Superior Iron Man vol. 1: Infamous
Originally I was going to discuss this in a separate post about some collections I picked up for half-off their cover price at Comic-Con (maybe expect that sometime this weekend). Yet the more that I thought about it, the more I came to realize that this volume deserved a takedown of its own. The idea of an unhinged Tony Stark with his arrogance and smugness turned up to toxic levels may have been an irresistible one to Marvel editorial, as is discussed in the supplemental material at the back of the book. What we get here, however, fails to realize any of that promise and stands as a real failure of imagination with regards to that idea. Captain America will still be black and Thor will still be a woman post-”Secret Wars,” and after reading this I can see why Iron Man won’t be “Superior” along with them.
All of that being said, I still haven’t read “Axis” yet (the “Prelude” is waiting to be shipped). Fortunately, the book provides its own explanation regarding Stark’s “heel turn.” After the Red Skull inverted all of the personalities of the heroes and villains in that event, and they were all reverted at the end, Stark evaded this fate. With his new mindset, he’s got some own ideas on how to use the technology at his disposal to enrich the world. Like dispersing Extremis tech throughout his new home of San Francisco to allow everyone to be the ideal version of themselves. For a price, of course. He’s not the only hero in San Francisco, though. Daredevil has also been out here for a while and he knows that Stark has his own secrets regarding this plan that aren’t being shared with anyone.
The good parts: Artist Yildray Cinar handles the first four issues and he’s got a style that reminds me very much of Darick Robertson’s with his linework and how he illustrates his characters. I like Robertson’s style so I’m regarding it as a case of “imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.” Laura Braga’s work in the final issue is very appealing with all of the detail she brings to it. That last issue, focusing on the origin of new villain “Teen Abomination” and his relationship to Stark was also the best in the volume as it developed the character quite well and had a nice surprise regarding his relationship to a departed cast member of this series. Writer Tom Taylor is also clearly committed to this take on Stark, and he writes a good Daredevil as well. He also gets a moment that I’m sure Mark Waid would loved to have written for the character in his one encounter with Foggy Nelson in this volume.
All of this is balanced against a Tony Stark who is presented as a selfish supervillain whose big scheme for this volume is… to hook the population of San Francisco into a payment plan for Extremis. While the upgrade does work as advertised, the hitch is that it comes with a $99 daily renewal fee. Though Daredevil’s suspicions that there’s some kind of secret regarding how it’s being made to work are correct, the question of why Stark would even bother with this is never really addressed. He’s already one of the richest people in the Marvel Universe, and pumping the population of San Francisco for a couple million each day seems really small-scale for a man of his ambitions. This was all he wanted to accomplish after being unhinged by the Red Skull’s inversion? That’s not just lame, it doesn’t jive with his character either!
One of the things that has been pushed about Stark’s character in recent years is that he’s the chief futurist of the Marvel Universe. He wants to uplift everyone in the right way using the technology at his disposal, but for one reason or another (usually involving genre conventions) he hasn’t been able to do that. Now, with his empathy, decency, and compassion all playing a distant second-fiddle to his newly-found sense of superiority, you’d think he’d start taking some actual steps towards dragging the Marvel Universe into the future. In short, we should’ve received an Iron Man who would go, “I know how to make all of your lives better, and I’m going to do just that whether you want me to or not!”
With that in mind, the idea of releasing Extremis on a pay plan to the residents of San Francisco comes off as pretty lame. Why not release it to the world and have Stark deal with the fallout from the governments he bypassed and the people who don’t want to be augmented by nanotech? Better yet, why not have him make good on the promise of free repulsor-fueled power that Matt Fraction brought up in his run? Or have the character try uplifting the poorest nations of the world into the most modern? Or start mass-producing the “Troy” city from Kieron Gillen’s run? I COULD GO ON FOR A WHILE HERE!
When you start thinking about things like this, the story we get in this first volume can’t really compete. I could be holding Taylor to an unrealistic standard here, but the fact is that what he delivered didn’t really satisfy me at all. In case you haven’t guessed, the most fun I’ve had with this volume has been in picking apart its many issues. You could argue that a lot of the ideas that I’ve thrown out here couldn’t really be done because they’d “break” our perception of the Marvel Universe as the universe right outside our window. Well, the thing is that “Secret Wars” has effectively demolished that idea for the time being. This would’ve been the perfect time for a writer to do a story that would screw with the Marvel Universe in ways that they normally can’t because the reset button was going to be hit in a few months anyway.
That is, unless the writer in question wasn’t told about it. Given the fact that several series that were recently launched are going to be relaunched again before they even hit an issue in the double digits, I’m wondering if the actual plan was for these titles to continue through “Secret Wars” before the call was made to give them new #1’s after the event. If that was the case, then I can understand why Taylor wouldn’t want to rock the boat in terms of having his “Superior” Iron Man do stuff that wouldn’t be too damaging to the fabric of the Marvel Universe. On the other hand, if he was told that he only had nine issues before the crossover would start and end the Marvel Universe then it’s disappointing that he didn’t take advantage of that.
In the end, “Superior Iron Man” will likely wind up being another footnote in the character’s history that is glossed over until a particularly brave writer is brave enough to try and re-integrate it. Kind of like how Hickman brought back “Teen Tony” for a cameo in vol. 6 of “Avengers.” The idea of a Tony Stark unrestrained by conventional morals wasn’t a bad one, but the execution was sorely lacking and deficient in imagination. In the end, this volume committed one of the biggest sins I can think of for something designed to entertained me: It left me thinking I could’ve written something better.