Paper comic books, what a concept. This time we’re dropping into Matt Fraction, Salvador LaRocca & Frank D’Armata’s Iron Man run. It’s an epilogue to their first arc on this title, a little breather before they get into one of the craziest Iron Man stories of all time. And look who’s in it! This title seems a bit odd in retrospect. It launched as a 2nd monthly Iron Man title alongside the one that had been going since Heroes Return. But around the release of this issue, I think, that title was ended and this one became the main title. Fraction had already made a splash at Marvel on Punisher War Journal and Immortal Iron Fist, but in 2008, he took over both Uncanny X-Men and Iron Man, the latter just as his first movie was coming out and his stature in the Marvel Universe was significantly elevated. Fraction was officially one of the writers whose name made a book important now. And here’s how this issue starts:
In the Front Line office. It’s funny how the Spider-Man part seems to take over a comic when he guest stars. Speaking of:
Who is Peter Parker? Like, seriously, who is he? Could he maybe be Josh Hartnet? I know so few celebrities. I think I spelled Hartnet wrong, but I’m not going to check. Is Ben Urih Sidney Poitier? I think he is! Well, you know. Peter “worked at” Stark Industries. In my memory, he got a job as a scientist there, somehow. Clearly, that was not true. And then Tony hired him, like, 2 seconds before Civil War broke out, and that was that. I believe this would’ve been my first look at Peter’s status quo since quitting ASM. Not that it told me too much. Oh, as for Iron Man, he’s just had the son of Obidiah Stane show up and do crazy tech-terrorism to his company. Fractions was faced with Marvel’s desire to do comics tying into a movie whose lead villain was long dead, so he came up with a son. It was an interesting villain for sure. Then the 2nd Iron Man came out, and THAT villain was dead, too, and they had to work around it. Very awkward, but they did their best. Anyway, Ben drives Peter out to Stark Industries, telling him about an article from the 60s interviewing Clifton Pollard, the man who dug the grave of JFK, and how Ben wants to find an angle like that on this Stark terrorism business. Not just the party line, but someone on the ground.
So, like… What does Tony know now? What does he think is the reason he doesn’t like Peter? Does he even not like Peter? Why does he remember hiring a high school teacher to go to Washington with him and plead the case against registration? How could he or anyone with close ties to both Peter and Spider-Man not get a raging headache when they see either one now? Many years from now, when Daredevil’s identity has been similarly retconned, Kingpin will remember he used to know who DD was, and that he doesn’t now, that someone did something to him to make him forget, and he will set New York on fire over it in a very good crossover event. Oh, dang, and we’ll be seeing it to some degree, now that I think about it, and boy, you won’t believe the Spider-Man angle. But, as usual, getting ahead of myself. I don’t think Peter is Josh Hartnet, but I don’t know who he is. Well, cut to night time, when Tony Stark has become Iron Man, and is narrating that he’s been going nonstop for days, Tony Stark in the day time, Iron Man at night, and tonight he’s helping clean up after one of the attacks on his facilities. But some of the rubble shifts, and one of his guys is about to be crushed. And then a certain webslinger zips through and saves him.
Spidey, come on, you were infamously there after 9/11. It’s funny, people so associate the Tony-in-the-helmet view with the movies now, and that looks more or less like it, but Bendis created that in New Avengers.
Still putting that garish Raimi movie spider on Spider-Man. LaRocca only doing one arc in ASM isn’t hurting my feelings. Spidey gets a tracer on Iron Man’s foot and decides his old boss is getting his help one way or another. Soon enough, Iron Man is at the hotel where the Tinkerer is living, thinking he must’ve had something to do with the old Stark tech used in the attacks. And he just walks up and knocks on the door. When Mason sees him, he activates some rockets in his wheelchair that shoot him out the window, but they also dump him out of the chair, and into the waiting arms of Spider-Man.
How could Iron Man not know how Spider-Man followed him? Forgetting who’s in that mask doesn’t mean forgetting about his tracers. Love how annoying Spidey is here, tho. Our dynamic duo are off to Teaneck, NJ, and the home of, no kidding, Jackson Wheele, aka Big Wheel. Spider-Man protests that Wheele isn’t a bad guy anymore (As we saw, a little, in SMU V2 12), and he wants to just go talk to him. But as he approaches the door to the house, Big Wheel bolts, yelling that he can’t go back to jail, so it’s a fight whether Spider-Man likes it or not. They manage to stop him in 2 pages (It’s just BIG WHEEL and they’re 2 heroes), and that leads them to…
Fraction has such a good take on Peter. A shame he didn’t get to do more of it. Why couldn’t he have been in the “brain trust???”
Tony having essentially the same good hearted but shortsighted attitude toward Spider-Man that he did in Civil War is interesting. It seems noteworthy that he’s not raging mad at Spidey all the time once JMS is out of the picture. Well, Tony talks his way right through some rich girl’s birthday party, and then he’s down the basement with her dad. And he’s the thing: It’s the girl from New Avengers 7, who got kidnapped by the Wrecker, and her dad’s collection of super stuff is why Tony is here. Tony is already explaining that they really can’t let this go, and he’d like to bring the guy in to help them with their investigation rather than arrest him, when he finds the guy wearing pieces of no less than 6 Spider-Man villain costumes (But, crucially, not the Sinister Six, just a couple of them and others). Then we skip ahead via a text box that says “This was fun.”
It’d sure be a shame if something happened to turn Tony’s life completely upside down… maybe in the block after next, like. Humorously, comics being comics, that event has already happened when this issue comes out…