Comics I Bought This Week: October 29, 2011

Oct29
on October 29, 2011 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover book:

  • The Walking Dead – 90

  • ”The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide 41st Edition”

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

    ”The Invincible Iron Man Volume Seven: My Monsters” by Matt Fraction and a bunch of artists.

    This volume of Iron Man is a collection of stories from various specials. Iron Man Annual #1, Iron Man issue 500.1, and Iron Man issue 500. I was suspicious of the quality of the collection going in. In the world of super hero comics “Specials” are often quite the opposite of what the word means.

    Turns out I was correct to be suspicious. The book started out real well. The Iron Man Annual was the best of the lot. Iron Man is barely even in it but it’s a compelling story of his arch enemy, The Mandarin. He rules a small city in China and is an absolute ruler.

    The tale is told from the point of view of a movie director who the Mandarin kidnaps and forces to make a movie of the Mandarin’s life. It’s a scary story. We get a look into the world where your boss is a megalomaniacal super villain who has absolute power over your life. We feel the director’s despair as he loses control of his own fate. He tries to take some power back but it’s all hopeless. Like I said it’s a pretty frightening tale.

    The art on that story is by Carmine Di Giandomenico. I think it was the nicest art in the book. The drawing was interesting and the storytelling was well done. It was an all around good comic.

    The second tale form issue 500.1 was well done but kind of pointless. Tony Stark was at an AA meeting and recounted the story of his life and his alcoholism. It kept me reading the whole thing but at the end I didn’t much care. That issue also had an eight page story about Iron Man’s father, Howard Stark, that was nicely drawn by Howard Chaykin. It was good but short.

    The final issue, 500, was confusing. It had something to do with time travel or alternate worlds and Iron Man teamed up with Spider-Man. The story telling was not well done and I really have no idea what the heck it was about. There were a handful of Tony Stark’s (Iron Man) relatives and they were fighting Iran Man type guys in the future. I think. This one was a dud.

    There you go. This volume was a mixed bag as I suspected but the Mandarin story was very good and is what makes the book.