Post by goldenfist on Jul 11, 2008 8:01:02 GMT -5
Shellhead get's a review from Ign.com
The title on the cover might be Invincible Iron Man, but Matt Fraction's most notable creative achievement in these pages continues to be Ezekiel Stane the twisted genius and all-around pain in Tony Stark's side. Add Stane to the handful of other great components and, for three months running, Invincible Iron Man is one of my favorite Marvel books on the stands.
As if Stane wasn't twisted and freakish enough, Invincible #3 goes ahead and bumps the guy to near-Hannibal Lecter proportions. Fraction gives readers a mini origin story as well as a glimpse into the less sane inner workings of Stane's brilliant mind and continues to position the character as every bit the equal of Tony Stark. The character becomes so intriguing, in fact, that I'm almost rooting more for him than Iron Man. My favorite villains are those who are just fun to watch in action, and Invincible has injected nearly every panel with that sense of futuristic wonder, not just Stane's scenes. Much like the past two issues, it's obvious that Fraction is having a ball going over the top with many of Invincible's concepts.
Salvador Larroca's art is essentially more of the same -- he draws some great sequences that involve Iron Man blasting things, but his faces that don't belong to Tony Stark often suffer from the same-y quality that many readers complain of. There's one portion of the book that surprised me, though, and that's Ezekiel's flashback/origin scene. The art is so wildly divergent from Larroca's usual style that I actually flipped back to the first page to see if any other artist was credited. The style is much more cartoony and exaggerated than the sleek hyper-real work most fans are used to, and it's definitely an effective storytelling technique for the issue.
I expected to like Invincible Iron Man based on Fraction's knack for dialogue alone, but I didn't expect to be having so much fun with it. If any book is going to save Iron Man's image after the virtual character sabotage that was Civil War, this will be the one to do it.
Review Score: 8.6 Great
The title on the cover might be Invincible Iron Man, but Matt Fraction's most notable creative achievement in these pages continues to be Ezekiel Stane the twisted genius and all-around pain in Tony Stark's side. Add Stane to the handful of other great components and, for three months running, Invincible Iron Man is one of my favorite Marvel books on the stands.
As if Stane wasn't twisted and freakish enough, Invincible #3 goes ahead and bumps the guy to near-Hannibal Lecter proportions. Fraction gives readers a mini origin story as well as a glimpse into the less sane inner workings of Stane's brilliant mind and continues to position the character as every bit the equal of Tony Stark. The character becomes so intriguing, in fact, that I'm almost rooting more for him than Iron Man. My favorite villains are those who are just fun to watch in action, and Invincible has injected nearly every panel with that sense of futuristic wonder, not just Stane's scenes. Much like the past two issues, it's obvious that Fraction is having a ball going over the top with many of Invincible's concepts.
Salvador Larroca's art is essentially more of the same -- he draws some great sequences that involve Iron Man blasting things, but his faces that don't belong to Tony Stark often suffer from the same-y quality that many readers complain of. There's one portion of the book that surprised me, though, and that's Ezekiel's flashback/origin scene. The art is so wildly divergent from Larroca's usual style that I actually flipped back to the first page to see if any other artist was credited. The style is much more cartoony and exaggerated than the sleek hyper-real work most fans are used to, and it's definitely an effective storytelling technique for the issue.
I expected to like Invincible Iron Man based on Fraction's knack for dialogue alone, but I didn't expect to be having so much fun with it. If any book is going to save Iron Man's image after the virtual character sabotage that was Civil War, this will be the one to do it.
Review Score: 8.6 Great