Hoo boy, Jae Lee. Jae Lee took the comics world by storm when he showed up on Namor in the early 90s, his striking use of shadow somehow blinding everyone, myself included to some degree, to the fact that he drew people like he’d never seen one before. Later, he would refine his art style to drawing superheroes standing on rocks in a ¾ view, looking up. If that sounds too snarky to be true, I invite you to Google his 21st Century comic book covers. I am not a fan. And it’s Terry Kavanagh’s turn to write the aimless title, so this is gonna be bad. Kevin Tinsley colors.
Would you have guess that’s Peter Parker, or maybe Wolverine instead? Jeez. Kavanagh has apparently made up a competitor for AIM called ARMS. I am ready to tap out on page 1 of a 3 part story.
Can you produce a page of comics with 2 characters on it and draw almost nothing at all? If you’re Jae Lee you can!
Raaaaaargh, it’s Ironverine!
And this is what we’re doing for 3 whole issues. As I said, I kinda fell for the hype on Lee at first. He did some wild looking stuff, I was a dumb kid. He was smart enough to work for both Marvel and Image, doing some work for Jim Lee just as his Wildstorm studio was starting out. But I began to realize his stuff was pretty insane looking, and his storytelling was atrocious. This page is followed by a 6-page advertorial for the Dungeons & Dragons Dragonstrike game. A lot of really egregious advertising in this period, my goodness. At least it didn’t interrupt what was meant to be a tense scene with 14 pages of ads, I guess. Somehow, Spider-Man knows Iron Fist stole his print out, and goes to a big black shape that I guess is either Danny’s house or office, where he sits on the floor in near total darkness, surrounded by candles, looking at his papers. Then Spider-Man smashes through a skylight. Danny sets up some defensive measures while he changes into his Iron Fist gear again, which makes Spidey think he’s even more guilty, and then it’s fightin’ time.
Iron Fist follows Spider-Man to the roof, even though he could’ve easily just stayed inside. “I’m gonna leave the fight and hope he decides to come after me!” is a brilliant strategy from Spider-Man. Danny appears ready to talk, asking Spidey to trust him, but then applies a Vulcan Nerve Pinch and kicks Spidey off the roof to his doom. Very nice. Luckily, our hero recovers instantly, like so fast it’s stupid, and swings right back up. A bunch of blades spring out of the ground (Well, some pointy black shapes spring out of the black), which Kavanagh desperately has Danny call “a containment cage,” but Spidey jumps away from them, right into Iron Fist’s, well, fist. Spider-Man smashes through the big letter “A” in the “RAND” sign on the building, which looks like an 8, and comes back fightin’ mad. They beat the crap out of each other until one of the big letters threatens to fall into the street, and they work together to prevent it.
You can only just barely follow what’s going on from the art. The dialogue is having to do a lot of work it shouldn’t. Also, more great pseudo-science from our guy Terry. “If you could just mega-flop the dioflange, I can probably friggletron up a data omelet.” Also I guess IF has been dead or “dead” and is recently back, tho no explanation is offered.
Terry Kavanagh cannot get enough of generic guys in armor. I bet he was so jealous when he saw The Jury. I can only hope the next 2 issues read just as fast due to almost nothing happening in them, either…