Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1994-07-01 00:08:30 |
| Previous: Ghost Rider #51 | Up: Main | Next: Annex #1-4 |
Iron Man #306
Issue(s): Iron Man #306
Cover Date: Jul 94
Title: Crash and Burn: "Redemption"
Credits:
Len Kaminski - Writer
Kevin Hopgood - Penciler
Steven Mitchell - Inker
Mike Marts - Assistant Editor
Nel Yomtov - Editor
Review/plot:
This is the conclusion of the Crash and Burn storyline. It's also the last issues with the art team of Kevin Hopgood and Steven Mitchell. Tom Morgan will begin as penciler and inker next issue.
This is a text heavy downtime issue with Tony Stark repurposing his company after the lessons learned from the previous issues.
As noted in the comments, it turns out that the Skrulls were laying the groundwork for Secret Invasion much longer than we realized.
Stark also blows up his cliffside home and begins rebuilding something new.
And Marcy Pearson is arrested after admitting to her crimes, despite her blaming it all on the mysterious voice on the phone.
And the Mandarin wakes up.
Quality Rating: C-
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: This is a conclusion to the "Crash and Burn" storyline, but it's not a direct continuation from last issue.
Takes place circa War Machine #4 (per the Reference below)
A cameo of Captain America shows him reacting to Stark's changes.
References:
- Abe Zimmer argues for leniency for the hacker named Raven after it's revealed that Raven's been doing dirty work for Marcy Pearson. Stark gave Zimmer a second chance after Iron Man #219.
- Stark and Pearson last spoke in Iron Man #292.
- Nick Fury calls Stark to try to get him to do something about James Rhodes "screwing around in Imaya". A footnote points to War Machine #4. Stark says there's no point in him doing anything because Rhodes won't listen to him.
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
| Previous: Ghost Rider #51 | Up: Main | Next: Annex #1-4 |
Comments
I wonder if Marvel ever proposed an Iron Man version of the Punisher War Journal - Starkives and it's just memos and policy documents from Stark Industries/Enterprises.
The presentation style with blocks of text framed as documents reminds me of The Iron Manual, which Marvel published in '93, though as you'd expect that was about technical aspects rather than business ones.
Looking at it again, I notice that the regular series doesn't go as far in its vision of everyday Stark technology. In Iron Manual, Tony explains how his office doesn't need traditional keyboards or telephones (and can beam Mannheim Steamroller directly to his ears), while this issue shows both those things.
There are some people who wish that copy of "Weekly News World" had turned out to be true about, oh, 14 years after this was published, and extending at least two years or so prior to that.
Y'know what? I bet after SECRET INVASION the Weekly World News on Earth-616 won a Pulitzer Prize.
Usually "90s comic" is a pejorative based in genre criticism, but this issue is more an artifact of 1990s politics than 90s comics. It could only have been written in that post-Cold War moment when one of the dominant political/media narratives was that "the West had won," and now it was a matter of creating suprasovereign entities from corporations, NGOs, and multilateral political bodies. In retrospect, this is built on a lot of assumptions about the world that weren't true. Even at the time there were plenty of people arguing against this vision, but this was for a lot of people in power.
Iron Man is arguably *the* book in which to tackle this, and Kaminski's response is to imagine how a corporation run by a superhero might work, ethically and otherwise. The interesting thing, to me, is that the idea of the "ethical corporation" here is an entirely self-regulating one: it's as if government simply doesn't exist where multinationals are concerned, so Stark's idea is to create a transparent corporation that is in some way accountable to the public. And it's not clear how the public could respond if they didn't like what Stark International was doing, especially when it's CEO has a billion-dollar personal warsuit.
Unfortunately, this stuff never really gets explored fully, in part because of the 1990s demand for Moar Crossover Action and Young (or Anti-Hero Replacements, and in part because superhero comics just don't handle these things well in general.
Today's CBR:
https://www.cbr.com/iron-man-skrull-secret-invasion-newspaper/
Toffler's 'Third Wave' was pretty successful in the US, but in the People's Republic of China it had an almost-universal level of response and praise:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/11/AR2006101101977.html
Despite Toffler's left-leaning proclivities, he was also a major influence on Newt Gingrich:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/newt-gingrich-new-age-love-gurus-alvin-toffler/
When I first read this issue, I managed to miss a page because I thought one of the "document" pages was an ad. Anyway, if Iron Man had continued to explore the ideas in this issue it could have been one of the more interesting comics of its era.
It truly does sound like something they could have generated fine stories off of, Omar, had they stuck with it and been very clever. Now I feel a bit like I lost something...
