Iron Man Legacy #5 – Review

By: Fred van Lente (writer), Steve Kurth (pencils), Allen Martinez (inks), John Rauch & Chris Chuckry (colors) & Dave Lanphear (letters)

The Story: The Big Bad behind the strife in Transia is revealed.  Surprise… It’s Doom.

What’s Good: This issue ends in the initial story arc on Iron Man Legacy and ends it on a positive note.  I have not been a tremendous fan of this series thus far and was concerned about this issue because endings to story arcs are hard: It is a lot easier to plop a lot of cool ideas onto a comic page at the beginning of a story than to do something interesting with them.

So, I was pleasantly surprised at the direction van Lente went with the issue of Tony Stark’s legacy.  Too often we have see his legacy illustrated by out of control Stark-tech falling into the hands of bad people.  Here we see that one of his other legacies is to inspire the inventors of the world to use their talents to create a better world for their peoples.  Thus, I was very happy to see them bring back the Dragana (the handicapped lady engineer from past issues) as a hero with a cool new armor suit that she hopes can become an inspiration to her people.  Actually, the suit is a little more like a mech that she sits inside, but you get the point.

Age of Heroes #2 – Review

“Who Needs Gravity” by: Sean McKeever (writer), David Baldeon (pencils), N. Bowling (inks), Chris Sotomayor (colors) & Joe Sabino (letters)

“Heroic Rage” by: Brian Reed (writer), Chad Hardin (pencils), Victor Olazaba (inks), Sotomayor (colors), Sabino (letters)

“Young Masters” by: Paul Cornell (writer), Mark Brooks (art) & Dave Lamphear (letters)

“Semper Fidelis” by: Dan Slott (writer), Ty Templeton (art), Jorge Maese (colors) & Lamphear (letters)

The Story: Marvel’s 4-issue anthology miniseries showing what various folks are doing in THE HEROIC AGE checks in on the C-listers.

What’s Good: These stories are all cute, fun and well written.  They really serve as a sampler platter for new books that Marvel has coming out and I really don’t mind that.  Heck, I’d much rather get a chance to see a few of these characters in small doses before committing to a few issues at $3.99 a pop.

I thought the best of these stories was Heroic Rage starring American Son.  I feel like I’m falling down on the job by admitting that I am not getting the “Amazing Spider-Man presents: American Son” but I did read the American Son story arc in ASM about 40 issues ago (or a year ago in ASM-time….I swear, it’s like talking about “dog years”, LOL).  Even though my favorite characterization of Harry Osborn is when he’s just Peter’s confident and slick buddy who doesn’t like Spider-Man, I really enjoyed this short (8-page) story.  One of the things the story plays up is that there seems to be some mystery behind who is wearing the American Son armor.  I had assumed it was Harry, but the reactions of the other characters made it seem that wasn’t certain. Plus, bonus points for tossing Norah the reporter into the story (she’s spunky and fun!) and having a cool scene where American Son stakes (vampire style) a bad-guy/monster with an flagpole complete with billowing American Flag.  The whole scene is very Mr. Suribachi inspired.

The art throughout this issue was really well done.  I didn’t see any pages or panels in here where I rolled my eyes.  Marvel also deserves credit for an accurate cover…..The C-listers on the cover are the folks in the comic!  Not sure if that’s a good thing, but….