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Underground > Comic Books >

Warren Ellis writes Iron Man!

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15:36 / 14.10.04

OK, Warren Ellis is writing Iron Man - this to me seems the best of all Ellis' recent 'whoring out to Marvel'. A better fit than Ult. FF, better than Ultimate Secret Nightmare Boogeyman whatever.

A little annoying that they're starting over with a new Iron Man #1 yet AGAIN, but oh well...

Newsarama has a preview here, although the pages get formatted a little too tiny to really read, unless I'm missing something:

Looks nice, eh wot?

17:38 / 14.10.04

i'm looking forward to it. i think it's a perfect fit for Ellis as far as superheroes go: the intersection of technology and global politics is a fertile zone for him. the preview pages are encouraging as he seems to be taking the main issue with Iron Man head on, that being the fact that he's a kind of irrelevant anomaly with no reason to exist. if Iron Man is so great, why not manufacture a bunch of them? why does Tony Stark keep doing it himself, alone? isn't it a bit weird that this "hero" is a billionaire CEO in the defense industry? he's taking the bull by the horns, here.

18:33 / 14.10.04

The artwork is CGI but thankfully, actually looks really good - I thought it was painted art until I read it was CGI.

19:00 / 14.10.04

From what I've seen of this so far, it looks like Ellis is playing up the whole alcoholic with a heart condition who has to defend himself with a suit of armour angle, rather than, at least at first, Tony Stark's life as an industrial billionaire. If that's right, Ellis is getting back to the ( iffy ) heart of the character, insofar as Tony Stark's a flawed human being who can't really afford to show any weakness because of his business interests, and so needs to escape into a, crucially, invulnerable suit. Y'know, nothing and no one can get to him in there.
Except that it can...

Episode one, I gather, has Tony Stark fighting the Crimson Dynamo, totally shitfaced.

13:49 / 15.10.04

Speaking of Ellis' other Marvel output, Ult. Nightmare #3 was pretty weak, REALLY weak considering it's Ellis. It felt really mainstreamed-up and dumbed down, very cheesy, esp. the dialogue for the cliffhanger ending and final sequence with Colossus. It sort of slipped out being Ellis' familiar writing 'voice' for most it...weird and disappointing. I'm not paying money for any of the rest of this limited series. And big-time talent Trevor Hairsine couldn't even do 3 issues in a row - issue #3 is a fill-in, capably done by Steve Epting (who also seems to be trying to draw more like Hairsine so people don't notice the difference).

15:04 / 12.11.04

So this is out -- great art, decent writing by Ellis, this could be a fun run. He gives Stark a snarkiness which we all know by now is classic Ellis character persona, but which I think works for Stark. Anyone else read this?

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

15:22 / 12.11.04

I picked it up. It reads like it's supposed to: the first draft of the Iron Man movie screenplay, complete with Cruise as lead.

That being said, it's a movie I'd certainly sit through. You know Ellis has been waiting his whole life to write that Frank T.J. Mackey interview scene, which was both a long time coming and very well concluded.

The Ultimatization was a bit bizarre though. It's not even a Marvel Knights story or anything. I could truly care less but it was interesting to see Marvel giving the greenlight to a succinct razing of decades of continuity.

(Editor's Note: In Iron Man #1, Warren Ellis shows Iron Man's origin story, in which Tony Stark is nigh-mortally wounded by shrapnel, a) taking place during the first Gulf War and b) resulting from a landmine of his own design.)

Not a bad book, and the art is surprisingly fluid. As far as Ellis goes, though, the brief glimpses provided by the Arrarat Preview were much more enjoyable.

15:29 / 12.11.04

I have been unimpressed by Ellis' work for a good long while now, but am incredibly fond of Iron Man. I also think alcoholism and the physical frailty of Tony Stark are the less interesting parts of the character. To me, Iron Man is first and foremost a muscular capitalist hero whose powers are a result of his technological and business accumen...

But regardless I'll probably try an issue of this ...

16:48 / 12.11.04

I think it's decent, maybe even good if you go by what Ellis has been offering these past few years.

Good scene with the filmmaker.

17:04 / 12.11.04

That Apparat one-week event is coming up when? ...next week, I think?

17:25 / 12.11.04

(Editor's Note: In Iron Man #1, Warren Ellis shows Iron Man's origin story, in which Tony Stark is nigh-mortally wounded by shrapnel, a) taking place during the first Gulf War and b) resulting from a landmine of his own design.)

actually, it takes place in Afghanistan in the 90s, though it is a landmine of his own design.

i thought this was a great approach to a reboot, and i'm definitely planning on picking this up in the future.

anyone notice the reference to ethnobotany? how much you want to bet that Tony Stark is going on an ayahuasca trip in this arc?

18:01 / 12.11.04

John Pillinger is quite obviously John Pilger, is he not?

Haus of Mystery

18:28 / 12.11.04

Does no-one else think the art is UG-ER-LY? I personally loathe CG art. My mind just can't get with it.

I'm more of a stop-motion kinda guy too...

18:43 / 12.11.04

I enjoyed it greatly.

Yes very much Iron Man the movie feel what with that opening sequence.

The art of gorgous and the pacing was enjoyable. Scary prologue, very human intro to Toney. The interview was very good and I was pleased to see that the preview pages I has seen online where actually well into the story.

The retcon had be doubletake just a bit but was handled fairly smoothly. I personally don't think Tony should be as young as the retcon makes him out to be (20 years old durring gulfwar 1?) but that's a minor quibble.

I'll follow this story so far.

20:22 / 12.11.04

I thought the sequence with Iron Man flying and Tony laughing with glee was kinda creepy, as it felt kinda spooky to hear "HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA" coming from a guy in an expressionless "iron" mask...

11:51 / 13.11.04

I didn't think the art was CGI? I read on the artist's website that he draws the art, shades it, then uses his own computer-colouring technique, giving it a CGI-esque look. I like it, but it suits the Iron Man armour better than the regular humans.

15:32 / 13.11.04

Yes, I very much got the impression that the artist was selected on images of Iron Man raather than his abilities to draw dynamic humans - very static artwork - which is not good when the core of the issue is basically headshots. Another problem was the lack of sound effects. I'm not advocating sound effects in all circumstances but without the any indecation of sound the suicide scene fell flat on its arse for me - We neither hear the gun or see a body and thus are forced to presume that the man in the lab coat successfully killed himself - the lack of sound effects is also a problem for the woman who we assume finds the body - she remains transfixed by something that is out of shot for two panels then inexplicably reaches to her right to pick up a piece of paper from the printer which is out of her line of sight - seemingly for no reason.

Now I'd assume that the woman in the lab coat could hear the printer working just as she heard the gun go bang and then ran to the room in the first place, but without the sound effects it all feels a little bit clumsy and lacking in atmosphere. It strikes me that Ellis is attempting to craft a more filmic comic here, but bereft of one of the key tools of cinema - sound- fails.

Outside of this the trademark Ellis-style dialogue between Stark and his secretary got on my tits. It did not strike any chord of authenticity - it felt like spider Jerusalem with the swear words cut out.

Don't think I'll be bothering with the next issue.

15:54 / 13.11.04

y'know probably the first comic i bought for myself was an old layton micheline issue of iron man. their second run, where he fights the ghost. that was class. that whole run was class, and it occurs to me that i spent the next ten years or so waiting for iron man to be class like that again. with the rare exception of kaminski /hopgood in the mid ninties, the rest was bollocks. i finally fell off in the whole portacio heroes reborn fiasco.even busiek and chen felt off to me. none of that bleeding edge future shock, and too much fanboy crap , and ugly villains.

that said, this was really bloody good. i actually buy tony as a charachter again. he's absolutely true to everything that made him work over the years, without all the accumulated shit that takes away from the technocrat with an agenda that he should be.

my only concern is that he seem to have devolved the technology level a bit, to make it more believable. i can deal with that. if you really want to get readers into the feel of a flying suit of armour, having it fit into a briefcase and wrap itself around him in pieces is a bit much to ask. I would imagine he's just laying a foundation for the wonky tech head shit he loves to get into.

I was extremely stoked by the refference to the lecture by the 'computer-guy turned ethnobotanist/futurist'. tony stark inspired by terrence mckenna? fuck yeah, dude.

21:14 / 13.11.04

I basically liked it. The art, while indeed somewhat static, was different enough from everything else on the stands that it worked pretty well. The story was all setup, but still pretty meaty for a single Ellis-authored issue. I'll give it a qualified thumbs up--I'm not so excited by it that I'll definitely buy it month-to-month, but I'll almost certainly pick up the trade somewhere down the line.

As and aside (this was discussed briefly in the Avengers thread, but no details were forthcoming), but could someone who's been reading this book quickly summarize how it is that the public at large came to believe someone other than Stark is now Iron Man? How did this "unknown pilot of the Iron Man suit" thing get started, and why would anyone believe it when Stark's been publically flying around in the thing for years?

01:41 / 14.11.04

There is no good explanation, or even ANY explanation, as far as I can see, for why everyone has suddenly forgotten that Stark is Iron Man (he "came out" publically about 1 1/2 years ago in the Marvel U.). In the Bendis-written mostly-crap AVENGERS FINALE, Stark comments that the one good thing that came out of the Scarlet Witch going psycho and basically destroying half the Avengeres (in Bendis' similarly mostly-lackluster but somehow halfway decent "Chaos/Avengers Dissassembled" arc, which just happened) is that most people think he's not Iron Man anymore. No further explanation was given.

I think Bendis might be implying that Wanda's magical rewriting of reality and fucking with things had this as a side-effet. A quaint (and very forced & clumsy, if you ask me) excuse for Marvel to push the reboot button gently. That's my only theory. Anyone else...?

I think the sound effets thing isn't a big deal at all. I knew the guy shot himself and died, and that she heard it. Didn't bother me in the least. Morrison had no sound effects in New X-Men and it worked just fine. Bruce Jones had no sound effects for most of his Hulk run and I thought that actually added to the drama (not that I really loved his Hulk run, but just commenting on that one particular point).

HOWEVER...

>> Outside of this the trademark Ellis-style dialogue between Stark and his secretary got on my tits. It did not strike any chord of authenticity - it felt like spider Jerusalem with the swear words cut out.

I agree with this completely, it felt a bit forced and Ellis-y. But I forgave it because I felt the issue on the whole was one of the better Ellis-written things I've read in a while... and I liked the art quite a bit.

11:25 / 14.11.04

Don't get me wrong - i don't think sound effects are necessarily desirable, but I felt their absence was problematic here.

On the technology level - did anyone else think Tony Stark's mobile phone looked kind of dated - especially for a leading technologist and industrialist?

13:33 / 15.11.04

On the technology level - did anyone else think Tony Stark's mobile phone looked kind of dated - especially for a leading technologist and industrialist?

i thought the cellphone was a conscious attempt to ground him. i think that, in the past, we would take the Iron Man technology-level to it's logical conclusion and figure that he wouldn't even have a cellphone, but would instead have some nifty communicator. this, and the flashback to Stark at a 90s tech conference, and the nuts and bolts of how Stark Enterprises works and what it is, seem like an attempt to say "hey, this guy doesn't live on the moon, he's a regular young hotshot techie CEO living in the same real world as everyone else. having a sort of dull cellphone reinforces that.

13:48 / 15.11.04

So I wonder how long til someone takes a peek in that crate where he keeps and ships his "car"? When you tell people 'you're not allowed to look inside this crate that Tony Stark ships all over the place, it's his special car', you're just begging for trouble...

13:59 / 15.11.04

it's not a billionaire's mobile. no way. and this was only okay. i wish elly'd had say half the pilger chat with himself in his head, rather than using it to hit ME over the head. rationally, of course, stark is only slightly less hateful a character than doctor doom, and this is the great challenge to an IM writer. Ellis looks like he might be wrestling with this problem a little too 'on the page'.

one act of violence. that's all it would have taken. as it is, it'll be a real toss-up when issue two comes out. only really got this for the recommendation above: 'he's fighting the crimson dynamo totally shitfaced' and he never.

14:42 / 15.11.04

In regards to how it is that Stark could have his identity separated from the Iron Man persona with the general public, see the Dissassembled arc of the last volume. Even still, you'd think the masses would remember that he publically outted himself while serving as secretary of defence (or possibly before I can't be sure). That's some bullshit right there...

08:51 / 16.11.04

He outed himself in a really shitty Mike Grell written issue.. He was at a party on a balcony and saw some sort of crime going on below on the street, so he just jumped over the balcony and turned into Iron Man right there. Whee.

09:11 / 16.11.04

Gambit;

Erm, yeah, sorry about that. I still think the Crimson Dynamo thing would have been an improvement though.

How many regular-ish titles is Ellis writing now anyway ? Four ? Five ? Whatever, it seemed like he wasn't so much leaning on the artist here, as using the guy as some strange hi tech combination of an iron lung, a catheter and an electric wheelchair, in fact like a medical version of Tony Stark's uniform.

13:23 / 16.11.04

that's okay, i ain't mad at yer.

anyone seen this?

the best joke's on the cover, but it's good to know other folk feel the same about this title

11:29 / 17.11.04

I thought the best joke was 'we won't be having any of the Mandarin or Fu Manchu or Crimson Dynamo or any of that exciting stuff, noooo'.

12:01 / 17.11.04

yeh sgood. they needed to get this bit in the oh-so cutting and witty phone conversation though:

have you seen chuck norris in enter the dragon?

no.

oh you haven't? it's brilliant right he ...

i haven't seen chuck norris in ENTER the dragon...

14:56 / 17.11.04

I don't get your punchline... is it is supposed to be "No, but I've seen him in 'Screw the Dragon'?" (blindly guessing here and I know my guess isn't even funny, just confused)

15:10 / 17.11.04

yeh sorry, one for the tv watchers in the UK. it's just a pisstake of the way techy geeks (i.e. stark, elly) communicate with proper, decent human beings:

the above is what he techead says instead of 'i think you mean WAY of the dragon, but yes i've seen it and the bit where chuck has like three broken limbs but goes for bruce anyway is affecting in the extreme', they're so 'proud' of their superior fact-retentive intelligence and so inept at talking to people in a way conducive to better understanding that they consider pedantry more important and invariably appear dickish in the extreme. if you've ever worked in an (or perhaps 'the') office and needed to ask someone from systems for a hand with a prob they consider beneath them, you'll have ended up talking to a character from a warren ellis comic.

15:12 / 17.11.04

a copy of jim valentino's shadowhawk number 2 to the next person to use 'in the extreme' more than i just have.

01:37 / 30.12.04

issue 2 is out, and dear me, it's a Marvel comic - not even Marvel Knights or MAX comic - that discusses dropping acid and DMT in a mature way. Never thought I'd see the day.

Although even though I love talk of shamans and DMT and Terrence McKenna and 'machine elves,' I wonder if Ellis hasn't played the 'discussion of shamanism and machine elves' a little too much. He puts shamanism as a theme in every single one of his works, even moreso than Morrison (and more obviously and ham-handedly than Morrison, who I feel is more skillful and subtle in discussing this and other esoteric concepts). Did he discuss shamanism in Transmetropolitan, which I haven't read yet (and will eventually get around to reading for fun)?

Ah well. Nice to have a decently-written Iron Man. And overall, I like the art.

02:22 / 30.12.04

issue 2 is out, and dear me, it's a Marvel comic - not even Marvel Knights or MAX comic - that discusses dropping acid and DMT in a mature way. Never thought I'd see the day.

seriously.

he does, however, seem a little obsessed with the topic, as you say, especially DMT/ayahuasca and especially lately. Elijah Snow spends an issue on an ayahuasca trip, Ultimate Falcon is doing some sort of ayahuasca shamanism thing, and now Tony Stark has a psychedelic guru who wants him to do it.

however, i think it was handled reasonably well here, and i think it's really well-handled as part of the sort of bleeding-edge techie/Bay Area weirdo/Rise of the Creative Class milieu that Ellis is working Stark into. it's a good fit and an interesting direction for the character.

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