Superior Iron Man #9

Writer – Tom Taylor
Artist – Yildiray Cinar
Colours – Guru-eFX

The adventures of an inverted Tony Stark come to an end courtesy of the creative team who started them off, Tom Taylor and Yildiray Cinar, and they do so in a fairly satisfactory manner.  The book begins with current-Tony facing off against memory bank-Tony and a legion of former Iron Man armours.  The battle is fierce and it is literally for all the marbles as the winner will be the one who gets to live while the other will not.  Even with the involvement of Pepper in her Rescue armour which has been upgraded and all of the fail-safes they have put in place, the Superior Iron Man proves exactly why he is such by always being a number of steps ahead of everyone else.  That is probably the best thing about this book that Taylor manages to do on a consistent basis, which is to continually have Tony prove just how much better he believes himself to be and with him always coming out on top no matter the situation.  As Tony does so, he is always so smug and so self-righteous that it sometimes grates on you and yet it works and suits the man’s personality perfectly, such as it is right now.  Some might complain that the book has a non-ending as it leaves so many questions unanswered as well as doing nothing about the whole Tony problem.  It worked in a way, as it gave Tony something to think about come the end of the story, but given all that has happened and the way his personality stands now, you would naturally assume that an idea would come to him to get around it and the Superior Iron Man would be so once more.  On the whole, the series was quite exciting and a lot of fun as it gave us an Iron Man without restrictions and without morals.  If he wanted to do something, he would do it and it was not like the old Tony would not do the same, but that Tony had a conscience that would sometimes keep him in check where this Superior Tony did not.  It remains to be seen if this storyline will get properly wrapped up, but for now the Superior Iron Man has been put to rest.

4 out of 5

Years of Future Past #1

Writer – Marguerite Bennett
Artist – Mike Norton
Colours – FCO Plascencia

The desolate future envisioned by Chris Claremont many years ago, returns in a brand new limited series that now comprises one of the territories that make up Battleworld.  Everything is just as remembered as mutants have been hunted to extinction with very few remaining.  All of them are either dead or have been sterilized so that there may be no more mutants going forward to plague the human race.  But like they have proven so many times before, they will not go silently into that good night and a rebellion is forming.  The only question is will they be able to pull it off?  Marguerite Bennett and Mike Norton return to the dystopic future of the X-Men and they do so with a great story and some fun artwork, bringing with them the daughter of Kitty Pryde and the son of Wolverine.  The current situation regarding the mutants in this land is an interesting one just as it was so many years ago and it is always a lot of fun to see a good, old-fashioned revolution.  Chrissie is a new character that has potential and how much of it is realized in the short time she will be around is up to Bennett, but so far she looks to be a promising new X-Man.  Like all of the titles thus far that feature strife and discord, why Doom does not intervene to set things right is unknown, especially when he has a fighting force like the Thor Corps.  Suffice it to say, this book looks like a fairly self-contained mini-series and like almost all of the Secret Wars tie-ins, is off to a great start.

3.5 out of 5