IRON MAN: HYPERVELOCITY #3
(May 2007)  - no title -  Cover art: Brian Denham. Script: Adam Warren. Art: Brian Denham.  Tony’s in a coma and a cobbled together software emulation of his brain has been uploaded to the newest iteration of the Iron Man armor... which is blasting down the freeway in a pimped-out Honda on its way to an underground mecha party to figure out who blasted his meaty body to a vegetated state. You read that right friends, Iron Man is going to a rave attended by a bunch of freaking cyborgs (or mechs if you prefer)! Now you know I think that’s cool. However, one major flaw jumps out at me on page 6: Iron Man says, “I can seriously crank my mp3 list all day.”

MP3???? As great as I think Warren is at writing this story, Tony would NEVER stand for the seriously degraded sound quality of the mp3 algorithm blasting inside his armor. Any guy that can cobble together a software version of his own brain would certainly design a plug-in that would transform a regular stereo signal to a surround sound mix, at no less than 96khz without lousy compression artifacts! That’s what Marvel gets for not having rave DJs write their comics -- sheesh! I gotta deduct a repulsor right there. Anyway, Iron Man (or Tony 2.0) lets us in on a secret: Tony 1.0 has been reverse engineering his enemies’ technology to add to the Iron Man technology! Wow! This revelation is right up there with issue #118 when we saw a whole room full of Iron Man variants! Meanwhile, SHIELD is still trying destroy Iron Man because they think he’s gone rogue, and Major Aramaki, who’s in charge of this operation, is hopped up on all kind of weird experimental drugs.  

Mid route to the rave, IM’s repulsor fires all by itself. You guessed it, that crazy suicide goth chick is back! Her name is Absynthe, and she’s a computer virus bent on erasing Tony 2.0 from the armor and taking it over herself. At least, that’s what she says. IM runs some anti-viral software and momentarily dismisses her. He makes it to the mecha rave where he figures he’ll get the intel he needs to figure this mess out… but the mecha party is a trap laid by Absynthe!

Deadly Buda's Recommendation:   repulsors!