ICYMI! Invincible Iron Man #15: Because I’m back in BLACK. BACK IN BLACK.

As the end of the Fall of X continues to slowly crawl, ever so slowly to its end, Gerry Duggan’s Iron Man continues Tony & Emma’s war against Feilong and his horde of Stark Sentinels, that uses Iron Man’s tech into becoming some of the most dangerous robots to chase the mutants in quite some time. Plus we see the next iteration of Tony’s next big armor, THE SENTINEL SMASHER! So let’s get back into the thick of it, shall we…

We’re fifteen issues in, and what started out as an interesting premise on ol’ shellhead has turned into a decompressed shell of an Iron Man comic. The run started with Tony being flat broke, which isn’t a novel idea. It’s been one of those themes I’ve seen since I started reading Iron Man comics, but this time he was broke because he spent every dime he had to buy up black market weapons of war, and not due to a hostile takeover, or one of his enemies ran him out of business, so it was definitely a fresh spin on an old faithful. Heck, even bringing in Feilong was a neat idea. He’s one of those characters who can be used across the Marvel Universe, and come up with all sorts of trouble, regardless of who he’s up against. 

Unfortunately the book seemed to lose focus the more it got involved in the Fall of X storyline that’s signaling the death throes of the Krakoan era, and slowly setting up what comes next when comics editorial legend Tom Brevoort joins X-editorial, as he leaves the Avengers office that’s been under his stewardship for the last 25 years. It’s a shame, because Gerry really had a very fun grasp on Tony, and I really enjoyed seeing Tony and Emma tie the knot. To be honest, adding Emma to the cast has been the most exciting part of Tony’s life, and he’s been dragged into a part of the rather bloated event. Well, Emma being on the cast, and the other part being Tony’s involvement with the Hellfire Club. I am a HUGE Hellfire Club fan. The first set of action figures I ever had was the 2020 X-Men Legends HFC, so this is definitely something I’d like to see explored after this status quo reshuffling is complete. 

Joining Gerry for art duties is Creees Lee. Crees is a relative newcomer to the Big Two, so I’m not overly familiar with his work, but find his work to be enjoyable, yet familiar. It seems like Creees has a style that evokes artists like Todd Nauck, or a Jeff Matsuda, but with a flair better suited for today’s comics fanbase. There are some things that seem sort of questionable, like some of the proportions, as well as making the Sentinels seem dangerous, but otherwise it’s a very entertaining issue. I wonder where he’s going to end up next.