From Beginning to End: Iron Man v4-Extremis
Hey there all you folks out in their in comic land, it’s me Oroboros358 and boy do I have a treat for you today…but first…an introduction. I’m Oroboros358 and the dumbest thing I’ve done in the past week was snort a pixie stick.
Now that the introductions out of the way I’d like to talk about a series a bunch of you might’ve missed or simply got tired of waiting around for, I’d like to talk to all of you about the first arc of Iron Man v4: Extremis written by Warren Ellis and drawn…or painted…or rendered by Adi Granov. Yeah, it’s sad to say but the damn story just wrapped itself up after staring in January ‘05. The delays were apparently because of the art, which in my opinion, wasn’t at all waiting for since the issues could be drawn by Liefield and it’d still be worth spending your money on.
It starts off simple enough, we’ve got Tony Stark closed off in his garage because he can’t for the life of him figure out what the hell he wants to do with either Iron Man or his company. He wants to move as far into the future as he can by creating technologies that’ll be useful for everyone and really make the world a better place…but it seems more and more everyday that they only way to get the money for something like that is to sell weapons to the military. After this we’ve got Tony owning some snooty Michael Moore-esque director who’s trying his hardest to make Stark look bad in his documentary.
This is pretty much when we get down to the meat of the story. Tony gets a call from an old friend of his (who’s introduced in a flashback) by the name of Maya Hansen who needs some serious help. Turns out her partner in the Extremis project has not only stolen one of the only samples they have left, but he’s also killed himself. To make matters worse he seems to have sold the stuff to some wannabe homegrown terrorists who they can bring down capitalist America.
Tony tries to help Maya by cracking her partner’s computers but it doesn’t seem to be of any use so he sends the hard drive to a friend of his to decrypt it. After that Maya explains to Tony that Extremis is pretty much an advanced form of the super soldier serum, a much more advanced form. This stuff literally gives the user an entirely new set of organs if that’s what it’s programmed to do. There’s a whole lot of questionable science brought up at this point, even by comic book standards but I’ll let it slide since Ellis pretty much plays it off as conventional thinking.
Maya takes Tony to see an old friend of theirs who lives out the forest (much like Spider Jerusalem did at the begging of Transmetropolitan) and from the way the guy talks (especially about his fondness for drugs) you can tell he’s modeled after Spider, only a lot older, wiser, and more mellow. The chat is little more than psycho babble and half-way through they get a call about the terrorist has been located. Tony dons his armor and proceeds with caution since earlier on he was able to see footage of what this guy could do when he attacked some federal building with for no real reason.
Iron Man gets his ass kicked three shades of blue during this fight but that’s simply to be expected. He can’t move anywhere as fast as his opponent can and he keeps getting caught off guard with each passing moment. Honestly, if you were Iron Man would you expect someone (who isn’t Fin Fang Foom) to spit fire at you? Tony’s opponent stops just short of killing him and dashes away at over 300mph (*insert Quicksilver joke here*) and Tony needs to be airlifted to the nearby FuturePharm labs where Maya works. Naturally, he tells her to inject him with some modified Extremis so that he’ll be able to pilot the newest version of suit. She does and Tony pretty much coughs up his insides before turning into a giant scab. While Tony lies comatose we get a nice seen with our villain chatting it up with teenage girl who he feels is similar to himself. When it turns out her views are radically different (considering he wants to, y’know, kill everyone who isn’t white) he decapitates her and runs off. This scene was completely over the top and was simply to reminiscent of Transmetropolitan.
After some flashbacks to his origin and day of rest Tony Stark emerges from his cocoon a new man (seems familiar doesn’t it?) and reveals the fact that he’s now a living operating system for his suit. After making vague statements about his new organs (get your mind out of the gutter!) he shows off some of his new powers like calling Maya’s cell phone…WITH HIS MIND! BUM BUM BUMMMMMMM! Oh, he can also see through satellites now too, which makes me imagine a Marvel version of the OMAC project only with less spying and learning weaknesses but more peeping in on Jessica Drew in the shower. *ahem* Forgive me, that was inappropriate.
To make a long story short Tony finds Mallen (the terrorist) and smacks the fire out him with his new powers and suit. The guy was utterly outclassed to say the least, with his new abilities Tony controls his suit mentally meaning he moves it as easily as he moves his arms and legs. After literally kicking the bastard around and calling him a “murder-happy hillbilly” as well as a twisted version of himself, Tony is forced to blow him away with his chest repulsor. There’s a dramatic panel where Mallen’s body (gaping hole in the chest and all) is still propped on top of Iron Man while he’s lying on the ground…but it’s completely ruined when the guys head blows up splattering blood everywhere.
To wrap up the story Tony winds up having to turn his friend Maya over to the authorities because she had helped Mallen get the Extremis in the first place. It turns out that during her research the government cut her funding despite Extremis being ready for use so she decided that she’d create a villain and call Tony knowing that he’d have Iron Man go and deal with the problem…and lose, thus showing the government that Extremis was potentially the most devastating weapon on the planet.
FINAL THOUGHS: All in all this was a really good read, especially since I read it all in one sitting unlike some of you guys out there who haven’t read, and possibly haven’t even seen your copy of the first issue, since it came out. Personally, the story could’ve worked fine without the fancy art, which was incredible. Other than the fact that Tony looked exactly like Tom Cruise it was great.
There’s no excuse to not go out and get issues 1-6 of Iron Man as soon as possible, forget how long it took to come out! This arc has served the as Iron Man’s beacon into a bold new tomorrow…at least until someone decides he doesn’t need his fancy new powers…
Now that the introductions out of the way I’d like to talk about a series a bunch of you might’ve missed or simply got tired of waiting around for, I’d like to talk to all of you about the first arc of Iron Man v4: Extremis written by Warren Ellis and drawn…or painted…or rendered by Adi Granov. Yeah, it’s sad to say but the damn story just wrapped itself up after staring in January ‘05. The delays were apparently because of the art, which in my opinion, wasn’t at all waiting for since the issues could be drawn by Liefield and it’d still be worth spending your money on.
It starts off simple enough, we’ve got Tony Stark closed off in his garage because he can’t for the life of him figure out what the hell he wants to do with either Iron Man or his company. He wants to move as far into the future as he can by creating technologies that’ll be useful for everyone and really make the world a better place…but it seems more and more everyday that they only way to get the money for something like that is to sell weapons to the military. After this we’ve got Tony owning some snooty Michael Moore-esque director who’s trying his hardest to make Stark look bad in his documentary.
This is pretty much when we get down to the meat of the story. Tony gets a call from an old friend of his (who’s introduced in a flashback) by the name of Maya Hansen who needs some serious help. Turns out her partner in the Extremis project has not only stolen one of the only samples they have left, but he’s also killed himself. To make matters worse he seems to have sold the stuff to some wannabe homegrown terrorists who they can bring down capitalist America.
Tony tries to help Maya by cracking her partner’s computers but it doesn’t seem to be of any use so he sends the hard drive to a friend of his to decrypt it. After that Maya explains to Tony that Extremis is pretty much an advanced form of the super soldier serum, a much more advanced form. This stuff literally gives the user an entirely new set of organs if that’s what it’s programmed to do. There’s a whole lot of questionable science brought up at this point, even by comic book standards but I’ll let it slide since Ellis pretty much plays it off as conventional thinking.
Maya takes Tony to see an old friend of theirs who lives out the forest (much like Spider Jerusalem did at the begging of Transmetropolitan) and from the way the guy talks (especially about his fondness for drugs) you can tell he’s modeled after Spider, only a lot older, wiser, and more mellow. The chat is little more than psycho babble and half-way through they get a call about the terrorist has been located. Tony dons his armor and proceeds with caution since earlier on he was able to see footage of what this guy could do when he attacked some federal building with for no real reason.
Iron Man gets his ass kicked three shades of blue during this fight but that’s simply to be expected. He can’t move anywhere as fast as his opponent can and he keeps getting caught off guard with each passing moment. Honestly, if you were Iron Man would you expect someone (who isn’t Fin Fang Foom) to spit fire at you? Tony’s opponent stops just short of killing him and dashes away at over 300mph (*insert Quicksilver joke here*) and Tony needs to be airlifted to the nearby FuturePharm labs where Maya works. Naturally, he tells her to inject him with some modified Extremis so that he’ll be able to pilot the newest version of suit. She does and Tony pretty much coughs up his insides before turning into a giant scab. While Tony lies comatose we get a nice seen with our villain chatting it up with teenage girl who he feels is similar to himself. When it turns out her views are radically different (considering he wants to, y’know, kill everyone who isn’t white) he decapitates her and runs off. This scene was completely over the top and was simply to reminiscent of Transmetropolitan.
After some flashbacks to his origin and day of rest Tony Stark emerges from his cocoon a new man (seems familiar doesn’t it?) and reveals the fact that he’s now a living operating system for his suit. After making vague statements about his new organs (get your mind out of the gutter!) he shows off some of his new powers like calling Maya’s cell phone…WITH HIS MIND! BUM BUM BUMMMMMMM! Oh, he can also see through satellites now too, which makes me imagine a Marvel version of the OMAC project only with less spying and learning weaknesses but more peeping in on Jessica Drew in the shower. *ahem* Forgive me, that was inappropriate.
To make a long story short Tony finds Mallen (the terrorist) and smacks the fire out him with his new powers and suit. The guy was utterly outclassed to say the least, with his new abilities Tony controls his suit mentally meaning he moves it as easily as he moves his arms and legs. After literally kicking the bastard around and calling him a “murder-happy hillbilly” as well as a twisted version of himself, Tony is forced to blow him away with his chest repulsor. There’s a dramatic panel where Mallen’s body (gaping hole in the chest and all) is still propped on top of Iron Man while he’s lying on the ground…but it’s completely ruined when the guys head blows up splattering blood everywhere.
To wrap up the story Tony winds up having to turn his friend Maya over to the authorities because she had helped Mallen get the Extremis in the first place. It turns out that during her research the government cut her funding despite Extremis being ready for use so she decided that she’d create a villain and call Tony knowing that he’d have Iron Man go and deal with the problem…and lose, thus showing the government that Extremis was potentially the most devastating weapon on the planet.
FINAL THOUGHS: All in all this was a really good read, especially since I read it all in one sitting unlike some of you guys out there who haven’t read, and possibly haven’t even seen your copy of the first issue, since it came out. Personally, the story could’ve worked fine without the fancy art, which was incredible. Other than the fact that Tony looked exactly like Tom Cruise it was great.
There’s no excuse to not go out and get issues 1-6 of Iron Man as soon as possible, forget how long it took to come out! This arc has served the as Iron Man’s beacon into a bold new tomorrow…at least until someone decides he doesn’t need his fancy new powers…
posted by Anonymous at 7:34 PM
3 Comments:
Great review! It's good to know what actually happened in the series, since the only thing I've heard about it up 'till now was about the delays...nice to know there was a story, too.
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Hotlinking steals bandwidth by reducing it from their end, and CAC is already pushing their bandwidth limits every day to the point they shut down the site during the day now.
Good review. I've never read much solo Iron Man, he's just not one of my favourites. Still it sounds like Tony has undergone some serious changes - "living operating system" - I'm surprised there's been no mention of this whatsoever in New Avengers . . . maybe something will come of it in Civil War.
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