Issue(s): Iron Man #6
Cover Date: Apr 97
Title: "Industrial revelation!"
Credits:
Scott Lobdell - Writer
Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, & Ryan Benjamin - Penciler
Scott Williams, JD, Trevor Scott, Saleem Crawford, Richard Friend, & Sal Regla - Inker
Michael Heisler - Editor

Review/plot:
Three pencilers and six (6!) inkers on this issue.

Let's take a look at the first four pages of this issue, from a storytelling perspective. It's all very splash heavy, so you'll have to bear with me:

Hopefully you see the problem. The Hulk pounds on the Invisible Woman's forcefield twice on the first page, and then stands there talking calmly. On page four, the Invisible Woman, also standing calmly, talks about the sustained barrage of the Hulk's attacks that she's holding back.

After that we have a few pages dealing with other characters in other scenes, and then we return to the Hulk.

Action as you like it!

As noted earlier, the point of this crossover is just to get all the Heroes Reborn characters together (it's "character-driven" in the sense that all the characters have been driven into the same book). So there really isn't any conflict, other than the above "fight" with the Hulk. Loki is still lurking around, talking to Nick Fury for some reason, but he's not really involved. The one interesting thing is when they finally convince the Hulk to help shut down the reactor, and this happens:

We're halfway through these books and there's no longer any doubt: this isn't a fresh reboot, this is definitely the Marvel universe versions of these characters stuck in a nightmare Image world. It's hard to recapture now, but to the average fan, this wasn't a forgone conclusion at the time. There were fan theories on, like, usenet, but Wizard magazine was reporting the possibility that Jim Lee would run these books indefinitely and that was the official line from Marvel. The hints that we'd seen previously were enough to keep me buying this crap, and this scene was like striking gold. I mean, i don't know what it means and it doesn't really lead to anything specific. The MCP lists this as a real appearance of Onslaught, but it's not like the Heroes will have to fight Onslaught again to escape their Reborn-ing or anything. At the time it was pretty interesting, though!

But crap it was and crap it still is. Here's the final panel. The reactor meltdown has been stopped and the Human Torch has absorbed the residual radiation or whatever. Then everyone rushes to the surface of Avengers Island. And then we get some sort of cliffhanger:

Boy, i bet you can't wait to see how this resolves in Captain America #6!

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Industrial Revolution continues from Avengers #6 and continues (sort of!) in Captain America #6.

References: N/A

Crossover: Industrial Revolution

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A