• FATAL FRONTIER is over. The moon is safe. The Earth is safe. But is Tony's sanity?
• What comes back from the moon with Tony? What new friends and new enemies?
Once you've passed the fatal, final frontier, can you ever go back?
This annual serves a much needed role in expanding the Iron Man series through its more obscure or forgotten characters. While there is a remarkably small amount of actual Iron Man in this Iron Man annual he does get the rest of the series to himself so it's only fair that some of the other characters get the spotlight. This issue was written well enough that it may peak your interest in characters who might have seemed uninteresting before. In short this issue does what an annual should do, it takes advantage of the extra time outside of the main plotline to enrich the series and give it more depth. Read Full Review
Ultimately, Kieron Gillen front-loads this annual well enough to take it off the ground, even though a print annual is a curious place to be addressing the aftermath of a digital series that few people have read. Perhaps Gillen has some future plot developments in this book that we aren't aware of - that said, this book doesn't really add too much to the fun Mandarin story going on in the monthly book, but instead is a more sedate check-in with Tony Stark and company. Completists and Gillen fans will dig it - otherwise, not the end of the world if you skip this. Read Full Review
Unfortunately, the end result of all of this is very mixed, and this annual doesn't really emerge as required reading for those just following the main series and not the Fatal Frontier comic. Read Full Review
Call me a stick-in-the-mud or a traditionalist, but I prefer my Annuals to be encapsulated events, toppers to a long story or an extra-long, extra-fun self-contained adventure. "Iron Man Annual" #1 is none of those. It's not a terrible comic, it's just not a comic worthy of Annual status, nor will it prove to be an overly memorable one. Essentially, "Iron Man Annual" #1 sums up the unadorned nature that the series has delivered of late: it's mechanically fine, but it's mechanical. Read Full Review
All in all Two Cities makes the Iron Man Annual #1 worth reading. Borrowing themes and methods of storytelling from two giants of sci-fi it tells an immersive story between man, machine, and the desolation of space. As a whole this issue feels muddled, unsure of what story its really trying to tell. Read Full Review
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