This is the first big Iron Man “event.” Issue #73 is a prequel, laying some groundwork, for the war that jumps off in issue #74.
The cover features my favorite villain announcing the event.
Black Lama entices MODOK, Firebrand, The Mad Thinker, Yellow Claw, Mandarin, Man-Bull, Melter, and Whiplash to compete with each other for a “golden globe.” No, not the acting award. It’s a pretty vague trophy, but these guys are into it.
MODOK is still a bad boss…
Other than a cute sequence where Dr. Doom tells Lama to “Begone!” and another with Red Skull declining to participate, all the major villains are absent from this war.
It’s basically just Iron Man’s rogues gallery, which is a pretty lame villain set. MODOK excluded of course.
MODOK considers recruiting Dracula for the competition, but decides vampires aren’t real. Because who could believe in a vampire?
In the middle of it Iron Man fights Hulk. Honestly, you barely need Iron Man for this story, and it’s padded with lots of filler.
In the end, Black Lama is revealed to be the ruler of another world in another dimension that needs a hero to fight a major battle there, so his idea was to recruit the strongest supervillain. But instead, he takes Firebrand. And Iron Man comes along to help–after Llama just spend a half-dozen issues kicking his ass.
See, that doesn’t even make sense. This is just awful.
Thankfully, these are Mike Friedrich’s last issues.