Review: Iron Man/Captain America

Writers: Stan Lee, Mark Waid, Denny O’Neil, David Michelinie, Mark Gruenwald, Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas, James Robinson, Kurt Busiek, and Roger Stern
Artists: Don Heck, Ron Garney, Luke McDonnell, Mark Bright, Bob Layton, Kieron Dwyer, Jim Valentino, Colin MacNeil, and Patrick Zircher
Collects: Tales of Suspense #58, Iron Man #172 & 228, Captain America #341 & Annual #9, Tales of Suspense #1, Iron Man and Captain America Annual 1998, Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #5-6
Published: Marvel, 2010; $24.99

With such a boring title, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that Iron Man/Captain America is probably a pretty run-of-the-mill book. As it turns out, though, it’s actually pretty unique as far as “best of” collections go, in that it maintains a specific theme across the entire book beyond simply “stories that happen to feature the characters in the title.” While not every story is exactly perfect, this does make for a nice, unified reading experience overall.

We start off with an early Iron Man tale by Stan Lee and Don Heck, in which a case of mistaken identity (involving Kraven the Hunter and the Chameleon, apparently on loan from the Spider-Man comics) leads Iron Man and Captain America to duke it out in a construction site. This issue is classic Marvel at its best, with solid action scenes by Heck and some nice character drama involving Iron Man supporting characters Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan. While it’s been reprinted plenty of times elsewhere, its inclusion here is more than welcome.

Next, we jump forward nearly fifty years (in terms of publication date, that is) to a two-part story from Mark Waid’s Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty series. It actually takes place shortly after Captain America is discovered by the Avengers, though, which explains why it’s positioned here in the book. In essence, this is meant to be the characters’ first non-Avengers team-up and the real start of their friendship. It begins with Iron Man assuming that Captain America has lost his edge after being trapped in ice for so long; however, Cap is the one to save the day when alien robots take control of Tony’s mind and send him on a rampage through New York City.

The next two issues come from a period of Marvel history that I’m not quite as familiar with, especially when it comes to the Avengers’ corner of the universe. The first story, reprinted from a Denny O’Neil-written issue from 1983, actually features Jim Rhodes as Iron Man – at this point, Tony’s alcoholism had apparently so consumed him that his friends deemed him too much of a risk to allow him to continue suiting up. Even Captain America is in the dark as to who’s under the helmet, which makes their interactions all the more interesting as the two heroes scour some of NYC’s seedier locales for a drunken Tony.

The second issue, written in 1988 by David Michelinie (with art by Mark Bright and Bob Layton), sees Tony back on his feet as Iron Man, but facing even greater problems than his own inner demons. Terrorists have somehow gotten hold of his Iron Man technology, and in an effort to prevent even more of it from falling into the wrong hands, he resolves to take out the Guardsmen, a group that guards a super-villain prison using Stark technology. Personally, I don’t understand why he didn’t just try talking to the people who run the prison and come up with some alternative security measures, rather than waging all-out war on the security guards and accidentally freeing a handful of super-villains in the process.

Captain America doesn’t see the logic in Tony’s plan either, and the two friends end up coming to literal blows over it. A short follow-up written by Mark Gruenwald, originally published as a back-up story in Captain America #341 sees Cap trying to arrest Iron Man for his actions and coming up empty-handed when Tony flees his own apartment. Between this and the other ‘80s stories, I get the impression that Tony Stark spent most of that decade being a grade-A jerk.

Another story, taken from Captain America Annual #9 and written by Roy and Dann Thomas, is the first part of “The Terminus Factor,” a plotline that ran across several different characters’ Annual issues in 1990. The other four parts aren’t collected here, but if the first part is any indication, that’s probably a good thing. The story is about Cap dealing with a town that turns into a horde of zombies after eating bad trout at a fish-fry – among them, Iron Man. Yes, that’s really the plot: zombies and a fish-fry. There’s even a bear that turns into a zombie after eating one of the fish. The less said about that, the better, I think…

The next story, by far the longest in the book in terms of page count (though it’s a pretty quick read), comes from one of those standalone original graphic novels that Marvel seemed overly fond of putting out in the 1990s. Written by James Robinson (who at the time was just beginning his legendary run on Starman), it’s a fairly boring story about Captain America and Iron Man teaming up to fight an old enemy from Cap’s WWII days who plans to assassinate a Japanese politician. Since this is the ‘90s, there’s also a generic cyborg assassin who fails to come off as even slightly menacing.

I actually found this story to be a pretty annoying read since Robinson writes almost exclusively in one-word or two-word sentences. I get that he wanted the dialogue to be “punchy” or “powerful” or whatever, but after a while I just felt like I was reading a comic about cavemen in robot suits. The artwork is standard fare for these OGNs, in that it’s much more stylized and elaborate than the story warrants. Colin MacNeil is a good artist, to be sure, but his painterly style in this comic just seems self-indulgent when paired with Robinson’s mediocre script. Still, I guess it’s nice to see the OGN reprinted here, since it’s not worthy of its own trade and I can’t think of anywhere much better to put it.

The final issue collected in Iron Man/Captain America is the characters’ joint Annual issue from 1998, which is plotted by Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern and scripted by Mark Waid. Whereas the 1990 Captain America Annual was substandard (and zombie-filled) fare, this one hits the mark dead-on. It’s also quite important in terms of Marvel continuity, as it’s the issue where Iron Man essentially wipes the knowledge of his secret identity from every mind on the planet.

Cap is predictably angry when the truth comes out, leading him into a major moral dilemma when he’s faced with a similar situation during the characters’ fight with MODOK later in the issue. This story marked the first time in Iron Man/Captain America that I could actually see some logic to Tony’s argument, although in the end I still had to side with Cap. The art in this issue is by Patrick Zircher, who brings the same clean (if not entirely remarkable) style he did to Iron Man: Deadly Solutions.

I think Iron Man/Captain America was published in large part to be a vehicle for this last story – since Marvel seems intent on collecting the two characters’ solo series from 1998 onwards, this was an important issue that had to be placed somewhere, and putting it here prevents Marvel from having to collect it twice. While I don’t think too much knowledge of either solo series is required to enjoy this particular issue, I would recommend reading it if you’re following the other late-‘90s collected editions for either character, since the 1998 Annual is unlikely to be reprinted elsewhere.

What I like about this trade is that it’s about more than just the characters’ partnership through the years – in fact, it’s more concerned with the fact that Tony Stark is constantly putting that relationship to the test with his actions. With such a specific theme, it’s hard to see why Marvel didn’t slap some kind of subtitle on the book to separate it from the pack a bit (even if it was a completely lame one…a little individuality never hurts). I also can’t help but wonder why the editors of the book didn’t choose issues that portray Iron Man in a better light, but I’m not complaining; the stories they did choose, with only a few exceptions, tell a surprisingly cohesive story, one worth a look by fans of either character.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Review: Avengers: Supreme Justice

Writers: Kurt Busiek, Len Kaminski, Mark Waid, John Ostrander, and Joe Edkin
Artists: George Pérez, Sean Chen, Andy Kubert, Derec Aucoin, and Carlos Pacheco
Collects: Avengers #5-7, Avengers/Squadron Supreme ’98, Iron Man #7, Captain America #8, and Quicksilver #10 (1998)
Published: Marvel, 2001; $17.95

“Live Kree or Die” is a storyline that’s been collected rather confusingly over the years. As a result, I’ve sort of tiptoed around it in my reviews of Avengers Assemble, Vol. 1 and Iron Man: Deadly Solutions, since neither of those books actually include the story in full. As of this writing, Avengers: Supreme Justice is the only book in which the middle two parts of the story, originally published in issues of Captain America and Quicksilver, have been collected.

Before I continue, though, there’s something fairly significant I should mention: I took another look on Amazon this week at the new softcover edition of Avengers Assemble, Vol. 1 coming out at the end of the year, and it appears that unlike the hardcover, it actually will include “Live Kree or Die” in its entirety. Although that makes this review a bit less significant than I originally thought it would be, it doesn’t make it irrelevant in the least. Even with the extra issues in the softcover, the hardcover still has a significant edge, simply for the fact that it has bigger pages. When you’re talking about the artwork of someone as talented as George Pérez, page size would be a huge factor even if the missing issues were of pretty decent quality. As we’ll see a little further along in this review, though, that just isn’t the case here.

The vast majority of what’s collected in Supreme Justice is also collected in Avengers Assemble, although interestingly, the issues are placed in a different (and better) reading order in the former. In Avengers Assemble, the Avengers/Squadron Supreme Annual comes directly after Avengers #5 and #6, the issues in which the team does battle with the Squadron Supreme and tensions begin to rise between Warbird (Carol Danvers, also known as Ms. Marvel) and her teammates.

Since the Annual features the Squadron as well, it’s clear that the book’s editors wanted to group all of the issues featuring those characters together, which I suppose makes sense on some level. But here’s the problem: the Annual takes place after Warbird has left the team and Justice and Firestar have become active members, which means that it must take place after the final part of “Live Kree or Die” in Avengers #7. The Annual doesn’t refer to specific plot points or even mention Carol by name, so it’s not exactly debilitating to the overall story; however, it certainly wouldn’t be unwarranted for someone reading Avengers Assemble to be confused at Warbird’s sudden absence or the appearance of two new team members without any explanation.

Supreme Justice, on the other hand, places the Annual where it belongs, after the events of “Live Kree or Die.” What I find most fascinating here is that this book was actually published before Avengers Assemble; that is, Marvel got the reading order right the first time around but then screwed it up in later collections. As far as the new softcover version of Avengers Assemble goes, it’s impossible to say at this point whether Marvel will reprint the stories in their proper order or not. There’s nothing stopping you from simply reading the issues of the book in any order, of course, so perhaps I’m making a bigger deal of this than I should. Still, it’s a bit annoying to see such a major continuity error in a book which is otherwise quite excellent.

The “Live Kree or Die” crossover begins with Iron Man #7, is also collected in Iron Man: Deadly Solutions. I discussed it a fair amount in my review of that book already, but just to recap, it’s a pretty solid issue, and it does a good job of propelling the plot of Iron Man’s own series forward while still contributing to a larger story involving the rest of the Avengers. The highlight of the issue comes when Iron Man confronts Warbird about her alcoholism, which she tries to explain away throughout a series of flashbacks that give the reader a great understanding of the character’s history, as well as the sense of loss that defines her personality.

When Tony gets into a bit of a sticky situation afterward, Warbird makes things even worse by bursting onto the scene completely drunk. In the process, she inadvertently exposes a splinter cell of Kree extremists, who have resolved to turn the entire human race into fellow members of their own blue-skinned species. Due to her connection to the deceased Captain Marvel (who himself was half-Kree), Carol is for some reason an integral part of the Kree warriors’ plan. As a result they try to lure her into their clutches, which proves none too difficult in her inebriated state.

It’s a rather convoluted set-up, but it gets the job done, I guess. The second part of the story, from Captain America #8, is kind of similar in that it’s just Warbird and one other hero fighting against the Kree. The issue takes place shortly after Captain America: To Serve and Protect, and it deals with some plot threads from that story in a brief scene at the beginning. With art by Andy Kubert, it’s a very good-looking twenty-odd pages. But in the end, the plot is nothing we haven’t already seen, with Captain America standing around looking incredulous while Carol generally acts like a drunken moron.

The story continues into Quicksilver #10, which is by all accounts an absolutely terrible comic book. First of all, the fact that Quicksilver ever had an ongoing series of his own is astounding to me, since I’ve never seen him portrayed as anything more than an unlikeable jerk. That aside, the actual script, by John Ostrander and Joe Edkin, is stilted and emotionless (and conspicuously devoid of contractions). See the picture at right for an especially painful moment, in which the Scarlet Witch robotically summarizes what’s been happening in the story so far.

I could go on and on about how awful this issue is, but in the interest of time I’ll give you just one example. There’s a positively ridiculous scene about halfway through in which a weakened Carol comes across a random vat of liquid in the Kree’s secret moon base and, somehow sensing its alcoholic nature, guzzles it down and regains her powers. It makes no sense at all: first, why would the Kree leave a huge, open container of alcohol just lying around? Second, how would Carol even know it was alcohol (or, for that matter, that Kree alcohol wouldn’t be poisonous to a human being)? And third, why would drinking it suddenly give her back the super powers she had lost? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s now how alcoholism works. Bizarre leaps of logic like this one are just one more reason why this issue rubs me the wrong way.

The final part of “Live Kree or Die,” from Avengers #7, is the only issue from the entire crossover that you actually need to read; the others just give it a bit more context, is all. It summarizes everything as competently as it can (given how ludicrously bad the Quicksilver issue is), neatly wraps up the Kree plot threads, and sees the expulsion of Carol from the team. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel quite as tragic as it probably should – it’s hard not to want Carol gone after all the stupid things she’s done over the preceding issues.

In short, then, the two issues that are exclusive to Supreme Justice – Captain America #8 and Quicksilver #10 – aren’t at all worth the price of this book, even if you can find it at a significant discount. They’re not a good reason to choose the softcover version of Avengers Assemble either, which I would only recommend if you can’t find the hardcover for a good price. Everything you need to know about “Live Kree or Die” is already present in that book, and it’s not as if it’s a wonderful story (even in concept) anyway. So, to be even shorter this time: just avoid this book.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Review: Deadpool Classic, Vol. 1

Writers: Fabian Nicieza, Rob Liefeld, Mark Waid, Joe Kelly
Artists: Rob Liefeld, Joe Madureira, Ian Churchill, Lee Weeks, Ken Lashley, Ed McGuinness
Collects: New Mutants #98, Deadpool: The Circle Chase #1-4, Deadpool (1994) #1-4, Deadpool (1997) #1
Published: Marvel, 2008; $29.99
For whatever reason, Deadpool has come pretty much out of nowhere over the last few years to become one of Marvel’s biggest-selling characters. He’s always had a devoted following, to be sure, but the current Deadpool craze is fairly unprecedented, with the character currently appearing in almost as many comics per month as the likes of Spider-Man and Wolverine. I’m not sure yet where I weigh in on the matter – I find the character interesting, although perhaps not enough to read him in half a dozen comics every month – but either way, in light of Deadpool’s current popularity it seems only fitting to take a look back at where it all began, which is what Marvel’s Deadpool Classic trade series has set out to do.

Deadpool Classic, Vol. 1 begins, fittingly enough, with the character’s first appearance in New Mutants #98 (first published February 1991). As with most things written and/or drawn by Rob Liefeld, to call this issue “subpar” would be a tremendous compliment. Deadpool, in this first incarnation, is vintage Liefeld – a completely unremarkable character with big guns and a whole mess of bulky, impractical “gear” who briefly shows up to attack Cable and his mutant protégés. His role isn’t significant to the series’ ongoing plot at all, but rather a means of biding time while Liefeld and scripter Fabian Nicieza develop a boring subplot featuring Gideon (another Liefeld creation which, along with most of what happened at Marvel in the early 1990s, is best forgotten).

The book jumps a few years ahead from this point to Deadpool: The Circle Chase, a four-issue miniseries from 1993 which revolves around a number of criminals all on a hunt for the will of Mr. Tolliver (an illegal weapons merchant, actually Cable’s son in disguise, who was for some reason or another assumed dead at this point). At times it reads sort of like a “who’s who” of the characters in Marvel’s early-‘90s D-list, which isn’t a plus considering I wasn’t particularly fond of the direction in which even the A-listers were headed at the time. This isn’t helped by the presence of Juggernaut and Black Tom, a duo that quite frankly bores me to tears and who I don’t think I’ve ever been able to take completely seriously.

But unlike in his initial appearance, Deadpool finally starts to show some personality in The Circle Chase, and for that alone I don’t think the series is a total wash. Although he acts like a jerk for most of the time, we’re treated at the end, in his interactions with ex-girlfriend Copycat, to a rare glimpse at the character’s compassionate side. Add to that a fairly competent job on the artwork (for the ‘90s, at least) by Joe Madureira, and I’d rate The Circle Chase as being slightly above average overall, although just barely.

It’s followed in this collection by another Deadpool miniseries from 1994 (called just Deadpool this time, although it was retroactively subtitled Sins of the Past when it was collected in 1997), written by Mark Waid and drawn mostly by Ian Churchill. Juggernaut and Black Tom rear their ugly heads again, unfortunately, but for whatever reason I didn’t mind them as much in this story. Perhaps it’s because Waid is a much better writer than Fabian Nicieza, who wrote both New Mutants #98 and The Circle Chase, but I think it’s also because the second series’ main emphasis is on the ongoing relationship between Deadpool and Siryn (member of X-Force, daughter of Banshee, and niece of Black Tom). Deadpool is infatuated with her from the moment they meet, and Waid creates legitimate tension between them as she first resists his advances and later begins to warm up to him.

Churchill’s art is characterized by his penchant for drawing far more lines than could ever be considered practical, but surprisingly enough, I enjoyed it in this series. Linework aside, his figures are well-proportioned (other than Juggernaut, obviously, who looks just as massively over-the-top as he should) and he does some interesting things in terms of panel composition. Lee Weeks does a nice-looking flashback sequence in the second issue, and Ken Lashley takes over for Churchill for a few pages in issues three and four. In the latter, curiously, Lashley draws five pages right in the middle of an action sequence – these are some of the only pages in the series to show Deadpool unmasked, and my guess is that someone in editorial felt Churchill’s version of Deadpool’s face (seen briefly in the first issue) was a bit too grotesque to be revisited. I’m curious as to whether Churchill ever drew these pages before it was decided that Lashley would do the final versions; if so, I think they would be really interesting to see.

Deadpool made a number of appearances in the pages of X-Force before and after his two miniseries, none of which are collected here. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing – I’ve never read them, and I suspect they weren’t very good – but a page or two explaining the events that take place in those issues would have been appreciated. As it is, I’m left slightly confused by the collection’s final story, the premiere issue of Deadpool’s first ongoing series from 1997. Published three years after the Mark Waid miniseries, it makes vague references to developments in the Deadpool/Siryn relationship that took place during the time between – something I would have preferred to read about rather than the issue’s actual story, which involves Deadpool fighting Sasquatch in the wastes of Antarctica. It’s not bad, I guess, but it’s obvious that Marvel only included it in this collection to entice readers to buy the second volume of Deadpool Classic, which continues with the second issue of Deadpool’s ongoing series.

Although there are some good stories in this book, the disparity of quality throughout, as well as the exclusion of a number of stories that probably should have been included (or at least explained), makes it difficult for me to recommend it wholeheartedly at the price Marvel is asking. Ideally, the first volume in a series called “Deadpool Classic” would bring readers totally up to speed on the character’s early history, but instead it leaves bothersome gaps that readers will have to fill by other means (either by tracking down the issues or waiting to see if they’ll be collected separately) to get the full picture. If you’re a fan of Deadpool and you really want to see how he got his start, then give this a shot, I suppose – just don’t expect the same level of polish the character’s numerous titles receive today.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Review: Captain America: To Serve and Protect

Writer: Mark Waid
Artists: Ron Garney, Dale Eaglesham, and Andy Kubert
Collects: Captain America (vol. 3) #1-7 (1998)
Published: Marvel, 2002; $24.99 (HC), $17.95 (TPB)

To say things were bad for Marvel in the 1990s would be an understatement. The entire comic book market had been all but destroyed by rampant speculation at the beginning of the decade, and things were so bad by the mid-‘90s that Marvel was totally bankrupt – both creatively and financially. The company’s solution? Write half of their characters completely out of the Marvel Universe, and then sell them outright to the highest bidder.

The plan never went through, thankfully, although the basic outline stayed in place: at the end of the company-wide Onslaught crossover, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four were shunted off to an alternate universe where their stories began completely from scratch. Their new series were written and drawn mostly by creators from Image, including the infamous Rob Liefeld – folks known less for their ability to make good comics than for their ability to sell them. About a year later, Marvel realized what a horrible idea this was and brought the characters back to the main universe, re-launching them with new series and new creative teams. If you’ve ever wondered when the Marvel Universe as we know it today got its start, it was here, in 1998, with the simultaneous series reboots of Captain America, Iron Man, and the Avengers, among others.

Captain America: To Serve and Protect collects the opening issues of the new Captain America series, and to me it’s one of the books most representative of the sea change that took place at Marvel in the late ‘90s. It would have been easy for writer Mark Waid to simply brush everything post-Onslaught under the rug, but instead he makes the best of his situation and uses the character’s year-long disappearance from the main universe to the story’s advantage. Upon his return, Captain America must contend with an enemy he’s never faced before: his adoring public.

Idolized by the masses, Cap initially resists and later tries to come to terms with the “Capmania” that’s seemingly overtaken not just the United States, but the entire world. How successful he is at doing that is debatable, to say the least. There’s room for disagreement with Cap’s attitude toward celebrity in this book, an ambiguity that’s given voice at several points by Hawkeye and Thor, and I think that’s what makes this story so interesting: there really isn’t a right or wrong answer as to how he should address the problem, or even (for part of the book, anyway) if there’s really a problem at all.

While most of the book concerns Cap’s ongoing battles with the criminal organization HYDRA, it ends with a Skrull subplot that puts the recent Secret Invasion miniseries to shame. Whereas Marvel took eight issues to tell that story back in 2008 (not counting the nearly one hundred tie-in issues), Waid tells a better one in just two. He resolves it much more definitively, too – by the end, Waid has completely redefined Cap’s purpose and the character’s long-term thematic direction. It’s a shame the series hasn’t been collected past this point, because I’d really like to see Waid continue with this take on the character.

Ron Garney’s artwork is another major contribution to the book’s success. While he’s improved a great deal in the years since, in large part due to the fact that he now inks his own pencils, his style here is a welcome change from the over-rendered linework that had become Marvel’s house style in the 1990s. There’s a poignant scene at the end of the second issue in which Cap loses his one-of-a-kind shield, and Garney does an expert job of conveying the character’s sense of remorse – almost entirely without words, to boot. Even at this point in his career, there’s something about his work I can hardly describe that keeps the story moving forward at a brisk and well-oiled pace.

The last two issues of this collection are drawn by Dale Eaglesham, who some might be familiar with as the current artist on Fantastic Four. His Captain America is more heavily muscled than Garney’s – a little too much for my taste, in fact – but luckily it never reaches anywhere close to Liefeldian proportions. The final issue actually transitions partway through from Eaglesham to Andy Kubert, one of my favorite pencilers (he’s joined by Jesse Delperdang on inks, who would later work with him on Grant Morrison’s Batman). Kubert’s work is strong, but unfortunately there are only a few pages of it. Again, it’s too bad there aren’t any more collections for this series, because I would have loved to see more of his work on the title.

Although it seems to be out of print at the moment, To Serve and Protect is a book I recommend seeking out for anyone interested in Captain America or in exploring the creative seeds of what the Marvel Universe would become in the new millennium. It’s not perfect – the coloring is a little bland at times, and at one point the collection breaks up a two-page spread to fairly disastrous effect. But it’s definitely worth reading, which is more than can be said for a good deal of Marvel’s output over the decade that preceded it, or even in the decade since.

Rating: 4 out of 5