IRON MAN #53

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Saturday, April 20, 2002

For the longest time, it seemed as though IRON MAN had lost its way. In storylines that dealt with alternate armors, stolen Stark technology, and ghosts in the machine, the title centered more on the "iron" and less on the "man." On those occasions when it did focus on the "man," the title often took serious missteps - or had you forgotten the "Iron Boy" fiasco? Now that veteran writer Mike Grell has taken over the scripting chores, IRON MAN has achieved an almost spiritual sense of balance between the "iron" and the "man" that it hasn't had in years, if ever.

Sound a bit too Eastern to you? Perhaps it's the book rubbing off on me, as it's also taken on a very Eastern feel. Perhaps it's just this issue, in which a mysterious man named Po brings a package to the monastery and Ninja training camp where his former master abandoned his son. Tony Stark's tracking down of a hideously addictive new drug called the Sleeping Dragon, which is making the rounds of Chinatown, may have something to do with it too. Or perhaps it's the truly amazing pencils by Ryan Odagawa and inks by Derek Fridolfs that do the trick. Or maybe it's Chris Eliopoulos' lettering, which gives the text an ornate quality. Whatever it is, there are times when reading this issue feels more like an update of MASTER OF KUNG-FU than IRON MAN. But it's exactly the sort of shake-up this book, and this character, has needed for years.

For one thing, Grell never lets us forget that there's a man inside that armor. The previous creative team tried to achieve this by making the armor itself "expressive," usually by having the mask show what looked very much like surprise, or fear, or whatever. Grell achieves it more directly, through Tony's dialogue while in the armor and through scenes with Tony outside the armor. These latter moments, in which grumpy Tony uses his new Girl Friday program who keeps changing forms and faces to run an analysis of the drug, and in which he and Pepper have a nearly romantic moment, are among the best in the book. They're also the moments IRON MAN rarely had just a year ago.

For another, Odagawa and Fridolf's artwork picks up the Eastern feel of the storyline and runs with it, resulting not only in Asian characters who look less like anime bastardizations and more like real people, but also in a Tony Stark with something of the same look about him. Then there are the startling visuals of the courier's visit to the monastery, Iron Man's raid on Chinatown, and the two splash pages in which the abandoned son discovers the exact nature of his father and his father's legacy, all of which make this a visually stunning book. Oh, yeah, and their version of the armor kicks ass, too.

The last time I reviewed IRON MAN, I panned it, expressing the fear that the character had seen better days and would probably never hit a high again. While this issue is very much an opening salvo at the beginning of a new story arc and therefore not the best example to judge by, it certainly provides enough evidence that the rumors of Iron Man's death have been greatly exaggerated.