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Apr. 30th, 2013 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI read the beginning of the Matt Fraction run of Invincible Iron Man last night, the first two storylines.
The first storyline, "The Five Nightmares" is excellent. Introduces Ezekiel Stane as a villain, has a good Tony/Maria vibe and a good Tony/Pepper vibe and it does a really great job with the idea that being Iron Man works for Tony because it makes him feel like he's better than everyone else, that the whole shitshow is skating on the thin edge of Tony Stark's ego. It shows how that's a weakness in a much more clever way than just showing Tony's arrogance failing to deliver on its promises because he's overestimated his abilities.
I also love this metaphor Fraction used in an interview, that Zeke Stane is Linux and Tony is Microsoft, that Stane represents the danger that decentralization and individualization offer to a top-down view of the world. Security threats emanate from below instead of above. There doesn't need to be a nation-state for there to be an enemy, and as we see in Libya or Egypt, sometimes it's impossible to balance the good that open source communications offer with the evil they allow. Zeke Stane might be what happens if Aaron Swartz goes unchecked. This works because it's Tony Stark- he's allowed to be partially on the dark side of the Military-Industrial complex. The reader will still be a fan.
Second storyline is "World's Most Wanted", the Dark Reign tie-in. I mentioned grumblingly my feelings about Dark Reign in my post on Avengers Academy. I think it is a stupid storyline, a fumbling attempt at a Hitler in America storyline that doesn't actually make much sense and it is suspended on the incredibly stupid idea of Tony Stark as director of SHIELD. And I hate that it disrupted storylines developing in the various individual comic books.
So as I read "World's Most Wanted" I had serious frustration between the parts of the story that I hated with a passion and the parts that I loved. It is a brilliantly crafted story shoehorned into a terrible overarching arc. It has amazing stories for Maria Hill and Pepper, including a thorough rejection of Pepper as Secretary as a trope and some great Maria Hill backstory. And it uses a lunatic SF plot hook, that Tony has information stored in his head that he needs to delete from his head before the bad guy can capture him and SFnally extract, in order to do a beautiful, clever look back at the many versions of Tony Stark/Iron Man that we've seen in fifty years of comics. Identities that Tony has rejected like a hermit crab throwing away old shells, returned as ghosts that he must reinhabit as his mind goes to pot. I love beyond reason the moment when he finally arrives in Afghanistan at his last destination, the original Iron Man from the cave with Yinsen. Because Tony is an insane megalomaniac, and he's also a sentimental bastard.
But I hated that this was being driven by Norman Osborne as head of SHIELD/HAMMER, that the whole thing was premised on all of SHIELD 'just following orders' as Osborne dismantled the Constitution in the name of his own incomprehensible goals. I just... no. Look, I believe in America as an Idea with a fervor that is pretty ridiculous. I know I should be more cynical, I know that the magic of checks and balances is not actually magic and in the right circumstances it's possible that America could go off the rails, and I know there are people who think that has already happened, but no, America would never actually decide that Norman Osborne, the Green Goblin, should be made head of SHIELD simply because he helped to defeat the skrulls. There are mechanisms in place to keep that from happening, and if you're going to circumvent those mechanisms for the sake of a story, you need to take me to those places, and show your work.
But I'd rather you didn't. That's not why I want to read comics. I want to read about Tony being a hero even though he's a broken human being, and when Matt Fraction is delivering that magnificently, I am happy.
Today is the thirty fifth day of the Omer
The first storyline, "The Five Nightmares" is excellent. Introduces Ezekiel Stane as a villain, has a good Tony/Maria vibe and a good Tony/Pepper vibe and it does a really great job with the idea that being Iron Man works for Tony because it makes him feel like he's better than everyone else, that the whole shitshow is skating on the thin edge of Tony Stark's ego. It shows how that's a weakness in a much more clever way than just showing Tony's arrogance failing to deliver on its promises because he's overestimated his abilities.
I also love this metaphor Fraction used in an interview, that Zeke Stane is Linux and Tony is Microsoft, that Stane represents the danger that decentralization and individualization offer to a top-down view of the world. Security threats emanate from below instead of above. There doesn't need to be a nation-state for there to be an enemy, and as we see in Libya or Egypt, sometimes it's impossible to balance the good that open source communications offer with the evil they allow. Zeke Stane might be what happens if Aaron Swartz goes unchecked. This works because it's Tony Stark- he's allowed to be partially on the dark side of the Military-Industrial complex. The reader will still be a fan.
Second storyline is "World's Most Wanted", the Dark Reign tie-in. I mentioned grumblingly my feelings about Dark Reign in my post on Avengers Academy. I think it is a stupid storyline, a fumbling attempt at a Hitler in America storyline that doesn't actually make much sense and it is suspended on the incredibly stupid idea of Tony Stark as director of SHIELD. And I hate that it disrupted storylines developing in the various individual comic books.
So as I read "World's Most Wanted" I had serious frustration between the parts of the story that I hated with a passion and the parts that I loved. It is a brilliantly crafted story shoehorned into a terrible overarching arc. It has amazing stories for Maria Hill and Pepper, including a thorough rejection of Pepper as Secretary as a trope and some great Maria Hill backstory. And it uses a lunatic SF plot hook, that Tony has information stored in his head that he needs to delete from his head before the bad guy can capture him and SFnally extract, in order to do a beautiful, clever look back at the many versions of Tony Stark/Iron Man that we've seen in fifty years of comics. Identities that Tony has rejected like a hermit crab throwing away old shells, returned as ghosts that he must reinhabit as his mind goes to pot. I love beyond reason the moment when he finally arrives in Afghanistan at his last destination, the original Iron Man from the cave with Yinsen. Because Tony is an insane megalomaniac, and he's also a sentimental bastard.
But I hated that this was being driven by Norman Osborne as head of SHIELD/HAMMER, that the whole thing was premised on all of SHIELD 'just following orders' as Osborne dismantled the Constitution in the name of his own incomprehensible goals. I just... no. Look, I believe in America as an Idea with a fervor that is pretty ridiculous. I know I should be more cynical, I know that the magic of checks and balances is not actually magic and in the right circumstances it's possible that America could go off the rails, and I know there are people who think that has already happened, but no, America would never actually decide that Norman Osborne, the Green Goblin, should be made head of SHIELD simply because he helped to defeat the skrulls. There are mechanisms in place to keep that from happening, and if you're going to circumvent those mechanisms for the sake of a story, you need to take me to those places, and show your work.
But I'd rather you didn't. That's not why I want to read comics. I want to read about Tony being a hero even though he's a broken human being, and when Matt Fraction is delivering that magnificently, I am happy.
Today is the thirty fifth day of the Omer