Iron Man by Kieron Gillen vol. 1: Believe

After twelve volumes of sometimes wildly varying quality, Matt Fraction has ceded control of Tony Stark to a writer who has yet to disappoint me with anything that he has written:  Kieron Gillen.  With that in mind, I came into his first volume of “Iron Man” fully expecting to be quite entertained even though Greg Land is providing the art.  What I got with “Believe” is a fairly run-of-the-mill story featuring the character tackling the escape of the Extremis program into some fairly unsavory hands.  It’s not that there isn’t entertainment to be had from seeing Stark go after the guilty parties, but the writer has done better in the past.

We don’t get the inciting incident for this story until a few pages in when Maya Hansen, creator of Extremis, is seen crawling out of a sewer in Buenos Aires.  After stealing a tourist’s phone to send a message to Stark, she’s promptly incinerated by an agent of A.I.M.  Fortunately Stark gets her message which tells him that not only is she dead, but Extremis is out in the wild.  The potential damage the procedure can do in the right wrong hands is almost incalculable, so our protagonist promptly finds out where A.I.M. is making their sales pitch for it and shakes them down for the info while taking out their enhanciles in the process.  He finds out that four doses of the procedure have already been sold and makes it his personal mission to see that they’re properly disposed of.

One of the recurring stories in “Iron Man” comics over the years is the one where Stark finds out that some of his proprietary tech has been stolen and then goes to substantial, even desperate, lengths to get it back.  It served as the basis for one of his defining tales, “The Armor Wars,” and as the setup for Fraction’s initial arc “The Five Nightmares.”  I realize that’s not quite the case here in “Believe” as the technology involved isn’t his, but the basic concept of the character going to great lengths to put a particular genie back in the bottle is essentially the same.

Given that, all but one of the stories here are fairly light, jaunty affairs that involve Stark showing off new types of Iron Man armor and outsmarting his opponents in entertaining ways.  Seeing him casually stroll into the A.I.M. presentation simply by shaving his mustache as a disguise is fun, but not as much fun as seeing how he gets their ringleader to spill the beans about the rest of the Extremis doses.  From there, we get a virtual world and low-orbit tour as Stark takes on the Arthurian-inspired mercenary group known as The Circle, fights some of his rogues’ gallery on a druglord’s estate in Columbia, has a Lovecraftian encounter in the Paris underground, and meet an old forward-thinking friend on a space station.  You’ll see the man quip his way through every encounter — except for Paris, that one turns creepy and nasty — as he shows himself to be the smartest man in the room every single time.

Though all of these stories do a good job of showcasing Stark’s cleverness and technical expertise, they’re all pretty straightforward with twists that you’re likely to see coming pretty early on.  Gillen’s wit goes a long way towards offsetting any tedium one might feel while reading this, yet it’s not hard to feel that he’s not fully invested in the character or the material.  When you read “Young Avengers,” it’s obvious to tell that he loves the characters and writing for them.  With “Uncanny X-Men” you can see that the man has a real interest in the concept and its history as well as a desire to find new spins to put on them.  Here, in “Iron Man,” that sense of enthusiasm and innovation is largely absent.  Gillen does do a good job of making the familiar go down easy enough here, but this is not representative of his best work.

At least Greg Land’s work comes off better when he’s drawing faceless characters in armor.  When the cast is suited up, we’re at least spared from seeing any of the manic grins that plague his work.  As is always the case with Land:  the storytelling in his art is clear, but the facial expressions from many of his characters pull you right out of it.  There was an article from “Bleeding Cool” several months back that noted an exchange between Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, who was promoting Land’s work on the then-upcoming “Mighty Avenges,” and a fan who said “no thanks” to that “tracer’s” work while going on to name several other artists — Goran Parlov, Sean Phillips, Darwyn Cooke, Mike Deodato, John Paul Leon, Patrick Zircher, Igor Kordey, David Aja, Michael Lark and Frank Quitely — whose work he preferred.  Brevoort shot back by saying that at least three of the artists the fan named traced about as much or more than Land does.

I want to say that the issue here isn’t whether or not Land traces his artwork from other sources, it’s that he’s TERRIBLE at it.  Regardless of who else on the list employs the same methods, all of them have produced more vital and engaging work with less obvious distractions than you’ll see in this volume of “Iron Man.”  Land’s work has been plagued with the same issues for years and their ongoing presence shows that he has little interest in addressing them.  That’s what really frustrates me about the artist.

Fortunately he won’t be the sole artist on this series for long as the ads for volumes two and three show that he’ll be joined by the likes of Dale Eaglesham and Carlo Pagulayan which should make for a significant improvement.  I will also say that there is reason to be optimistic about seeing a similar upward trend in the storytelling as well.  Not only does Gillen get one of the traditional “Iron Man” stories out of the way, but there’s some obvious setup for future stories here as well with Draguno of the Circle and the survivor of Stark’s trip to Paris clearly having some long-term plans of their own as well.  Plus, the next arc is titled “Godkiller” and involves the title character heading to outer space to deal with the fallout from “Avengers vs. X-Men” and Gillen excels at getting good stories from crossover events.  So if his first volume of “Iron Man” is just “okay,” the potential for it to become “good” or even “great” is clearly present.  That’s enough to get me to come back for next time.