Iron Man and his father

Iron Man is dead.  At least in this point in the comics.  It allows War Machine to take over the title for a few issues, but it mainly consists of James Rhodes angrily stomping his feet in frustration at every single situation that comes his way.  Seriously, for starring in his own superhero comic for these precious few issues, Rhodes has more angst than Spider-Man’s worst day.  Anyway, in Iron Man #285-288, written by Len Kaminski and drawn by Kevin Hopgood & Barry Kitson – Iron Man obviously not “dead” dead – our hero hallucinates about his past.  Mainly about his relationship with his father. Nowadays in current continuity, Tony Stark’s dad acts much like Batman’s dad: a paragon of the community and a role model for our superhero to aspire to be.  But not in these four issues.  Let’s meet a very different Howard Stark.

Iron Man has been sober for about a hundred issues or so.  But all that previous alcohol fried his brain enough for him to repress all those awful memories of the domestic abuse committed by his boozy father.  We know this story as a constant theme in comics — terrible parents force the prodigal son to begin his never-ending quest seeking the approval of people who will never give it to him.  But this story factors so much into Iron Man’s personality: his love of machines, his superhero fantasies, his maniacal self-improvement, and his relentless drive; everything pretty much goes back to his father being a dick.

I know he’s called Iron Man and his first two armors were made of iron, but let’s chalk his father’s proclamation up to a coincidence.  By the way, is it just me or is it weird to see Tony Stark without his mustache?  Even as a child.  That ten year-old needs to be rocking that pencil-thin mustache for me to be completely comfortable with this flashback.

You see what happens when you let kids be exposed to fantasy?  They become billionaire playboy superheroes who gain the whole world’s adoration and love.  Off topic, but I do hold a firm belief that superheroes are America’s King Arthur.  Britain has their fictional greater-than-life heroes, complete with adventures and so on.  We Americans created our own fictional greater-than-life heroes, just with spandex and who punch mobsters as opposed to slaying dragons.  Though, if I can shamelessly plug, Green Arrow has totally slayed a dragon, so take that Lancelot or whoever.

You should feel bad for Iron Man, and not because he lost his parents.  No, y’see, Iron Man is so amazing that nothing is difficult.  He’s good at everything.  He has no weaknesses.  He’s a god among men.  So shed your tears now, my friends.  Can we all take a minute and proclaim what a genius Stan Lee is?  He created Iron Man, a superhero literally no one can identify with (except maybe Elon Musk), injected into him the ego of an entire professional sports league, gave him everything the readers weren’t getting (like girls), and then somehow made this man a comic book superstar.

You know what happens next.  Terrorists kidnap him or Vietcong or whatever’s the current group Iron Man first gets kidnapped by.  I know nowadays his superhero origin relies on an abduction somewhere in the Middle East, but that changes depending on what decade the Iron Man story takes place in.  But that incident propelled him to become a good person, warrior of justice, etc.  May we all hope that our own physical, mental, or emotional transformation doesn’t involve building a suit of armor to blow up terrorists.  But we should definitely hope that we can one day we could wear a pencil-thin mustache and still be called cool.  That’d be a decent enough transformation, I guess.

Iron Man’s back to life!  On Monday, get ready for a surprise (because I don’t know what we’ll be reading at).

Intermission: Doctor Doom

One more smaller article won’t hurt. We continue our short stories from the beginning of the Marvel event Dark Reign with another piece from the Dark Reign: The Cabal one-shot, written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Adi Granov.  Y’see, Norman Osborn can’t get superheroes to work with him due to his past as the Green Goblin and his present as a conniving jerk.  That means his allies have to be his peers, and other supervillains have a long history of not working well together.  Mainly due to egos, psychopathy, megalomania or whatever other evil plots they can think of.  Each time a supervillain betrays another supervillain, he gets a gold star on his record.  Whoever has the most gold stars win.  Especially since they can’t seem to win against the good guys.

Anyway, Norman Osborn picked a secret “cabal” to help him rule the world and stuff — Emma Frost, Loki, Namor, Doctor Doom, and the Hood.  Of those five, four end up betraying him, so y’know.

Note the upcoming color change from normal to a shade of blue.  That’s important later.  Now as you know, Doom’s right — Osborn does soon implode.  But you want to know how things would go down if Osborn actually succeeded in his delusional plots?  Of course.  The Green Goblin made the terrible decision to make deals with supervillains, after all.

You can see where this is going.  While Osborn may rank in the top five of most influential supervillains in the Marvel universe, he’s no Doctor Doom.  By the way, can we all agree Doctor Doom is a silly name?  There’s no way he’d be named that if he wasn’t created in the early 1960s. Plus, wouldn’t his royal titles supersede his PhD?  Emperor Doom, right?  Oh, and Doom murders the Hood.

Doom now rules the earth and Namor the seas.  I know this isn’t canon, but that’s for a good reason:

So Doom enslaved Emma Frost and (female) Loki, who I assume the latter can turn back into a dude anytime he feels like it.  My only guess: Loki has a secret fetish.  But look at the genius of this story: the blue shaded panels are all simply Doom daydreams, like we have when we’re staring at our computer screens at work.  Under that mask still lies an adorable human mind, just really evil and stuff.  Plus that whole naked Emma Frost and Loki thing?  As weird as this sounds, it sort of humanizes Doom further to know he’s just as perverted as his other fellow supervillains, because I promise you, that’s all Namor daydreams about.

Intermission: Attuma

You know about Attuma, right?  Not that Street Fighter character.  Don’t worry, I don’t know who he is either until I looked him up about an hour ago.  He battles Namor every now and then in his delusional attempts to conquer Atlantis and whatnot.  If Aquaman gets a rogue gallery, Marvel’s Aquaman gets one too — that’s how competition works.  In this short story from Dark Reign: Made Men one-shot, written by Frank Tieri and drawn by Rafa Sandoval, we get caught up on what happened to Attuma since his head exploded in Sentry #1.

Attuma, an Atlantean warlord, used some giant octopus creatures/mechs/whatever to take down New York City, where 50% of Marvel’s superhero population lives.  As you can see, it ended badly.  Keep in mind that bottom panel is the entire fight from that issue — Sentry simply flies down, beheads the supervillain, and continues about his day.  So it may be hard to imagine why anyone would want to bring Attuma back to life.  Well, there is that one guy.

Comic book science might as well be comic book magic — its only limitations lie in the imagination of the writer.  Drink a serum and now you have pterodactyl wings!  Take a pill and access time travel! Touch an orb and become a god!  We don’t even question it.  So yes, now Attuma is far more powerful than before simply because Doom said he is.  We’re cool with that.  Oh, and regarding Attuma’s refusal to Doom’s request.

It’s sort of like making a deal with the devil, except eventually the Fantastic Four will go to Latveria and punch the devil until there’s blood in his stool.  I know this ends on a cliffhanger, but don’t hold your breath: Attuma doesn’t show up again in comics until the Marvel event Fear Itself occurs two-ish years after this.  At least then, he gets one of the magic hammers and finally gives Namor the challenge our speedo-rockin’ monarch deserves.

Intermission: Namor

I know what you love most about Namor: his abs.  And second?  Punching, most likely.  But we all know the third admiration on that list: his political problem-solving.  So in a short story from Dark Reign: The Cabal one-shot, written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Carmine di Giandomenico, we get to see Namor in the position we always prefer to see him in: king (and a lazy sex joke).

Namor sits like I do at work.  Seriously, these Atlanteans should know better.  Namor almost certainly left two mermaids and a DVD copy of Poseidon back in his chambers.  To have to solve petty arguments is what biblical kings do, not scantily-clad sea monarchs.  I’m saying Namor’s royal jewels are firmly on display, just not on his head.

Just like Game of Thrones, right?  Shall we recap Marvel’s Atlanteans?  They’re blue as you’ve noticed, complete with slightly stronger, tougher bodies and a longer life-span than humans.  Also, they can’t survive out of water for more than a few minutes.  Luckily, Namor’s half-Atlantean and half human, so he can do that whole breathe air thing.  Though stick the Sub-Mariner in a desert and he’s useless — the dude still have to be moist all the time.  All the time.

Oh, and with one more twist about this kid’s superpowers about to revealed, shall we revel in Namor’s judgement?  If anything, he has plenty of practice in bossing people around.

Meet Crosta.  I looked him up.  That’s the kid’s name.  He has appeared in sixteen comic book issues, all as a minor character.  And truthfully, this story’s more about Namor imposing his will than anything related to Crosta.  And of course Namor makes the right choice, because (sometimes) he’s a superhero.  Currently in comics nowadays?  He’s acting as a mini-Galactus, so y’know, not well.

Now if you’ll excuse Namor, he has some mermaids to bang.

Intermission: Norman Osborn

If you don’t mind, let’s have shorter articles this week.  I’m busy with stuff (and things), you’re busy with stuff (and things), and just like a rerun of your favorite TV show — sometimes it’s an off week.  So today, we’re taking one of the multiples stories told in Dark Reign: Made Men one-shot, written by Frank Tieri and drawn by Khoi Pham.

We jump back to the beginning of the Marvel event Dark Reign, where Norman Osborn has taken control of the nation’s security allowing him freedom to spread his corrupt and evil influence all throughout the country’s stuff (and things).  First order of business?  Petty revenge.  What kind of supervillain would he be if it wasn’t?  Oh, and meet Spymaster.

As you can expect, his name pretty much summarizes everything you need to know about him.  He usually annoys Iron Man, he has no superpowers, and he mostly does espionage.  There.  You’re caught up.  And speaking of caught, Osborn has a few tricks up his sleeve to find his man.  And by that I mean the entire computer databases of all information in the United States.

When Osborn asks you for a favor, you don’t have much of a choice.  Those lasers from earlier? Looks like Spymaster’s reenacting that laser dance scene from Ocean’s Twelve.  When it comes to refusal or failure, Osborn’s predecessors Nick Fury would yell and Iron Man would mope, but the former Green Goblin has no problem ruining.  Hell, we’ve seen what he did to his own son, much less a C-list supervillain trying to stay under the radar.  So the purpose of this job?  Remember how Osborn disgraced Iron Man to get his job?  This is called rubbing salt on the wound:

On Wednesday, we’ll continue our Dark Reign short stories with Namor!  He wears his speedo.