Comics I Bought This Week: February 5, 2011

Feb05
on February 5, 2011 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got no new comics but I did get a couple of hard cover collections:

  • “Starman Omnibus Volume 6”

  • “Scenes from an Impending Marriage”

    • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

    “Iron Man: Noir” issues 1-4 by Scott Snyder and Manuel Garcia

    After talking about “Captain Easy” with a couple of friends in the comic shop last week one of them said that I might like this comic and lent it to me. It’s an “Elseworlds” type story that stars Tony Stark/Iron Man as a globe trotting adventurer in the late 1930’s. Captain Easy was a globe trotting adventurer in the 1930’s too. Hence the connection.

    I haven’t read any of Marvel’s recent “Noir” line of comics. I’ve assumed it is supposed to be a Film Noir take on some of their characters but this story has more to do with old time movie serials than Film Noir. Tony Stark is a world famous adventurer and inventor who’s stories are chronicled in a men’s adventure magazine. He travels with his sidekick, James Rhodes, and his writer, Pepper Potts all around the world looking for famous antiquities much like Indiana Jones did. Except Stark has a bad heart and is running from the ghost of his father’s breakdown. Of course he eventually runs into some Marvel villains, Baron Strucker and Zemo, who have Nazi ties.

    Overall this is a pretty well done series. The art is mostly good but sometimes falls down in the story telling department. It’s not terrible but sometimes things get confusing and awkward to follow. I question some of the angles the artist chose at times. Other than that it’s fairly well drawn. Garcia certainly has skill I just question some of his decisions. The book sports some rather ineffective covers not done by the interior artist.

    This is more of a Tony Stark book than an Iron Man book and that was okay with me. Stark was interesting enough. You see some 1930’s Iron Man armor early on but you kind of know that he’ll be putting in on only at the climax of the book. That was also okay also because it was treated as just another one of Stark’s tools/inventions. Putting the armor on didn’t solve Stark’s problems. He still had to do that. I liked that approach.

    I have no idea if any of Marvel’s other “Noir” comics are any good but this one is well worth checking out.