Iron Man # 8 (1998)
"The Hunt"
Writer: Kurt Busiek
Artist: Sean Chen
It's baffling how Iron Man's been able to stick around for so long. The character
has survived on looks alone for most of his 40 + years. Even dating back to
his early Silver Age days, his stories have been largely forgettable, with the only
memorable element being the constant tweaking of the Iron Man armor. Dumb stories,
bad character..but hey, doesn't he look neato?
In 1996, Marvel dumped off all of their struggling "Heroes" books to the
infamous "Heroes Reborn" gimmick. In this case, "Heroes" referred to the
enitre Avengers family, and the Fantastic Four. They threw in another
version of the Hulk, because 12 versions just weren't
enough. "Reborn" was a controversial flop, and the Heroes went back
to their proper spot in ANOTHER follow-up event entitled
"Heroes Return" in late 1997. Some of the burdgeoning continuity that the Heroes
went through in the mid 90's was thankfully flushed away as a bonus.
Marvel pegged continuity geek Kurt Busiek to pen their new "Return"
versions of "Avengers" and "Iron Man". Busiek was a big Avengers fan, and probably
HAD to take on "Iron Man" as part of his "Avengers" deal. The re-launched
"Avengers" was a success, but "Iron Man" was not so rosy. In fact, it
flat out stunk.
Iron Man #8 begins the final blow-off story of Busiek's run. Throughout the
first 7 issues, Iron Man had been bothered by a "mysterious unseen entity".
Someone had been paying other supervillains to bug Iron Man.
Just because something is "unseen", doesn't necessarily mean it's
"mysterious". This led Iron Man to run into dweebs like
the Death Squad, Firebrand, Tuatara and Hauptmann. As issue 8 opens,
Iron Man (as Tony Stark) is being pursued in France by old sparing partner Whiplash.
Whiplash has "upgraded" himself...he now wears S&M gear, complete with
a gimp mask. Instantly making him the most visually intimidating supervillain
of recent memory. If I'm a superhero and I'm flying around the hood, I've
got no problem with facing a giant spider, 18 foot monkey or demon-with-his-head-on-fire.
But if I run into a dude wearing leather pants, a gimp mask and carrying whips,
I'm on the horn to the muthafucking Avengers or Fantastic Four instantly.
Stark, in his flying Plymouth Prowler, eludes Whiplash by flying into
an HO-Scale train tunnel. Well, it just LOOKS like one. Artist Sean Chen
renders a train tunnel exactly like one of those plastic tunnels they sell at
Caboose Hobbies. Complete with perfectly perpendicular lines and a barrier line
between the mountain and the ground. Anyways, Stark turns into Iron Man and
manages to chase Whiplash off. He doesn't trounce Whiplash..
just chases him off. During the melee, Whiplash
does the obligatory villain melodrama and babbles out more
personal info than we could care for. Something about his wife and kid.
Iron Man's convinced that his "mysterious opponent"
means business....I mean, he sent kinky-ass frickin' Whiplash after him.
Stark then searches the Internet for clues about the mysterious mastermind.
Surprising nobody who has ever read an Iron Man comic, the grand villain
turns out to be the Mandarin. Stark discovers this when he hits a shitty webpage
with the Mandarin's symbol. "Detective Comics" this ain't. Mandarin can instantly
pinpoint where Stark is, through this crappy website.
Stark runs out of the building and gets pummelled by the "Death Squad". No, not
the old Micronauts villains.
Five people in low-rent Fantastic Four pajamas, all named Number One, Two, etc.
No, they're NOT the members of Slipknot, either. The Death Squad beats the tar out
of Tony Stark, until the Black Widow arrives. Too late, as Stark's heart
has stopped. Normally, this would be a cliffhanger, but I was actually
cheering FOR the Death Squad and hoping they'd send the annoying Stark to
Pluto's realm, or one of the other "ethereal places someone goes when
they die in comics" joints.
Not one of Busiek's finer moments. Tony Stark was anything but a sympathetic
hero in this Iron Man relaunch. A flithy rich computer bastard, he
ran around in fancy cars, flew to Carribean resorts and
hung out with hot women. He's a combo of George Clooney and
Bill Gates. How are we supposed to root for the guy?
At least Bruce Wayne would piss off other rich people or
use their parties as fronts for Batman fact-finding missions.
Stark indulges in the playboy routine and you want to see him pounded
like a roadkilled squirrel.
Stark even debutted a ludicrous "Stark Web Browser, the Web Voyager" in issue 4.
This was when the Fucking Internet was still a novelty and Busiek tried to incoprate the
trend in his stories. According to Stark, the browser could download the entire
Internet to your hard drive and allow you to "surf off-line". Uh huh.
I'm sure all Marvel citizens who used the Stark "Web Voyager" all reported
viruses within one hour of installing it. I'm reminded
of the guy who approached me in late 1997 and asked
if I could "download the Internet" to a CD, then install it on his machine.
Another hilarious attempt at incorporating "real-life" technology was the book's
captions. Iron Man would narrate the stories, and his thoughts were provided in
Macintosh dialogue boxes. I'm sure every two hours, the Iron Man armor would
lock-up and the only way Stark could get out was to stick a bent paper-clip into a
little hole. At least the Macintosh-based system would prevent hackers from
ever getting into the armor. If I'm the Fixer, I'm not fucking with
the data-forks, incompatabilities and stupid filenames... I'll pass hacking into Iron Man and go mess
with the Vision or the android Human Torch.
In defense, I usually like Kurt Busiek's stuff, but sometimes he seems so intent on
diving into Marvel's history that he hits his head on the bottom of the pool. I could
have done without the forced inclusion of longtime Iron Man flunkies
Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan. In every scene they apepar in, they mention
that they're recently divorced, in case you missed that last scene where
they mentioned that they were divorced recently. There's also
a "hey, look who I found in my old Iron Man comics" cameo with Spymaster. I don't know
why Busiek doesn't involve time travel in all of his stories. That way he could
jump everything back to his beloved late 70's continuity. I liked
his Avengers run, but it was not without its flaws (annoying turd Justice,
constant villain melodrama and recreating almost the entire 1979 Avengers lineup).
I'm surprised he never dug up the Yellow Claw or Inferno (or did he?). At least he didn't
return Wonder Man to his leisure suit/safari jacket.
I've always thought of
the late 70's as a prime era for comics, but I liked some of the departures of the
late 80's and 90's, as well. The recent trend in comics seems to be
ingoring, negating or repairing the stuff from 1984-1997 ("Identity Crisis", "Green Lantern:
Reborn", "Green Arrow", etc) and it seems Busiek was the first writer to
start this effect. I'm not advocating a return to the death and
"substitute hero takes over the Mantle of Hero X" death crappola of the 90's, but a balance
needs to be struck. That's probably the reason I don't currently ride around
on a Big Wheel, like I did back in the late 70's.
Artist Sean Chen debutted strongly in the early issues, but by issue
3 his work seemed rushed and lacked refinement. The HO train tunnel
looks like a scene from a Carl Barks "Uncle Scrooge" story (Barks was flat-out awesome and is still
one of my idols...but you
wouldn't want him on Iron Man). Chen's version of the Iron Man
armor was impressive in issue 1...but in this issue it's a garbled mess.
Good news: I got this issue and 29 more off of eBay for a whopping
5 bucks. The poor guy I bought it from... his shipping cost ended up
being $9.54! So he was basically paying to have someone take away 30 issues of
Iron Man.
Summary: Annoying fancy boy is chased in his flying Plymouth Prowler by
the gimp. Fancy boy gets his ass handed to him by five weenies in jumpsuits.
Cover price: 1.95
Rating: .25
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