Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Salvador Larroca
Publisher: Marvel
Price: $2.99

I remember back in 2006, when Five Fists of Science turned up we were all blown away by it, and by its writer; some guy called Matt Fraction. After that he turned up again writing his own Image on-going Casanova, which was, for all intents and purposes, genius. Then Immortal Iron Fist fist was announced. I really couldn’t see how it was ever going to be any good. Then I read it, and it confirmed that Matt Fraction is indeed one of the greatest new comic book writers of the last 5 years. This month we mourn the end of Fraction’s Iron Fist, but we do get a new project. The Invincible Iron Man is a new on-going from Marvel, and one of three Iron Man books this month; must be a movie out I guess. Can Fraction work his magic once again.

The current Iron Man series Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. is very much a political intrigue/espionage book, and it works incredibly well. What Fraction brings to the table in this new series is a more traditional, super-hero centric book. The focus is really on two things. The first is big spectacle; things kick off with a very big explosion, and then we join Iron Man in space fixing a shuttle, that kind of thing. The second is a more personal look at Stark, his hopes, his troubles and his insecurities. The Stark we get in Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. is all business; arrogant, assured, a smooth operator. We see some of that with Fraction’s Stark, but more importantly we get a glimpse into what it’s like to carry all that responsibility. We get to see what Stark forsakes to be Iron Man and Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. There’s hints of the child-like Stark who takes joy in technological marvels like seeing a shuttle landing, and we find there is cracks in that impenetrable armour of self-assuredness. We are reminded that Stark’s only demon isn’t his drinking, as the world’s leading futurist he is under continuous dread of being left behind, and that because of his job he is at risk of focusing so much in the present that he forgets the future and gets superseded by something newer and shinier. The new villain of the piece, a teenage son of Stane, epitomises all of Stark’s worst nightmares (he’s younger than Stark, more self-assured than Stark, as bright as Stark and 100 times more free to explore his ideas), and as such makes the perfect adversary.

Joining Fraction on art duties is Salvador Larroca. The style is very much in keeping with what we’ve seen from Larroca recently in both NewUniversal and Uncanny X-Men. The focus is on realistic and expressive faces, people and foreground objects, all with an almost photo-realistic look. I know some people hate this style, but here it generally works well, with the clean lines and the fine details lending themselves well to a book with lots of cool tech to draw. The backgrounds are for the best part simplistic in order to allow the detail of the in frame objects and peopls to come through. However all the panels deliver a clear sense of location and perspective, and when things kick off Larocca is still very much able to deliver that big-screen spectacle that he became famous for during his run on Xtreme X-Men/em>. There are also a couple of really nice visual tricks on offer, particularly on page three where the transition between the Stark logo on a phone and the same shape on the chest of the Iron Man armour is a very nice touch.

This series was always going to be a hard sell really. The existing Iron Man book, while good, is hardly doing the numbers that suggest a second series is in demand. Fraction, while a great writer, needs freedom of character development and story direction to really shine I think, and with a character as established and high profile as Iron Man he really does not get that freedom. I think if Marvel had given him Iron Man and said “go nuts”, this would have been legendary, instead it’s above average. We get a more human view of Stark, and a bit of kick ‘splode fun, all written very competently and illustrated quite beautifully. If you are a fan of Iron Man, or if the other Iron Man title is just a bit too dark and gritty, then this is definitely for you. If you don’t currently pick up an Iron Man title then I’d be hard pushed to recommend one title over the other with respect to quality. Buy them both, I do.