Invincible Iron Man #4: Things Begin To Heat Up

Invincible Iron Man #4, the fourth issue of Gerry Duggan and Juan Frigeri’s relaunch of the new Invincible Iron Man, finds things are heating up. Feilong lets the cat out of the bag of who’s been behind Tony’s recent string of bad luck (besides Tony himself. Let’s be honest here), and he’s not hiding it anymore. Taking it to Wall Street (yes, that Wall Street), Feilong makes his triumphant ascension to the new owner of Stark Industries to the press, singing the praises of fellow ORCHIS members, NIMROD and Doctor Stasis, who turned out to be a Mr. Sinister with a club (like in a deck of cards club) on his forehead. I have to say that…did give me a bit of a chuckle when it happened. All this, and something that looks to be quite an entertaining story brewing. That’s just in the first three pages, leaving readers waiting to see what comes next. 

Everyone loves a mascot.

Duggan and Frigeri’s take on Tony seems to be someone down on his luck and could use a hand. Relatability to Tony has been an ongoing issue since his creation, and for a good reason. He’s a privileged white kid who grew up with one of the enormous fortunes in the world. He was an arms dealer, selling weapons of mass destruction to allies and foes alike. You don’t see sides when your bread and butter sells bullets and guns. Just money and this fact have been hard to shake off since. Trying to humanize Tony has had its ups and downs, and writers have found ways to connect to the readers by giving him health problems or losing everything, causing him to start from scratch and rebuild. One of the best ways writers have humanized him was by having Tony deal with substance abuse.

Some people argue that substance abuse can be overused, and yeah, there’s some merit in that argument, but it’s an angle that can strike home to readers, to both those who have/are struggling with it, or someone they’re close to having dealt with it. Substance abuse isn’t a rich or poor disease, it’s something that can affect anyone, and it’s this that was the zenith of Cantwell’s run, and it’s this that Duggan and Frigeri are using to build him up, despite them pulling him down. It’s something that can always ground these bigger-than-life stories. Also using Feilong, and by extension ORCHIS, Duggan’s including characters primarily dealt with in the X-titles.

Unfortunately, the problem with the X-titles is that we don’t always see the synergy outside of the greater Marvel universe of books. Luckily Duggan’s also the writer for the flagship X-Men comic, so readers need not worry about some continuity gaffes. 

That’s a big mouth

Iron Man has had some awe-inspiring artists these past few years, and that trend has continued with Frigeri.   Hid output in both of Tony’s worlds. He’s been making rounds in other Marvel titles before becoming the series artist. His linework here is soft and almost as if he used a filter for everything. Frigeri takes the reader for a ride, like Alice falling to Wonderland, who had just been caught daydreaming amidst the flowers, where they could laugh and talk for hours. One can hope Frigeri gets elevated to a flagship book, where he can get a larger audience to see where he goes from here.