Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
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Marvel Comics Presents #51 (Iron Man & Le Peregrine)
Issue(s): Marvel Comics Presents #51 (Iron Man & Le Peregrine stories only)
Cover Date: Jun 90
Iron Man
Title: "The other way out"
Credits:
Steve Safel - Writer
M.D. Bright - Penciler
Don Heck - Inker
Le Peregrine
Title: "...The straight approach!"
Credits:
Fabian Nicieza - Writer
Don Heck - Penciler
Randy Emberlin - Inker
Kelly Corvese - Assistant Editor
Terry Kavanagh - Editor
Review/plot:
Tony Stark hears on the radio that an East Asian Communist country is going to execute twelve prisoners for participating in a pro-democracy demonstration. So he flies to Asia...
...but arrives too late to stop the execution.
The one prisoner that was still alive after the shooting, who i guess is someone that Tony knows, dies soon afterwards.
And that's basically it. I guess Stark stops trading with the unnamed country?
Meanwhile, Le Peregrine is on an assignment for Silver Sable.
He's supposed to be destroying a surveillance post, but he winds up in a conflict with the US Navy, and finds out that the company that contracted with Sable is Stane International.
Le Peregrine breaks away from the US forces and destroys the outpost anyway, but he also destroys the Stane tanker, which will get him in trouble with Sable.
I didn't really grok everything about the Stane plot, in part because i didn't care enough to try too hard, but the main purpose of the story is to remind us that Le Peregrine exists and show him kicking a little ass, and it succeeds on that front.
Both the Iron Man and Le Peregrine stories are by established Marvel artists. I guess at this point it makes sense that Don Heck would be relegated to things like this (although i think he does very well with the art in the Le Peregrine story). But M.D. Bright, in my opinion, is wasted here. He should be doing art on the actual Iron Man book, or at least on some actual series, not buried in Marvel Comics Presents.
Quality Rating: C-
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: Tony Stark is paralyzed and using his floating wheelchair. The MCP drop the Iron Man story between Iron Man #244-245 (which technically spoils the reveal of the chair in #245 but in #245 it's not presented as if Tony is using it for the first time).
References: N/A
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
I believe M.D. Bright was mostly doing Green Lantern stuff around this time.
This could have originally been an inventory story, but it's also likely it was a quick gig he did between drawing Emerald Twilight and Emerald Twilight II.
Are we supposed to recognize the dying prisoner? Or at least figure out how Tony knew him?
You know i tend to black out during these things, but no, there doesn't seem to be any information on who he is. It's a surprisingly minimalist story.
Is the idea supposed to be that he was another prisoner with Tony Stark in Vietnam way back in Iron Man's first story?
The way it's written feels like we're supposed to recognise the prisoner. There's even an asterisk for the footnote, and space underneath the panels for it to go. I always assumed it was supposed to be a reference to a story I've never read.
I think the asterisk is meant to indicate that he's died. That's actually a pretty common way to indicate sudden shock or death during someone's conversation, although obviously for Marvel books we're trained to look for footnotes when we see them.
