Invincible Iron Man #511 – Review

by Matt Fraction (writer), Salvador Larroca (art), Frank D’Armata (colors), and Joe Caramagna (letters)

The Story: Tony Stark comes clean to his employees before finding himself in a fight for his life against the Living Laser.

The Review:  After the underwhelming Fear Itself, it seems that Matt Fraction is fast replacing Bendis as the new whipping boy for vocal internet comics fans.  What said readers seem to gloss over is that Invincible Iron Man is still a really strong comic and that Fraction has an incredible grasp of Tony Stark’s voice and personality.

While it has been a rather slow year for the book, what we get this month is a bit of everything that makes this series great.  For starters, the character work is superb.  As always, Fraction’s knack for Tony’s gift of understatement and wit really animates what otherwise could’ve been an extended scene of talking heads.

More impressive, however, is Fraction’s writing of the tense relationship between Potts and Cabe.  It’s quite nuanced and has a good amount of emotion and subtlety.  However, what will definitely grab the attention this month is the absolute BOMBSHELL that Cabe drops on Pepper.  It’s a big reveal that makes for a gripping conversation between the two and serves as a foundation for a very interesting dynamic between the two characters.  It also serves to humble Pepper a bit, while also showing her to not be quite so squeaky-clean herself.  It’s really great stuff.

One of the main areas of criticism that Fraction has had this year with respect to this series has been the relatively slower pace as far as narrative progression.  Not so this month, as a lot of stuff happened, certainly enough to make you feel you got your money’s worth.  Along with that big reveal and the character-work, there’s also a healthy amount of Iron Man action scenes.  Frankly, I love seeing Fraction use some older villains.  This month, we get the Living Laser and Spymaster to go along with Mandarin.