this is my favorite page in the entire comic.
i mean seriously, i laughed hard at this page, it's so LOLWTF when taken out of context.
that and how many times has the Melter or any of the people using his tech been used in any Iron Man comic (SURPRISE HE'S DEAD) since the last decade? last i heard of him (or somebody using his tech) was in Matt Fraction and Salvador Larocca's Invincible Iron Man #4. and wouldn't you know it, he gets his ass kicked (you'll read a lot more about how the persona of the melter is so unfortunate by clicking the link above). i mean hell, in this first issue of legacy they even refer to the threat level of the guy as low. dude/s can't catch a break.
second thing to talk about: the Armor.
above is the first glimpse we catch of the new design, which appears to be an amalgamation of the movie and extremis designs. i've read that the armor's look will be unique for this series, and it's done for practical purposes to be a reference point for new fans or old fans getting into the new look of shellhead (more on this later) the way Steve Kurth handles it, the lines--particularly the face looks off to me in some way. i can feel that the movie design is very hard to put into pen and paper for some artists, perhaps it just lacks the rigidity and sharpness of the armor seen in the movies due to it existing in three dimensions (i know transformers has this trouble as well in their movie comics). below is a better, full body look of the design:
i won't say i hate it, but it just feels so strange. parts of it look organic, parts of it mechanical, never quite a cohesive mesh of both. i dunno maybe it'll grow on me as the series moves on
anyway...
moving on, the issue--or so i've heard the entire series--acts as a stand alone story that helps to ease fans of the movie into the mainstream (earth-616) incarnation of Iron Man by presenting stories inserted within shellhead's colorful history. these stories are intended to be stand-alone tales, meant to combine the aspects of the movie (such as Arc Reactor technology) and those of the comic series (like people assuming Iron Man is Tony's Bodyguard and not Tony himself). what can be said about this run is that it seems to be spotlighting Tony's inner struggles, between his legacy as the CEO of Stark Industries, like his Father Howard Stark, and growing out of that Death Dealer persona being imposed on him by his/father's Company, and by the start of it he thinks he has... until Rouge Iron Men start going on a murder spree in Transia (where do they get these names?) located in marvel's fictional Europe. after a few days mulling over the situation he decides to deal with this incident himself repulsors a-blazin, this makes him fall out of favor with the American Government, and due to Transia's ties with Russia and China, he's going to catch the attention of a certain comrade in crimson. yeah i know it smells like Armor Wars, but it's fresh! the mastermind behind all of this?
(spoiler alert! highlight at your own risk!)
Doctor Doom
this arc is aptly named: War of the Iron Men.
Fred Van Lente is at the writer's helm of this yarn, and this is the first time i've been exposed to his work, and i like it enough to stick around. same goes for Steve Kurth, and though i can understand the movie aesthetics can be a bit hard to translate into 2D especially in Kurth's style, as mentioned above the look of the armor in some places just seems... wonky to me.
personally i love where this is going because it is starting out to be a story of Tony Stark, fighting things he supposedly created-- the weapon to end all weapons, but it's not him against his own tech like it often is in these kinds of tales, but rather him fighting against an aspect of his identity. that of being a maker of weapons that kill people, being used in the most horrific of ways (ethnic cleansing for example) his image is crushed--yet again--and it's up to him and him alone to make or build his way out of it. will he come out of it a hero, or as an international war criminal? follow the comic to find out.
it's on sale now!
PS: this comic also includes a re-print of Iron Man's First ever appearance in comics, and his old, cold-war origin story from Tales of Suspense # 39 digitally recolored. it's really cool how the old art looks so...shiny.
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