Iron Man Comics

January 5, 2009 6:30 AM

Recommend me some Iron Man comics.

I got the Iron Man DVD for Christmas and really enjoyed it, and now I want more. What would you suggest as a starting point? I haven't read many superhero comics, so ones which don't rely on knowing the details of Marvel continuity are good.

posted by penguinliz to writing & language (17 comments total)

Marvel has an Essentials series for most (if not all) of their major series. It's black and white on regular paper so you're losing a lot of the look and feel of reading a comic in the first place, but other than that it's the same. Plus it has some cool trivia type stuff in the back.

Amazon link for volume 1.
posted by theichibun at 6:43 AM on January 5

10 Must-Read Stories Before You Watch 'Iron Man' in Theaters
posted by mediareport at 6:46 AM on January 5 [1 favorite has favorites]

You can pick up the Essential Iron Man volumes for cheap. It's several volumes of newsprint (black and white) but it's cheap and pretty expansive. Iron Man started as a back-up, so it tends to be pretty formulaic: Tony fights some sort of Science Badguy, has a scare regarding getting enough juice to power his heart, wins.

Iron Man doesn't really have many seminal tales. Demon in a Bottle is perhaps the closest thing Tony has to a classic.

Recent Iron Man comics are going to be pretty hard to follow if your entry point is the movie. The story arc before last had Tony as the Secretary of Defense cracking down on unregistered superheroes. Also avoid Ultimate Iron Man as it reads like a Orson Scott Card fanfic, which it is (no offense to anyone who likes blue Tony). You could give the Marvel Adventures trades, but remember that they are aimed at a younger audience.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:46 AM on January 5 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'd recommend the Armor Wars.
posted by josher71 at 7:17 AM on January 5

Until recently, Iron Man has always been sort of a second-tier character - his initial stories are pretty much negigible unless you're a hard-core fan, and there isn't a whole lot to recommend until the David Michelinie/Bob Layton/John Romita Jr. run in the eighties, which is still recognized as being some of the best work done on the character. Probably their most acclaimed arc is the 'Demon in a Bottle' storyline, wherein Stark must confront his alcoholism. The Doomquest story is also well-regarded. Click here and scroll down to #61 on this list for a synopsis of the run. Layton and Michelinie actually reunited and did a couple of Iron Man books after the movie was released, but I haven't read them.

As for more recent work, I haven't read much - during the huge Civil War crossover event, Iron Man was actually the heavy in many ways and became the director of espionage group SHIELD, so I wouldn't recommend it, as it was fairly continuity intensive and you're probably not interested in reading Iron Man being an antagonist.

The Marvel Adventures line was targeted towards younger readers, but the writer of its Iron Man series, Fred Van Lente, is very talented so it may be worth checking out. His stuff has been collected in a few volumes.

Presently there's a series written by Matt Fraction, which I think was meant as a jumping on point for readers who enjoyed the movie. Copies should be available at your local comic shop, and a collection of the first six issues should be released this spring.

It can be confusing and sort of daunting to get into a new character or series, especially when there are decades of continuity and comics out there - and if you're not careful, you can end up wasting serious cash on crap that isn't any good. Check out your local library first, they're adding more comics to their shelves everyday. Don't be afraid to ask questions at the comic store - and don't be intimated or discouraged if they give you grief or make you feel like a n00b, there are lots of other retailers who want your business.

Good luck, and happy reading!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:22 AM on January 5

As much as I like the Essential series, I'm not sure I'd recommend the Iron Man volumes to a new reader. The stories, as was said before, are formulaic and sort of corny, and the art's primarily by Don Heck and probably won't hold much appeal for a modern audience either.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:29 AM on January 5

I highly recommend the current run of "Invincible Iron Man" by Matt Fraction, it evokes the kind of wide-screen action that made the movie great without getting too tied up in continuity. I'd also recommend the Warren Ellis / Adi Granov "Extremis" arc from Iron Man (vol 4) #1-6, the trade is worth it for the art alone, and it heavily influenced the movie as well.
posted by Oktober at 7:44 AM on January 5

Iron Man: Hypervelocity by Adam Warren. Warren brings a genuinely science fictional tone to his superhero comics, and this reads more like a Charlie Stross story than, well, an Iron Man story.
posted by Zed at 7:47 AM on January 5

Seconding Extremis.
posted by mkultra at 7:59 AM on January 5

Armor Wars is great, but it's also '80s-ish writing. Comic book dialogue has changed a LOT in the last ten years. It's become much more realistic and more entertaining, and it makes a huge difference.

Tony has had a solo title forever, but his real impact is in the team title of the Avengers. Pick up a couple of the first volumes of New Avengers and you see Tony at some of his best. It's fairly recent and enjoyable, and it's sort of representative of the great direction Marvel was taking on the whole before their current sharp-left-turn-straight-to-stupidity-Hell.

Currently, Marvel's editorial staff has taken Tony (and much of the Marvel U with him) in a sharp left turn. Civil War makes no real sense, as the majority of the major players are all acting completely out of character given their 40-year histories. Tony turns into a complete fascist douchebag, and even this isn't the most ridiculous character turn. You can even tell through the subtext of the writing in some of Marvel's titles that their own writing staff aren't comfortable with all this.

"Ultimates" isn't mainstream continuity -- it's something of a re-imagining -- but the Tony in that is also pretty enjoyable.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:24 AM on January 5

Also seconding "Demon in a Bottle." The fan base will be utterly stunned if alcoholism is not a major factor in the next Iron Man movie. Leaving it alone was the right thing to do for the first film, but it's so intrinsic to the character that it can't be ignored... plus I can only imagine that Downey will do a great job with it.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:26 AM on January 5

The Marvel Adventures series is your best bet if you don't want to deal with continuity and lots of hero-vs-hero angst. It's "targeted" for younger readers, which just means the story always gets resolved in the same issue and the writing is consistently lighthearted and funny. Here's a sample on scans_daily.

Extremis and Hypervelocity are also very good, and pretty much self-contained.
posted by casarkos at 8:56 AM on January 5

While it's a tad slow to come out, Jon Favreau's actually writing his own Iron Man limited series, Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas, which you may like. The art's good, there's some very minor continuity that won't impact your enjoyment, and the style is very much like the lighter moments of the movie.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 9:02 AM on January 5

The Many Armors of Iron Man is worth buying or at least borrowing. Demon In A Bottle is where most people start and stop appreciating Iron Man. It is a second-tier character, so a lot of that stuff just isnt that good. Personally, I like Romita Jrs art so much it doesnt bother me is the story is a little weak.

I believe Marvel offers a lot of older Iron Man stuff for free at marvel.com. You might want to look at that before spending any money.

You may want to also ask at the AdvancedIron.org forums.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:50 AM on January 5

You should read SheHulk!

The newer series starts with SheHulk Volume 1, Single Green Female, and my favorite part about it is that is requires very little knowledge of bigger picture superhero stuff. See, SheHulk takes a job at a law firm that specializes in superhuman law, but they want her as her smaller alter ego, Jennifer. There's basically lots of little short stories about different cases she takes, some that involve already established superheroes, and some that are one-off tales. Anyway, not to spoil things, but Iron Man makes some appearances, and eventually, as the books progress, SheHulk does become an agent of Shield. I didn't used to read the big name superhero comics, but I thought SheHulk was so cool, and I liked the little stand-alone episodes, so I read those. That taught me enough that I could jump over to some of the other stuff and catch what was going on.
posted by redsparkler at 9:45 PM on January 5

A while back I came across an encylopedic book that has an overview of the history of Iron Man, schematics of all the different suits, and info on all the characters. I couldn't remember the title, but jokingly thought it might've been "Iron Man: Beneath the Armor," before realizing it was much too horrible a title to actually have been used.

I was wrong, but it's still worth checking out.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 9:51 PM on January 5

Thanks for all the recommendations, guys! I've checked a few of them out. I got Invincible Iron Man issues 1-5, and they are great for the newcomer - you get all the recognisable characters from the movie, but they make it clear where movie-verse and comic-verse differ. It's not the most inspired storyline, and I'm not particularly taken with the art (Pepper, in particular, looks a little weird), but the shiny suit action is great, and it's all good fun.

Hypervelocity is fun, and I like the more science-fictional aspects of the story although it's all a bit familiar since I'm well-read in that area, but most of the books I read don't include a suit of metal armour becoming sentient and doing the Napoleon Dynamite dance.

Finally, I picked up Ultimates vol 1 and 2, and thought they were excellent - a bit darker than the other comics, but a great team book without being too bogged down in Marvel continuity. I plan to grab Extremis and Armor Wars in the future, and possibly New Avengers since I liked the Ultimates team-up - having read the Civil War parody comics I think I'll be giving the real thing a miss.

Further useful links for anyone else reading this: a newbie's guide to Iron Man and the sequel, and a further guide to Iron Man canon.
posted by penguinliz at 5:11 PM on January 16