was Angel's first attempt at a unique costume.

And in the end, we learn that the bad guy bombarding the team with Parker's greatest hits is none other than Jean Grey, and I discover a facet of my favorite relationship in comics that I'd never quite caught on to before. I'd always seen Scott and Jean primarily as two straight-arrows, wanting nothing more than to do right and take care of their great big X-Men family. Less important, I thought, were the very different ways they experienced and dealt with power. Scott's struggle was with a physical handicap, Jean's with a metaphysical question of how much power she can use before it must corrupt her.

Finals showed that both Scott and Jean's power struggles are ultimately emotional. Here we learn that as Jean's telepathic abilities grew, her subconscious fears and traumatic memories began to manifest as what Xavier called "ambient dreams," forcing themselves on those around her. The Professor explains, "As a mentally enhanced mutant, it's important that her mind be disciplined. Objective," meaning that Jean's power demands a figurative clarity of vision, just as Scott's does a literal one. And for Jean, just as much as for Scott, power has always been overshadowed by childhood pain. Scott lost his parents in the plane crash which also deprived him of the ability to control his optic blasts; Jean first experienced telepathy in the moment her friend was killed in a car crash. One lost a family, the other a best friend, and they found both again in one another - making their continual efforts at control a little less burdensome.

And those who say Scott Summers wasn't "a real grown up" or "free" or "truly happy" until Emma Frost came along can suck it.

The first 3 Finals issues also feature a back-up story by Parker, irresistably drawn by Colleen Coover: "Scott & Jean Are On a Date!" Honestly, they had me at the title, but you have to love a Marvel series that manages to work a playful newspaper-style comic strip into its continuity, and in the oh-so-angsty X-verse to boot.

- JC

Iron Man: Armored Adventures

As with most comic book heroes, there's always been a distinct element of power fantasy to Iron Man. But it's not just the fact that Tony Stark has a cool suit of armor and gets to fly around and blast robots. The fact that he's a billionaire inventor with his own company has always been just as important to the vibe, to making readers and moviegoers not just want to hang out with Tony, but to BE him. He flies around the world on a whim, vacations in exotic locations, and gets the babes wherever he goes. He runs a business, has lunch meetings with the movers and shakers of the world, and then runs back to his garage to tinker with the next high-tech toy. He's Steve Jobs as James Bond.

Not so in Marvel Animation's new Iron Man: Armored Adventures cartoon. Here Stan Lee's famous billionaire industrialist/playboy Tony Stark has been redesigned as a sixteen-year-old who first puts on the Iron Man armor after his father's murder. Tony's still rich, but his company's being run by the man he's sure killed his dad (ostensibly until Tony turns 18 or exposes Obadiah Stane for the villain he is). When he's not flying around town in his new armor, he's struggling through high school with his friends Jim "Rhodey" Rhodes and Pepper Potts. It's cute, sure, watching the rich genius kid trying to cope with the banalities of his classes and being badgered by the more down-to-earth Rhodey and Pepper. But is it Iron Man?

At one point in the 4th episode, as Tony angsts about finding evidence against his father's murderer, Rhodey points out that his dad would just want him to live and enjoy a normal life. And therein lies the rub. In the comics and the movie, Tony Stark never had any problem enjoying his normal life, even with all the superheroics going on. This isn't to say it made him happy, that he didn't still internally monologue in grand Stan Lee fashion about the life and the relationships he REALLY wanted, but he still always found time to go to the parties, to date the girls, to at least enjoy the surface pleasures his money made possible. So who is this Tony?

IM: Armored Adventures is an entertaining enough superhero cartoon, with likable characters, witty dialogue, and some slick computer-animated action sequences, but it it feels more like an amalgamation of Batman ("I'm rich, and I will avenge my father!") and Spider-Man ("aww, man, how do I juggle the responsibilities of my power with a normal teenage life?") than a story of Stark. If I have some free time and a hankering for a generic superhero show, I'll catch up on the episodes, but it doesn't have the intrinsic Iron Man quality that makes me look forward to it as I do the next Matt Fraction issue, or even Iron Man 2 on the big screen.

- JC

Astonishing X-Men

The X-Men have long been my favorite characters in comics. Yet I've had a hard time really appreciating the main X-books since about 2001, when Grant Morrison began his run on New X-Men. The plots were needlessly convoluted and the characters seemed to be alienated from each other, but the biggest reason for my dislike came down to his treatment of just two characters: Scott Summers and Jean Grey. Morrison took Cyclops, the X-Men's ultimate idealistic boy scout, and turned him into a wimp-ass wannabe bad boy. He took Jean, who had emerged from the shadow of the Phoenix entity in the 1990s to become a truly formidable leader, rebonded her to the Phoenix, and reduced her to the fanboy distortion of "that chick who dies a lot." And in the process, he tore apart their marriage, which I would still argue is the greatest love story in comics.

Now, I'm not saying there haven't been great X-Men stories told since Morrison's reign. But without Scott Summers and Jean Grey at the center of them - with Scott instead shacked up with Emma Frost, with whom he had a psychic affair before Jean's death - they just haven't been my X-Men.

Which kind of makes Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men live up to its name all the more. I've just finished reading it all, start to finish, for the second time, and I still don't hate it.
Joss immediately sets right a lot of what Morrison muddled. He puts the X-Men back in spandex, gets them back in the game of reaching out to the human community by being superheroes rather than holing up in the mansion and teaching mutant kids how much better they are than humans. He gives Cyclops his idealism back, and shows us the X-Men actually enjoying each others' company again (even as they wind up in fist-fights every other page). They're a family. An endlessly squabbling family that expects the world of one another, but what family doesn't?

What's more, the Whedon issues of Astonishing X-Men offer some of the finest visual storytelling in comics. The "camera angles," the intercutting between parallel scenes, the characters' body language and blocking, it's all brilliant. The scene where Colossus returns from the dead is a perfect example: the guards' bullets pass through Kitty Pryde and ping off something in the shadows; Colossus steps out; Kitty freezes, Colossus running right through her to take down the guards, but the view remains locked on Kitty and the shock on her face. It's perfect. I'd love to get my hands on some of the scripts, and really pick apart how much of this was planned by Whedon and how much was the genius of artist John Cassaday.

But the really weird part? When Joss is writing them, I don't even hate Scott & Emma as a couple. Don't get me wrong; I still hate how it started and the revisionist writers who try to suggest Scott & Jean were never good for one another. (Joss has Emma suggest it, but Scott clearly isn't buying in.) But Joss emphasizes two people with ridiculous cases of survivor's guilt - for different reasons, from different pasts - coming together, each seeing the other very differently from how they see themselves, and trying to be better together. It's almost kinda cool. I still want Jean to come back, I still want to see her and Scott put back together, but I don't have to hate the Scott/Emma relationship as a step along Scott's journey.

- JC