Patricia Highsmash
Heroes Reborn Pt. 2: Iron Man
by Travis Hedge Coke
Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, philanthropist, self-destructive drunk who does not know how to grieve or let go. The Heroes Reborn revamp of Iron Man, the character, and Iron Man the property, is a distillation of the best-remembered of earlier takes, and reflected well in the runs to come, as well as the feature films in which he is played by Robert Downey Jr.
Direct influence, or not, this Iron Man is the first time that the Mandarin was revealed as orientalist trappings disguising a white-read man. It is the first time that Hydra appears as quiet, deceptive fascist organization and not a riff on the uniformed mass of men James Bond should be defeating with 007 ticks left on the clock.
Launched by writers Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell, Whilce Portacio on pencils, and the daring WildStorm Effects making the colors dance, Iron Man opens with tragedy, belying that it will involve hope, heroism, cosmic horror and time travel. The death of Rebel, Tony Stark’s best friend and the test pilot for what becomes the Iron Man armor, when we enter into the story, has left Stark cold, shut off, and when pushed, mean and angry was a shockingly in media res opening for a Marvel superhero book. The first hints of the Image modernity being brought to bear on these classic Marvel properties.
I have heard it said that, Conner “Rebel” O’Reilly, is a replacement for Rhodey, Lieutenant James Rhodes, who could for some reason not be used, and who, for some reason, has been repurposed as white.
In 1996, Scott Lobdell was the superhero storyelling technology. He is able and willing to craft his writing to the story, to the audience, not trying to bend new audiences to him. Lobdell introduces the book’s cast with a theatrical elegance, filmic beats, each character with their own past, their own agendas and wants, their own conflicts. Everyone placed poorly for their own lot, the dynamics between characters strained and frayed at the edges.
Hydra, the terrorist organization which Stark must rise to oppose, is for the first time in years, terrifying. Rob Liefeld, who co-curated these comics with Jim Lee, said that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, was a touchstone in their approach to the modern need for superheroes. Hydra, and other terrorist organizations, are not simply foreigners who get through our lines, but are some of us. The white American bomber, the white American shooter. Real threats given a supervillain facade to help us digest when superheroes defeat them.
Stark’s friends and colleagues come at us quick, but the relationships are never confused, the history he shares with each person is intuitable immediately.
Bruce Banner, soon to become the Hulk, is Stark’s close friend, for the first time establishing a link between them that will flower so well in the movies as the “Science Bros.”
Bruce is trying to be everything Tony pretends he never could be. He’s quiet, small, his hair is messy (but stylishly messy, because they’re both pretending, both playing their roles).
Bruce, Tony, and Happy.
Happy Hogan is Stark’s frustrated publicist. Liz Ross, head of security for Stark International. Leonard Samson, psychologist for hire. Pepper Pots is the only person in the world who will throw a drink in Tony Stark’s face, and who can get close enough to do it. Jasper Sitwell, the government agent who is just too close all the time. Jennifer Walters, who as Stark’s attorney, cannot raise her head even more than her cousin, Bruce, is incapable, and as unwilling to look people in the face as Stark, himself.
Jennifer, Bruce, and Tony all avoid looking at anyone. While Bruce and Jennifer cast their eyes down, Stark looks up, but up is still away.
All three of them will climb out of these people traps, over the course of the comic, and by the twelfth issue, they have become superheroes in full. Science, itself, will imply that they are made to be superheroes, that the gamma-irradiated, super-strong states are the natural, correct existence for the cousins Banner and Walters. Tony Stark comes so fully into his own, that he is not only beyond the fall from grace he engineers for himself after Rebel’s apparent death, but achieves heights he never had before.
This cast has problems. Pepper has good aim.
There is a scene in the first issue, where Stark stands dramatically on a precipice, and gives a schlocky, “man on the edge,” speech after firing Potts and insulting his party guests, and its potency is in its schlock. Tony Stark is not going to commit suicide in his first issue, but he is going to whine on about it to an audience.
Before the first issue begins, Tony Stark’s best friend is believed dead, working on one of his projects. What becomes the Iron Man suit is not the first functioning device of its kind, with the Titanium Man prosthesis receiving great press and accolades. The death, itself, comes from classic American hubris that, by issues eight and nine, Stark will be tempering with perspective and a growing sense of his own mortality.
When Bruce Banner is confronted by his bomb, the gamma bomb, taken and ready to be used by terrorists to murder the east coast of the United States, his reaction is to take the bomb and drop with it “thirteen miles straight down,” buried deep and exploding down there where no one else can be hurt.
Iron Man starts out about fear and consequences and it stays the course of fear and consequences. But, it is important that we not treat Iron Man as isolated, with all the comics being co-plotted in unison, key scenes in Iron Man involving an old, very respected friend from Fantastic Four, and halfway through the title, the founding of the founding of the Avengers being a paramount achievement for downward-spiraling, now climbing up Tony Stark. When he needs to save a life and his technical abilities are not enough, it is to the scientist leader of the Fantastic Four that he turns.
We are used to seeing Iron Man as a tool for anti-munitions, anti-war profiteering stories, alcoholism stories, but anti-suicide? About surviving depression? Surviving suicide? The drama roils the silt and the waters.
The Iron Man armor, called the Prometheum armor, or Project: Prometheus Rising, like Banner’s transfiguration into the Hulk, is survival via bravado adjusted with humility.
The visual redesigns of the Hulk and Iron Man are more than simply modernizations. The pool of influences the designs draw on, from Hollywood to anime join the push forward in high fashion that Jim Lee had brought to Marvel when he star was rising in the early 1990s. The Iron Man armor refused joints or sensible bending points for decades, a man wrapped in somehow flexible metal. This design, presenting segmented cables and hinged joints fitted with plates and articulated elements both allows for a seeming of musculature and an easier suspension of disbelief when it comes to mobility. Pepper Potts uses jumper cables that look like real life jumper cables to, in a pinch, transfer power into the armor.
Hulk BIG!
This Hulk is gigantic and unrefined. Marvel had, with their traditional Hulk, been moving towards a Hulk who has a neat haircut, wears reading glasses, buttons his shirt but only buttons it up so far over his more or less human physique. This Hulk is bigger than any before, huge and wide, and constantly reactive.
Liz Ross’ radiation damage is unkind, especially for a Marvel comic, where radiation is almost singularly a saving and power-imbuing force. Her scars are so deep they truncate and warp her skull inward.
Liz is a reminder that in 1996 Americans can’t pretend radiation is purely their friend.
The year before Heroes Reborn, you could have an attack by a dozen, even dozens of superhuman combatants and they would barely shake the walls of a house. I love Fantastic Four vol 1 #400, I do not love Avengers vol 1 # 400, but both feature armies of characters with godlike power attacking the heroes and achieving almost nothing. A block away, so to speak, no one is bothered.
With this run, we can see that superhumans cause superhuman damage. Bombs are not props that threaten, they are bombs. Even when they do not explode, the threats themselves hurt people.
Supervillains that had become punching bags or walking jokes, Whirlwind, the Living Laser, Madame Hydra are grandiose, powerful, strutting, destructive forces in sleek, awesome clothes. Whirlwind is a hired arm, but he can destroy lives. Tony, before he is even Iron Man, wrecks both the life of the man who becomes the Living Laster, and his family’s lives, because of his grief, his drinking, his just being that jerk. The Hulk in a natural disaster. Rebel, sent to bait and attack Tony, has a body count.
Who knew joints would make Iron Man more believable?
Replaced with Ryan Benjamin, in what becomes a sequence of changing hands all steered by Lee (and to a lesser degree, Rob Liefeld) the art prizes drama and the illusion of mobility above classical framing and traditional superhero visual cues. Characters pose action movie cool. Lobdell, unlike too many superhero writers in 1996, knows the value of a wordless panel, but thought balloons are still in full force, not yet taken out of the game by Frank Miller’s influence. This is pre-Bendis, pre-thought caption, but Image-style rewarding the image, rewarding the transient experience of fast-paced panels is in full effect, giving Whirlwind, who flies and attacks by spinning, or the newly-articulated Iron Man armor, with its fancy moving parts that seem to have precise aerodynamic and technological purposes a vibratory, impactful motion.
Jeph Loeb, who handles the main writing duties of the latter half of the series, and has since gone on to handle Marvel’s sort of/sort of not Cinematic Universe television and streaming tie-ins, like Agents of SHIELD and Jessica Jones, took what Lobdell had done, in modernizing Iron Man’s tone and storytelling techniques, and a regressive, but positive step away from the gekiga time employed by Lobdell and Portacio for a beat by beat cinematic rhythm, without the book losing its innovative layouts (aside from Terry Shoemaker’s issue, as penciler, whose stacked panels just lead to a sense that there are panels, stacked).
If anything, Benjamin brings even more movement into his layouts, so that when
Portacio returns, and they share an issue, a scene of Happy Hogan leaning back in a chair spills out of the panel, one chair leg into another panel, abutting a third panel, to strengthen the feel of leaning back, and the tension of watching someone lean too far back, not knowing if they will tip.
That the authors this sitting around scene, juxtaposing visual tension and relaxed characters, to reintroduce the supposedly deceased Rebel is quality pacing. Loeb continues to title issues after rock songs, which Lobdell established, whoever does the cover blurbs gets in on that game, creating a suggested soundtrack for this thirteen issue comic that is classic rock heavy, with America, Billy Idol, and David Bowie all getting thematically-sound shoutouts.
Rebel Yell and Rebel, Rebel both solidify around the return of Rebel, who will go on to have his own one shot comic in the post-Heroes Reborn event, Doomsday, masterminded by Chris Claremont. But, I am far more interested in Rebel Yell as the cover blurb to the Happy and Pepper make out with heart-shaped word balloons issue.
Look Back in Anger, Tin Men, and Don’t Look Back in Anger are songs utilized along the path, bringing us to a culminating and fulminatory time travel, step outside reality issue titled after the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, and featuring the Mandarin revealed as Victor Von Doom, making reference to The Wizard of Oz both to look at the two men’s personal past, the world’s past, but also the history they cannot remember, as in truth, Doom and Stark were inserted into this pocket dimension, having lived different, but similar lives in the classic Marvel Universe. Tony Stark meets the classic, traditional Marvel Universe Tony Stark, while Doom confronts the Fantastic Four’s Thing at a moment he caused, early in their published relationship, when Doom kidnapped one of their number to force the others to travel back in time and steal for him.
Doom has been touched on, as a member of Stark’s college group who fell out of their favor, but as Mandarin and head of Hydra, he has haunted the entire series, the rich, aristocratic genius who has grasped power and performs his acts in parallel to industrialist and showboater, Tony Stark. We are allowed to see their early published exploits through their fresh, revamped eyes, and taken to Camelot, from which the college clique derived its Knights of the Round Table nickname, both as a revisiting of a 1981 Iron Man/Dr Doom story, Doomquest, by Bob Layton and David Michelinie, and to settle for them, by a court sorcerer outside time and reality, the terminal nature of their pursuits as knights or kings or tin men.
