By Stuart Moore (Writer), Carlo Pagulayan & Steve Kurth (Pencilers), and Jeffrey Huet & Andrew Hennessy (Inkers), Dean White (Colors)
Why isn’t this book better? Invincible Iron Man is good. Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas seems good, so far. So why is Iron Man: Director of SHIELD so… soulless?
For the past two years, this book has been plagued by missteps, from scenes of questionable taste (the flying intestines of issues 17 and 18 ) and the unnecessary deaths of Happy and Sal, to out-of-character dialogue (Sue Storm berating Tony for not killing Happy) and plotlines that were simply incomprehensible and/or interminable (I swear I thought the Mandarin story was over two issues before it ended). There’s plenty of action, but no actually stories.
This issue is more of the same. Nasim Rahimov, a former associate of Tony’s, has hijacked his technology, made it nuclear, and is planning to… destroy the world or something. Also, SHIELD weapons guru Nicolas Weir has fused with the Overkill Horn and become a giant, floating, mechanical brain that plans to… destroy the world or something. And Paladin has disabled Iron Man’s armor, but Tony uses Extremis to get himself out of trouble. Again.
The problem is that none of this is original, and we’re given no reason to care about any of it. There isn’t a single compelling or insightful line of dialogue. The characters have no depth or complexity. There’s no sense that the story is headed anywhere other than toward more violence. And it doesn’t help that the art is, well, ugly.
I’m going to keep buying the book despite its considerable flaws, I suppose, since Iron Man is such an important part of the Marvel Universe right now, and plenty of other readers probably will too. Maybe that’s why the book is so bad. Because they know it can be. (Grade: D)
- Andrew C. Murphy
Filed under: Marvel Comics, Reviews | Tagged: and Jeffrey Huet, Andrew Hennessy, Carlo Pagulayan, Dean White, Iron Man, Iron Man: Director of SHIELD #31, SHIELD, Steve Kurth, Stuart Moore
