Reviews 

“Tony Stark: Iron Man” #4

By | October 5th, 2018
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Most of the time, a superhero is only as good as their villain. But the superhero genre is wide-encompassing, and a good ongoing series can get into all sorts of genre territory. Case in point- “Tony Stark: Iron Man” #4. Sure, there’s a “bad guy” in this story, but the issue mostly concerns itself with science fiction wrapped up in romance. This freewheeling installment of “Iron Man” is a classic comic book with just enough surprises to keep you guessing.

Cover by Alexander Lozano
Written by Dan Slott
Illustrated by Valerio Schiti
Colored by Edgar Delgado
Lettered by VC’s Joe Caramanga

STUNG! You wanted to know who the book’s love interest is going to be? Here you go. The one, the only…Janet Van Dyne! A love not seen since AVENGERS #224 is about to be rekindled. And what’s going on with Sunset Bain’s new dating app? Some of these online matches are just a little too good to be true…

There’s a lot going on in “Tony Stark: Iron Man” as an ongoing, but this issue is mostly about the Make-a-Match dating app from rival company Baintronics. As such it focuses on two main romance stories. One is the cute relationship developing between point-of-view character Andy Bhang and Tony’s biological mother Amanda. The other is Tony himself, who goes on a date with the original Wasp, Janet Van Dyne.

All of this is overlaid with the series ongoing concern for ethics in robotics. There are quite a few artificially intelligent automatons in this story, and how much autonomy and agency they are given is a central question the series never loses sight of. Without giving too much away, there’s a great moment towards the end where Tony needs to figure out how to non-lethally take out a bunch of robots serving the bad guy. They’re just obeying their programming. Is it really that different than a bunch of innocent people being mind controlled by the Purple Man?

That interplay between romance and technology is the theme of the issue, and it manifests in a couple of ways. Dan Slott has a good time breaking down dating apps and taking a couple of different sides. Rhodey misses the good old days when you met people at a bar or the gym. The other members of Team Stark are having a great time setting up their dating profiles. Bethany Cabe is just a curmudgeon who hates doing the work of screening all these new potential security risks. The story isn’t too concerned with reaching a conclusion, but does a great job at representing a wide array of viewpoints and letting the drama extend naturally from the characters.

As a couple, Janet and Tony make quite a bit of sense. As two of the founding Avengers, they’ve known each other for a long time, and this issue brings a lot of their weird history to the forefront. They’re also two of the more glamorous long-time members of the team. Janet is a wealthy fashionista and Tony is a fun-loving playboy. Their high tech (and expensive looking) date looks like lots of fun, and you wonder why anyone ever thought Janet would be happy with a stick in the mud like Hank Pym. Tony and Janet come across as equals, who can barely keep up with each other when it comes to quippy flirtation.

With so much going on, Valerio Schiti is the perfect artist for the issue. On the one hand, he’s a solid superhero journeyman. On the Scott McCloud “Understanding Comics” triangle of art, he’s a bit iconic of center (which is to say a little bit more cartoony than his contemporaries), but he never strays in Humberto Ramos style territory. His faces are simple, but everyone has a feature or three to make them distinct. Tony’s thin mustache is ultra-pronounced, as is Andy’s beard. Janet has a tiny little nose, Amanda has a classy scowl. Everyone can be visually reduced to a single shorthand feature.

That somewhat middle-of-the-road style gives Schiti the room for expression in other places, and Slott’s script encourages him not to just draw a series of talking heads. The story begins with a commercial, which has a distinct visual style from the “real life” action. A good chunk of the action happens in cyberspace, or adjacent to some funky memory cameras. Schiti, with a bit of help from letterer Joe Caramagna don’t do anything flashy, but fun little flourishes help the reader follow the action, in a way that’s pure comics. There also the occasional montage sequence where Schiti really shines, especially Tony and Janet’s date.

Dan Slott is a guy with big, bold ideas, which seems to piss a lot of people off, but at his core he is one of the premiere telling of superhero stories. “Tony Stark: Iron Man” #4 doesn’t have a gimmick or a special hook, and that allows the creative team to tell another wild chapter in the life of its protagonist. It’s in these in-between issues that Slott really shines. The ideas are big, but work within the confines on an ongoing series. All of it comes together as the gold standard for what this kind of story should look like.

Final Verdict: 8.1 – Love is in the air, and robots, and action, and it makes for a great superhero comic.


Jaina Hill

Jaina is from New York. She currently lives in Ohio. Ask her, and she'll swear she's one of those people who loves both Star Wars and Star Trek equally. Say hi to her on twitter @Rambling_Moose!

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