Iron Man II just hit theaters so … Time for another Iron Man ongoing. This one starts with the story, “War of the Iron Men.” And it is clearly designed to be more accessible than Matt Fraction and Salvador Larocca’s deeply thoughtful and intricate ongoing Iron Man book.
It almost reads like an all-ages book. There’s nothing wrong with that–I’m just noting the intended audience and tonal difference.
I’m not sure it’s canon–it doesn’t fully connect to the main Iron Man mythology. For one thing, it starts with him reforming Stark Enterprises (which in the Fraction title is called Stark Resilient). But the mission is similar–it leans to altruism and helping the world.
The new campus is attacked by mercenaries and Iron Man fights them off (see the sequence above). After that action scene, Tony can’t resist getting involved in an international incident–despite having just done a press conference about how the new Stark Enterprises is all about being a force for peace. All that tracks with Tony’s personality.
The international incident draws in Doctor Doom, and Tony learns that the bad guys are kidnapping scientists and forcing them to build armor to secure their own freedom–just as Tony himself was forced to do in his own origin story. Many of them die in the process. Yeah, it’s a very contrived plot. But it’s good enough.
Tony himself ends up captured (of course) and escapes (of course), fights a Dreadknight sent by Doctor Doom, causes a second international incident that draws in China’s own super-agent (Radioactive Man) and Russia’s new versions of Titanium Man and Crimson Dynamo…
Titanium Man apparently needs sensitivity training–“Chinaman” is NOT acceptable terminology.\
After Radioactive Man is dispatched, it’s time for the big war against the “iron men.”
They’re all working for Doom.
The ending is fairly pat and predictable, and in the very end we see Tony go into a hidden bunker where we see that he, too, is creating a legion of iron men.
Nothing in this book is bad. It’s all well-executed and harmless fun. When reading books from the 2010s, it all feels kind of simple and retro, but I guess there’s nothing really wrong with that.