Remember that Lucifer, from X-Men? He was an alien who was taken out by Professor X, when he was a kid, and dropped a rock on X’s legs—crippling him. Don’t remember? Don’t worry. For the story that established the most famous wheelchair-bound comic book character of all time, it was pretty bad.
Anyway, he returns in this issue. But that’s not what makes this an above-average comic. If anything, it distracts from what is otherwise an interesting and, I think, novel approach to the comic book story.
It starts with a Stark security guard seeing Iron Man and thinking jealous thoughts to himself. And then Stark cruises by in a convertible and he gets even more bitter. Next, we seem come home and scream at his kids. This guy is having a breakdown, and that’s when Lucifer shows up to tempt him and give him the power to beat the snot out of Iron Man.
It ends with Iron Man winning and the guard, named Charlie Gray, losing his powers. Which is a shame–there was potential here to have made this a very cool origin story for a new villain.
I don’t recall a story focused on a civilian before—and certainly not one that is told entirely from the point of view of a Joe Nobody, embittered and angry. It’s a nice change of pace.