By Matt Fraction (Writer), Salvador Larroca (Artist), and Frank D’Armata (Colors)
Anyone who has seen the Salvador Larroca cover for this issue may be disappointed as it leads the reader to believe that Zeke Stane and Tony Stark will finally face each other. Unfortunately, this is not true. What might add to the disappointment is the fact that we get almost nothing but “talking heads”. But, gosh darn it, this is probably the best “talking heads” issues I’ve ever read!
As Tony Stark and Reed Richards play a rather amusing game of chess, they discuss Tony’s plan to beat Zeke. Tony’s genius plan aside (he intends to put Zeke in “check” on every “board”), it was refreshing to see two of my favorite heroes simply taking some time to play a game with each other. Writer Matt Fraction is keeping the spirit of Stan Lee’s original Marvel stories by focusing as much or more on the life of Tony Stark than the adventures of Iron Man, and truthfully it makes up for any lack of action that may be going on.
As Tony continues to implement his plan to catch Zeke at his own game, we also see the continued recovery of Pepper. When she was implanted with the EM device last issue, I immediately had hopes of her getting her own Iron Man armor (or would that be Iron Maiden? Okay, sorry, bad joke). These hopes seem dashed when she remains adamant about not wanting to be a “walking bomb”, but Fraction still gives us another teaser that he still might have something “super” in store for her. Toward the end, we finally get to see a bit of Tony in action both as a superhero and as a businessman, and we even get a bit of resolution that I wasn’t expecting from the Philippines attack in issue #2.
To further add to the already high level of enjoyment, I can say for the first time in this series that there is nothing in the art to complain about. (Well, okay, there was one panel where Tony looked like he had chubby chipmunk cheeks, but one imperfect panel in an extremely great issue is more than deserving of being looked over.) Salvador Larroca’s pencils are as great as ever, and even more important, Frank D’Armata seems to have finally found a coloring scheme that doesn’t leave the characters with a fake, computer animated look.
I’m pretty sure I’ve said this in every review of this series, but if you even slightly enjoyed the Iron Man movie, Invincible Iron Man is mandatory. It maintains the same tone of the film and is written specifically with new readers in mind, but also contains a story engrossing enough to capture even the most seasoned comic book fan. It may be a bit early to say this yet, but if Fraction can maintain this level of promise, he may just be able to write an Iron Man series as groundbreaking as Ed Brubaker’s current Captain America run. If you haven’t jumped on board this yet, you’ll never know what you are missing. (Grade: A-)
-M. Staples
Filed under: Marvel Comics, Reviews Tagged: | Comic Book Reviews, comic books, Frank D’Armata, Invincible Iron Man, Invincible Iron Man #4, Iron Man, Marvel, Marvel Comics, Matt Fraction, Salvador Larroca
[...] My review can be found here. [...]