Invincible Iron Man #600
May. 25th, 2018 02:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nomadicwriter posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
doomfansThe big finale at long last!
Like the last issue of Infamous Iron Man, this suffers from Bendis Finale Disease of having an enormous chunk of the issue taken up by a character expositing in place of actual on-page action. (Seriously, there are like ten pages of AI Tony recapping stuff that could have been covered in a couple of lines if needed at all.) But, happily, it does do a decent job of wrapping things up while still leaving the future open-ended.
So, basically, Tony resurrects Rhodey using the same handwavy tech that allowed him to survive. Rhodey appears fine aside from being unhappy about being bald. Meanwhile, the Hood is planning his takeover of Stark Industries, but that's when Doom shows up with an army of Doombots (or possibly illusory Doombots - it's not totally clear how many if any are real) to stop them.
Tony and Rhodey arrive with a bunch of Iron Man armours to join the fight. Tony's kind of confused that Doom is dressing up as him, while Doom's surprised to find Tony alive. The Hood attacks Tony and Rhodey with demonic powers that they can't fight, and they end up further confused when Doom tackles the Hood and comes to their rescue. Doom does him enough damage that the demon using the Hood as a vessel emerges, furious that Doom is "cheating" by using spells supposed to be forbidden to mortals. His plans for taking over the Stark empire ruined, the demon says: "You cheated me, Victor! All for Stark?! All for them? They hate you!" and blasts Doom's exposed face from close range.
Elsewhere, Mary Jane rescues Amanda from Tony's evil Hydra biological father Jude, with backup from Riri and co. (There's also a bit of a subplot about Leonardo da Vinci assembling a new SHIELD including Riri, Miles and others, but it doesn't really go anywhere.) Tony arrives in time to zap Jude to stop him shooting Amanda, and then learns that the guy he just almost killed is his biological father. All ends well, though they're still a bit baffled Doom turned out to help and wondering where he is now.
The answer is Latveria, where Doom staggers back upright with a fresh set of demon-inflicted wounds on his face, and starts to magically rebuild Castle Doom.
So! All in all, pretty happy with that as an ending for Doom's arc. "Scars restored in the course of a heroic sacrifice" was one of the main possibilities I was rooting for when the reset button came, and it's well-executed here - it's not even to save Amara and his own child, which would be partially selfish, or done publicly for glory, but a sacrifice no one even knows about for people who hate him and have barely grasped that he was on their side. Plus, though I don't care about the Hood as a character, I do appreciate the symmetry of using his demonic side to inflict the new scars, so that like the original ones from Mephisto they're tainted by dark magic, explaining why they can't be healed.
And best of all, though we see Doom retreating to Latveria and the safety of his former castle, there's no outright confirmation of a full return to villainy, and it could still potentially go anywhere from here.
(Somewhat relatedly, I thought it was kind of an interesting choice to have him use the Doombots in battle this issue, which is the first time he's made use of a classic villain Doom motif in his new heroic mode. He hasn't even retooled the bots to match his new armour, but has them all still kitted out in his supervillain gear. It depends entirely where the next writers choose to go, of course, but I'd love to see some kind of integration of classic and heroic Doom now, where he's back in Latveria and wearing the old armour but still trying to act heroically.)
On a more annoying note, Bendis repeats his bizarre thing about Doom's mother having been a "dark-arts-wielding witch priestess" (what?) who set him on the wrong path as a child. I hope everybody else just quietly ignores his attempts to put that twist on the backstory, because I am very much here for the original story where Doom turned villain as a result of the cruel deaths of his good and loving parents, not some hackneyed crap about his evil witch mom corrupting him. At least here it only comes in the form of exposition from AI Tony, so it can be handwaved as misinformed.
Another, more intriguing detail that AI Tony drops into his exposition is calling the future Doom/Amara baby "an unborn son", which is a detail we didn't know before. (I'm still rooting for him to be this universe's Vincent von Doom, since I liked his character design in that old Secret Wars AU.)
The art in this issue is kind of hard to comment on, because it's one of those artist showcase deals with a big roster of artists all taking a few pages each. It's all gorgeous top-quality stuff and does an impressive job of keeping the look of all the characters consistent enough to avoid detracting from the story, but it's still inevitably a bit of a blur of shifting styles.
Anyway, despite its flaws, I'm pretty happy with this as an ending, and I'm glad we get something of a conclusion to Doom's storyline without it being a full, definite reset to villainous status quo. (Though I'm frankly now even more baffled now as to how this can possibly tie in timeline-wise with the events of Marvel Two-in-One. He's not scarred there, but if that series ends with the return of the F4, it's hard to see how it can take place earlier than this. But we will see, I guess. Or else, more likely, they'll just completely handwave it.)
Like the last issue of Infamous Iron Man, this suffers from Bendis Finale Disease of having an enormous chunk of the issue taken up by a character expositing in place of actual on-page action. (Seriously, there are like ten pages of AI Tony recapping stuff that could have been covered in a couple of lines if needed at all.) But, happily, it does do a decent job of wrapping things up while still leaving the future open-ended.
So, basically, Tony resurrects Rhodey using the same handwavy tech that allowed him to survive. Rhodey appears fine aside from being unhappy about being bald. Meanwhile, the Hood is planning his takeover of Stark Industries, but that's when Doom shows up with an army of Doombots (or possibly illusory Doombots - it's not totally clear how many if any are real) to stop them.
Tony and Rhodey arrive with a bunch of Iron Man armours to join the fight. Tony's kind of confused that Doom is dressing up as him, while Doom's surprised to find Tony alive. The Hood attacks Tony and Rhodey with demonic powers that they can't fight, and they end up further confused when Doom tackles the Hood and comes to their rescue. Doom does him enough damage that the demon using the Hood as a vessel emerges, furious that Doom is "cheating" by using spells supposed to be forbidden to mortals. His plans for taking over the Stark empire ruined, the demon says: "You cheated me, Victor! All for Stark?! All for them? They hate you!" and blasts Doom's exposed face from close range.
Elsewhere, Mary Jane rescues Amanda from Tony's evil Hydra biological father Jude, with backup from Riri and co. (There's also a bit of a subplot about Leonardo da Vinci assembling a new SHIELD including Riri, Miles and others, but it doesn't really go anywhere.) Tony arrives in time to zap Jude to stop him shooting Amanda, and then learns that the guy he just almost killed is his biological father. All ends well, though they're still a bit baffled Doom turned out to help and wondering where he is now.
The answer is Latveria, where Doom staggers back upright with a fresh set of demon-inflicted wounds on his face, and starts to magically rebuild Castle Doom.
So! All in all, pretty happy with that as an ending for Doom's arc. "Scars restored in the course of a heroic sacrifice" was one of the main possibilities I was rooting for when the reset button came, and it's well-executed here - it's not even to save Amara and his own child, which would be partially selfish, or done publicly for glory, but a sacrifice no one even knows about for people who hate him and have barely grasped that he was on their side. Plus, though I don't care about the Hood as a character, I do appreciate the symmetry of using his demonic side to inflict the new scars, so that like the original ones from Mephisto they're tainted by dark magic, explaining why they can't be healed.
And best of all, though we see Doom retreating to Latveria and the safety of his former castle, there's no outright confirmation of a full return to villainy, and it could still potentially go anywhere from here.
(Somewhat relatedly, I thought it was kind of an interesting choice to have him use the Doombots in battle this issue, which is the first time he's made use of a classic villain Doom motif in his new heroic mode. He hasn't even retooled the bots to match his new armour, but has them all still kitted out in his supervillain gear. It depends entirely where the next writers choose to go, of course, but I'd love to see some kind of integration of classic and heroic Doom now, where he's back in Latveria and wearing the old armour but still trying to act heroically.)
On a more annoying note, Bendis repeats his bizarre thing about Doom's mother having been a "dark-arts-wielding witch priestess" (what?) who set him on the wrong path as a child. I hope everybody else just quietly ignores his attempts to put that twist on the backstory, because I am very much here for the original story where Doom turned villain as a result of the cruel deaths of his good and loving parents, not some hackneyed crap about his evil witch mom corrupting him. At least here it only comes in the form of exposition from AI Tony, so it can be handwaved as misinformed.
Another, more intriguing detail that AI Tony drops into his exposition is calling the future Doom/Amara baby "an unborn son", which is a detail we didn't know before. (I'm still rooting for him to be this universe's Vincent von Doom, since I liked his character design in that old Secret Wars AU.)
The art in this issue is kind of hard to comment on, because it's one of those artist showcase deals with a big roster of artists all taking a few pages each. It's all gorgeous top-quality stuff and does an impressive job of keeping the look of all the characters consistent enough to avoid detracting from the story, but it's still inevitably a bit of a blur of shifting styles.
Anyway, despite its flaws, I'm pretty happy with this as an ending, and I'm glad we get something of a conclusion to Doom's storyline without it being a full, definite reset to villainous status quo. (Though I'm frankly now even more baffled now as to how this can possibly tie in timeline-wise with the events of Marvel Two-in-One. He's not scarred there, but if that series ends with the return of the F4, it's hard to see how it can take place earlier than this. But we will see, I guess. Or else, more likely, they'll just completely handwave it.)
