By: Matt Fraction (writer), Salvador Larroca (art), Frank D’Armata (colors) & Joe Caramanga (letters)
The Story: The penultimate chapter of the Stark Resilient / Detroit Steel story arc is here. Can Stark demonstrate his new electric car for adoring fans while the Hammers are trying to kill him?
What’s Good: This issue really shows off Matt Fraction’s writing chops. It is an enjoyable issue, but when one digs back through the issue looking for “the cool moment”, it just isn’t there. The whole comic is just a really good story without depending on a hook or a cool fight scene. Not that there is anything wrong with a well-done fight scene, but sometimes it is nice to just see a well done story without a crutch.
Many of the less exciting aspects of this story arc start to pay off in this issue. For one thing, it becomes very obvious why we have been subjected to “How to make an American electric car” over the last 6 issues. It turns out that car and the fledgling company, Stark Resilient, are central to the grand finale that Fraction has in mind. It is just classic “decompressed storytelling” and we should have known that it wasn’t in there for no good reason. By the end of this issue, everything is poised for a big-time, smash-bang finale pitting Stark (and hopefully Pepper Potts too) against Detroit Steel.
Larroca’s art sells the story very well. This style of photo-reference isn’t everyone’s favorite, but it does have some strengths: it can be very picturesque and it allows the use of quite lifelike looking explosions (whereas those same explosions would look foolish with more cartoony characters). And, Larroca avoids the weaknesses of the style (pasted on looking heads, obvious use of famous actors as reference material) in this issue.
An atta-boy should also be directed to colorist Frank D’Armata. He is doing a LOT of work coloring these Invincible Iron Man issues. It is very rare to see any object that is a solid color, meaning that he has to have a solid knowledge of shading, anatomy, etc. that colorists didn’t have to worry about 20 years ago.
What’s Not So Good: Fraction tells a good story, but if you like a little more crashing and banging in your comic book, this might not be for you. It would probably be unfair to call it “writing for the trade”, but he clearly is not bothered by his stories being long. The man is what he is at this point… You can either enjoy it or read something else.
Let’s also not forget that despite Fraction writing a bunch of A-list Marvel properties, he is still relatively early in his comic writing career and it is far preferable to have someone (like Fraction) who writes very well and tells a good story but just needs to learn how to chop his stories by ~10% than to have some hack who doesn’t write well at all and just resorts to big fights on every page.
Conclusion: Fraction at his decompressed best. Eagerly anticipating next month’s finale.
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion