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

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

Invincible Iron Man #11

In his first Iron Man story arc, Matt Fraction established Tony Stark as a master chess player capable of holding his own with Reed "Smartest Guy in the Marvel U" Richards. Now Tony is taking on the Dark Reign of Norman Osborn in "World's Most Wanted."

Four issues into this 12-part epic, the game still seems a slow and cautious one. Osborn, intent on getting his hands on Tony's list of registered superhero identities, has laid the blame for the recent Skrull invasion at Iron Man's armored feet. So Tony is on the run, deliberately distancing himself from his friends, yet subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) nudging them in the directions he needs them to go. It's hard to say where all this is headed just yet, but still fascinating watching Tony maneuver all the pieces on the board: by-the-book former S.H.I.E.L.D. director Maria Hill, now one bad-@$$ revolutionary/saboteur; War Machine, goaded into a fight with Tony (why do we never tire of watching the good guys spar?); Pepper Potts, now with her very own Iron Woman suit, which is also the biggest and coolest iPod ever (96,000 songs!); and Henry Hellrung, out of his depth but a welcome addition to the story. I enjoyed what I've read of the Order so far and Henry's leadership there. And how can you not love a hero who used to be Tony Stark's AA sponsor?

But my favorite part of this issue, and probably of this whole story so far? Tony Stark's shiny new Gmail account.

I'm a big fan of viral marketing, of all the wacky new ways storytellers are finding to make readers/viewers a part of the worlds they create. "The River Tam Sessions" got me even more excited to see Serenity, and I've enjoyed recent sitcom tie-in websites featuring (fake) hair accessories and Alan Thicke. As soon as Tony began describing to his friends how to use his secret doomsday Gmail account, I knew Fraction was letting us in on Tony's game.

So I went to Gmail. I tried and failed to log in to the secret account. And then I did what any good 21st century fanboy does: I cheated. I googled. And sure enough, someone on a message board had figured it out. The log-in info was a clever bit of misdirection, but an e-mail sent to Tony's address got a response. I had to try this myself. I spent a ridiculous amount of time staring at my screen, pondering just the right message of support to send to a fictional character on the run from a crooked government agency. [I rolled my eyes the whole time. - R] I settled on a Whedon reference.

The next day I checked my inbox and found an email waiting from "Sue." Sue Donym. It was my very own secret message from "T."

Fraction, you're just my kind of cheeseball.

- JC

Invincible Iron Man - John Jackson Miller

As a big fan of the Dark Horse Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic comics, I was excited to find that John Jackson Miller had done a run on Invincible Iron Man. I found the issues on Marvel's Complete Invincible Iron Man DVD-ROM, and I really enjoyed Miller's take on Tony Stark.

It's a mix of classic Iron Man techno-fantasy-adventure with elements of The West Wing. Tony Stark gets himself named U.S. Secretary of Defense after finding out that the military has used some legal loophole to open Stark Industries' closed patents and exploit his technology. Because they're working on the tech behind closed doors and rushing the jobs using contractors who don't understand the theories behind the mechanics, things are going wrong and people are getting killed.

Tony being Tony, he can't just halt production of the weapons, he has to go farther to try to fix the problem. He gets a bunch of U.S. Senators together and claims that as Secretary of Defense he can make it so that nobody ever has to die in war again.

It's a big crazy comic book idea, but it's just the kind of idealism I love - and with how fast technology changes, it really isn't that hard to believe that people could create technology for war that could be non-lethal but effective. Miller also has Tony making the important points about why war needs to change this way - especially in a world where violence doesn't just beget violence, it begets terrorism, fanaticism, and immeasurable collateral damage.

Miller sells it because, like all great Iron Man writers, he suggests technology that doesn't feel too far-fetched or is based on the kinds of things scientists have theorized today.

- JC

JC: "Honey, have you seen my soapbox?"
RD: "Did you check under your feet?"