Creative Team
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Salvador Larroca
Colorist: Frank D’Armata
Story – World’s Most Wanted Part 4: Breach
Review
Though “World’s Most Wanted” started with a good opening chapter that showed the potential the story Fraction had. Since then the following two chapter’s of “World’s Most Wanted” has been a bit on the boring side. Fraction’s story feels like a combination of two classic Iron Man stories “Demon in the Bottle” and “Armor Wars.” And for the most part the story doesn’t feel like Fraction has introduced anything new into the story other than integrating parts of the Iron Man film into continuity.
The thing about Invincible Iron Man #11 is that it has a weak beginning, an interesting middle, and non-compelling ending. My biggest problem with this issue was the beginning with Pepper training in order use her armor to its full potential. Now even though the idea of Pepper having to train do to her not having as high of an intelligence as Tony is actually pretty cool. I just find the A.I. that Tony installed to help with Pepper’s training is called Jarvis. At the moment I heard the A.I. of the Iron Woman had was called Jarvis I just rolled my eyes as Fraction continues to integrate everything from the Iron Man film into Marvel’s continuity.
Though I liked that Fraction returned Tony to being the playboy he should always be but has been thrown away over the past few years I think he is going to far with his fanboy obsession of the film. And I think it would have been much more interesting if the A.I system was actually called Tony instead as it could have lead to some funny dialogue between Pepper and a computerized Tony.
Even though the beginning of the issue was just one big eye roller, as I mentioned before, the middle of this issue was maybe the most enjoyable part of this issue. It is cool to see how even before the whole Dark Reign event happened Tony already had a plan in place in order to stay in contact with those closest to him. Fraction does an impressive job showing that Tony is always prepared for any problem he forsees happening in the future. I will be interested to see what role the new character introduced in this issue, Henry Hellrung, will play in the rest of this story.
I also continue to enjoyed how Fraction continues to develop Maria Hills character as more than just a character the reader loves to hate. Seeing Hill use all of her espionage training to infiltrate Futurepharm unseen. Though I wonder what she is doing in Futurepharm as I thought her mission was to get in contact with Captain America.
Now am I missing something or did Rhodey somehow magically transform into a cyborg. I don’t remember seeing this transformation in any of the Iron Man comics. Is it something that was introduced in the new War Machine comic?
In any case that aside I found the whole fight between Tony and Rhodey that took up the last half of the issue to be uninteresting. The whole fight reminds me that I still have no idea why Fraction took away the Extremis powerup Tony had as the idea behind why he doesn’t have it to be to convenient. Also I found Rhodey’s whole involvement in trying to “capture” Tony to be questionable as I don’t know if he choose to do it on his own or if it was Norman controlling the cyborg Rhodey.
The supposed hook ending was not much of a hook as I could care less about seeing a fight between Tony and Namor. And also I do not get how someone like Namor, who has never been known to take orders from someone else, to accept Norman’s orders without question. Though maybe Fraction will surprise me and continue to show how Tony has planned all of this ahead of time.
Now the artwork by Salvador Larroca continues to have its positives and negatives. As always I find him to do a great job drawing the various Iron Man armors as he gives it that nice clean look the Iron Man armor should have. Though still I continue to find all of characters outside armors to have an unnatural look to them. It is like all the human’s in Invincible Iron Man have gone through a car wax or something as they to shiney and stiff. And I don’t see this aspect of Larroca’s art to improve as this has been the case for every issue of Invincible Iron Man so far.
Issue Rating
Story: 6.3/10 – Though most of the issue was a bit to boring Fraction did a nice job with the Tony and Henry scene as well as Maria Hill’s mission.
Art: 5.4/10 – Larroca’s art continues to have its positives and negatives with the negatives outweighing the positive.
Overall: 5.85/10 – “World’s Most Wanted” continues to feel like a rehash of previous Iron Man stories though this story still has some untapped potential.