Fan Reaction:
While I appreciate your excitement with the change of direction, I’m afraid I
cannot share that excitement.
1) Tony is one who prides himself
in inventing something new, NOT duplicating effort. Doom, the FF, and many
implementations of magic have achieved time travel before, not to mention the
Fourth (?) Reich in the War Machine story. Time Travel is nothing new, so
I don’t know why Stark would be excited about doing it himself.
Nevermind that the actual trip into
the past itself is completely under-presented. We see IM surrounded by
fire, calling out commands to deflect the effects of the wormhole, then he’s
there. That’s it? He says ‘Whoa – what a trip’, but we
didn’t get an inkling that it was all that interesting. A waste of a
two-page spread, if you ask me. (and you have asked all of us :-)
that’s why we write!)
2) A quick trip to the past makes
it even less likely that Stark will have to confront his most recent decision
– revealing his identity – not to mention the fact that we have seen NO
ramifications from it in the first place. Something that should be the
largest impact on the book is relegated to a mere blurb per issue, if that.
This is, I’m surprised to find myself saying, the biggest failure Mike Grell
has made. He introduces a huge change in status in the book, then
completely ignores it. Usually I’d find myself complaining that a new
writer wasn’t staying true – or following up on – storylines introduced by
a previous writer. Grell isn’t even staying true to himself.
3) The story moves WAAAAAY too
quickly once he is in the past. He gets to the past, gets a horse, jumps
into a fray (without ANY consideration of not having any idea what’s going on
– no, that would be PLOT DEVELOPMENT), gets knocked out, is betrayed – ugh.
I could barely keep up.
I could go on, but I should
stop. My recommendation would’ve been around 2 pulsors. --
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Fan Reaction 2:
Hube, I agree with TJ above.Grell spins a fragile fairytale, things happen too
predictably, too fast and it fails to engage the reader. However, there is
lightness of humour here and I think that at least is something,Grell asks us to
chill and (enjoy?) a simplistic fantasy. Still hate the armor though, something
about it reminds me of the Brandy robot thing way back in ROM -- yeeucch!
Strangely, Grell's art improves slightly when he inks himself but if Chen won't
come back perhaps Paul Ryan could or the great Bob Layton. (I sure wish Jack
Kirby was still around -- I'd love his dynamics injected into this mag.) So two
'pulsors and counting. --
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Fan Reaction 3:
As far as IM#59 goes.......UGH!!! If I recall correctly, you mentioned the
idea being lifted from Star Trek - yup, it sure was, and rather than borrowing a
creative and interesting idea, Grell picked a lousy one :P A lot of
technical problems in this ish, too! IRON MAN sitting on a horse - yeah,
right - before or AFTER breaking its back? The armor being removed in
medieval times? sure...... What about the climactic skull - gee,
that's hard to figure out - maybe Tony sets up the bad guy in the armor, and
THAT'S who dies in it. As a climax it doesn't really grab me. Then
my personal favorite technical problem - Tony's heart needs to be recharged
every 24 hours. The time machine lets him be in the past for 40 hours.
Pepper says that it leaves Tony a thin margin... Let's do a little math,
ok? 40-24 = 16. Hmm...so Tony's a good 16 hours short for a recharge on
his ARTIFICAL HEART. Could be a problem, no? Keep in mind Grell
established these rules not altogether long ago. Oh
and the armor losing polarity....hmmm...I seem to recall Tony couldn't move at
times with un-powered armor. Even had Tony been able to move, he sure
wouldn't be able to sword fight!! He'd be slow at best. And sorry,
but Tony referencing Xena is WAY TOO dated. Besides, dontcha see Tony as
more of a Star Wars kinda guy? I sure do!
Oh, and I haven't even covered
the characters yet!! Happy the drunk - yeah, I see this train coming.
Great. It was so entertaining when we had to put up with Warbird in
virtually every issue of Busiek's run. Don't get me wrong - I loved Kurt's run, but
Warbird became an annoyance to me at the end because every encounter with her
seemed to play out the same way. Tony talking to Happy about it can't go
much better, can it? And I really don't care for how Pepper is written
these days. She's WAY too bitchy.....yeah, she lost a baby.....yeah, I'm a
man and don't know what that's like......y'know what though - Pepper was never
the kind to be overtly hostile to Tony. And her line about Tony being so
busy because he revealed his secret ID.....hmmm....we haven't really seen Tony
being busy, have we? If we have then it's not nearly what I'd view as
busy.
Overall I really hated this
issue. The character isn't who he's supposed to be, and the stories aren't
compelling. Originality is important - but telling a story people WANT to
read is more important I think. I wonder why Marvel chose this story over
a third helping of Iron Man VS. Dr. Doom..........oh well....... --
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Fan Reaction 4:
I agree with you in that this issue is the best that Mr. Grell has completed to
date. I am going from your rating scale and 3 1/2 is the highest that you
have given Mr. Grell. I must say I appreciate the sense of adventure that
is provided in the story. The art reminds me of Gene Colan's version from
the 60's, and as a result it made me very nostalgic. There were comments
that the story moved too quickly. In this day of long drawn out stories
with nothing really happening from issue to issue, it is nice to see a light
fast paced adventure. Isn't this really what comics is all about?
Maybe things have changed or I have missed the point. --
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