I don't think even the ideas were good, since they all revolved around making Stark into Alcoholism-Incarnate. Most Wanted especially was about writing a metaphor for an alcoholic running away from all of his problems and drinking his mind into mush. That idea fundamentally sucks, and could not have been improved simply by making it shorter.
You're already going far too deep. If you look at the basic premise (Tony wiping his mind to prevent Osborn from getting the info, for instance), they're not bad ideas. That exact story idea, fleshed out and written by someone who understands the core essence of the character, could have been phenomenal. But, it wasn't.
Same thing with this current arc. At it's core, you've got the Mandarin assembling some of IM's greatest villains to wage war against Tony Stark. That basic point, in and of itself, is sound. If you gave me that and only that, but said that David Michelinie or Len Kaminski (or, hey, let's go with someone more modern, like Ed Brubaker) was writing it, I'd be about 99% assured of a great, grand, in-character story.
One of Fraction's main failings in writing is that his scripts are rarely able to carry themselves. They're plodding, uninspired claptrap, with terrible dialogue.
