nickjenkins's Profile

Plot
Madame Masque is working with A.I.M. and forces a brilliant and resourceful individual to recreate the Iron Man suit under the same circumstances, but he fails. She then devises another plan to create her own Tony Stark.

Iron Man defeats Blizzard in Los Angeles and heads to present his first Tony Stark Award. With Pepper Potts' help, he selects a person of exceptional intellig ence: Adam Ware, a specialist in new teaching techniques. Tony is being watched by Melinda, who represents the government that has banned the use of powerful weapons following the defeat of Doctor Doom. She is currently an ally.

But the event is interrupted by Madame Masque, who kidnaps Pepper. Tony rescues her, only to realize it's a distraction; Masque has kidnapped Adam Ware.

A.I.M. not only kidnapped Adam, but also all the finalists for the Tony Stark Award, all personally chosen by Tony for their outstanding intelligence. With time running out, Iron Man must save all these people, as they are part of an old contingency plan of Tony's that he had previously discarded.

Captain America suspects Tony's plan and alerts the Avengers to the possibility of stopping Iron Man at some point.

A spectacular and exciting start to a new Iron Man saga, which refreshes his universe and places him in a kind of conspiracy that was his own idea.

Art
Carmen demonstrates her ability to create brilliant dynamism, where her lines create mesmerizing sequences and capture the essence of all these classic characters, updating them and highlighting their sexier traits while balancing them with their heroic moments.

Summary
Iron Man faces a conspiracy that perverts Tony's desire to reward excellence by turning brilliant and innocent people into key weapons for a nefarious A.I.M. project.
A magnificent starting point for new readersmore

I was skeptical when I read the solicits for this series about how they would get Laura to a place where she'd be not only on Revelation's side in this event but also taking the mantle of Sabretooth. I really liked Schultz's Laura series up to this point, though, and gave her the benefit of the doubt that there was going to be some continuity in characterization.
My skepticism was answered, as I think Schultz efficiently accounted for what seems to have been a complex and difficult journey on Laura's part.

It may be the case that some readers will not like Schultz's ideas about what happened to Laura in the "X" years separating Age of Revelation and the status quo/main continuity stories, but I don't think it's valid to say that Laura is "out of character" or that Schultz didn't explain the intervening years well enough (and I expect more explanation will be on its way in the next issues). I'm looking forward to seeing how Laura navigates between her feelings of duty to mutants as a whole and her more intimate connections to her wolverine family.more

It's really irritating that the users on this site most devoted to reviewing X-Men are hate-readers who don't even pretend to be acting in good faith.

Because of their bs, I was tempted to rate this one-shot higher than I think it deserves, just to even things out a bit, but I won't.

This issue is very skippable. If you are hoping to read the Age of Revelation event but als o are a bit stretched financially by the enormous number of tie-in series, you should know that this one-shot has three stories, and only one seems likely to matter to the overarching event: the first one, which is written by Al Ewing.

Ewing takes us back to Arakko, which is where the action of his (awesome) X-Men: Red series took place. It gives us a few glimpses of the ways that Arakko has developed in the years since the Genesis War, which took place at the same time that Orchis was making its move on Earth. I would love for Marvel to just give Ewing a new on-going series set on Arakko, but unfortunately this brief tale didn't give him enough room to do anything truly interesting. There's a big reveal at the end that I won't spoil, but if it does come into play in another series, it's also not something that will require explanation or exposition.

The second story is about Hulkling and Wiccan, and if you are fans of them, you may enjoy it. I' don't have any strong feelings about them, as the only things I've read where they appear have featured them only marginally, so I would not be a good judge of whether this story does them justice or not.

The third story allows Ryan North to fit the Fantastic Four into this event, but not in a way that seems like it will make any difference to the bigger plot.

Again, if you are looking to trim the number of Age of Revelation comics you're buying, skipping this issue is very reasonable.more

I thought the choice to position Thor as the hero to challenge the others to explain why they should continue to resist Doom's rule was a smart decision. There has always been a tension in Marvel comics between the way pro-democracy rhetoric in most comics sits side-by-side by treatments of monarchy or even autocracy that present that form of rule as a legitimate and potentially even beneficial sy stem. Kingship is presented as difficult, but not fundamentally wrong as a political regime.

Tony splutters a bit when Thor puts him on the defensive-he finds it difficult to justify why monarchy ought to be rejected out of hand. This difficulty is relatable: we are not often called on to explain what the merits of democracy are in concrete terms; because democracy has been ideologically so dominant, our reasons may amount to abstractions and clichés. It will be interesting if North can work through that difficulty not by crafting a better speech but by embedding a defense of democracy in the plot. If Doom's rule seems to be working even better than democracy, what are we not seeing that could make us reassess?more

I was eager to see some of the team members who have not yet appeared, but it's probably best for them to be introduced more gradually. I'm neither for or against the Natasha/Bucky romance, but more importantly it seems like they have complementary skills as team leaders but also differing m.o.'s, so it should be interesting to watch that play out.

I thought this issue was an improvement on the first Giant-Size. I enjoyed Rod Reis's work in New Mutants and I thought he acquitted himself really well here, especially in some of the smaller panels that focused on characters' reactions and expressions (close-ups, in other words). The story didn't have to squeeze in so much but Lanzing and Kelly also integrated the Legion stuff into the classic s tory with less difficulty, or rather they seemed to be able to move more easily in step with the narrative momentum of the original plot.

I still don't entirely understand Kamala's mutant power, but I'm also not really bothered.more

Although this issue was rightly focused on Emma, there were a few panels that acknowledged the conflicted feelings that Kitty must have been experiencing as she saw Emma laid flat and near death. Just because Kate is my favorite character, I wish she had been given some more space for those feelings, although in the middle of an emergency she seldom wastes time emoting. Perhaps in the next issue, Emma and Kitty will get a moment to process and reach an understanding closer to that which they reached on Krakoa before Kate was appointed captain of the Marauder. more

Vying to be my favorite current ongoing.

This is likely my fault rather than Gillen's but Etienne is the only character whose power set I feel like I understand. This may be a series that will be much more enjoyable when it's collected in an omnibus.

I thought Camp couldn't top #2. I don't think this does, but it's not far off.