The Captain Kirk Slam: Iron Man #6 Review

Editor’s Note: My old man had a philosophy: peace means having a bigger spoiler than the other guy.

If I had to hazard a guess, writing Iron Man has to be an interesting and somewhat difficult task for Kieron Gillen. He’s following an Eisner-winning run by writer Matt Fraction on Invincible Iron Man, and not only is he taking the peak seat writing a character who is now mired in the popular culture not only as the star of his own movies, but the star of The Avengers and, if reports are correct, soon to be part of the Guardians of The Galaxy movie. So imagine not only that heavy responsibility that Gillen must feel, but throw on top of it that he is working with artist Greg Land, which means that no matter what Gillen wants to write for Tony Stark, he needs to make sure he includes a coterie of hot chicks for Land to lightbox.

Well, Gillen tries to rise to the task in Iron Man #6, the first part of the three-part arc The Godkiller. First, Land picks up the story gauntlet thrown down by Fraction at the conclusion of Invincible Iron Man, where Fraction set up Stark as preparing to spend an extended period of time in deep space. Gillen picks up story elements from last year’s Avengers Vs. X-Men to put Stark at odds with an entire spacegoing civilization, in a way that could easily put Iron Man into contact with the Guardians before all is said and done. And I can almost see Gillen finishing the first draft of his script and leaning back in his his seat with satisfaction… only to see a handwritten note pinned to his wall reading, “DON’T FORGET THE SPACE BITCHES!” and then sighing, cracking his knuckles and leaning forward to perform draft two.

I say that Gillen “tries” to rise to the task, because while Iron Man #6 lays the groundwork for a high-tension story putting Iron Man into direct conflict with an entire spacefaring civilization… but it is, in fact, all groundwork. This is a somewhat talky, exposition-laden issue with precious little action, instead focusing on explaining the civilization to set the groundwork for future conflict, and on Stark’s daddy issues and senses of aging and mortality. It is mostly foreplay with very little climax.

And, as with most good foreplay, there are hot chicks. So at least Land has something to do.

Tony has taken his armor into deep space, and has found the two things that a man like Stark needs: a fight to pick, and some chicks to hit on. With regards to the fight, Tony has found a gang of space pirates attacking the ancient civilization of the Voldi: an ancient people who has long since past their best and most productive days, having learned their technology long ago from cosmic forces like Galactus and others, and trading the knowledge gleaned from them with civilizations like the Kree and Shi’ar in exchange for protection. Stark learns this during an extended evening trying to lay into Voldi Princess Veritina, a purple space girl who brings out Tony’s inner Captain Kirk (And God, I hope that is not a euphemism). Tony winds up being cockblocked in a sequence destined to be  a product placement opportunity for Gillette if ever made into a movie, before being attacked by automated police officers and eventually arrested for deicide. Which is a hell of a thing to be arrested for – it’s unlikely you’ll do time for deicide, even in the American Southeast – but Tony learns that they might have a legitimate gripe against him, and that he picked the wrong space skank hookup bar to go hang out in.

So let’s be clear: there is far more exposition in this story than actual, you know, story. Part of that is based on Gillen’s choice to create what I think is an entirely new alien race for Tony to be fucking around with. Which makes a lot of sense, since if you need someone to be pissed that Phoenix is dead, it’s gonna be kind of hard to go with any of the usual Marvel Cosmic suspects, most of who view Phoenix as the cosmic version of the good ol’ Southern Trespass. The problem with creating a new alien race whose motivations are going to be driving the story is that you need to spend some time setting the groundwork as to who they are and why they are willing to take affront to Phoenix’s death… which is fine, but it takes a certain amount of story real estate with which to establish those things. That’s this issue, which means, for good or ill, we’ve got an issue full of that exposition.

On the plus side, Gillen makes that exposition reasonably entertaining. Sure, he could have had Tony immediately in the dock, answering bombastic questions about killing Gods with multiple explanation points. Instead. Gillen uses the gimmick of Tony just trying to get laid in space to lay out the exposition. And sure, it means we’re still talking about a lot of exposition, but the gimmick at least humanizes the heavy level of backstory that we’re presented with here. Gillen does a decent job cutting the exposition medicine with some pure carnal interplay… and ending it with what is actually a pretty damn entertaining twist to keep what should be dry as a bone at least a bit light and entertaining.

But there is no escaping the fact that, with the setup of this new race of aliens and everything it entails, nothing really happens in this issue. You can summarize it with the simple sentence, “Tony goes into space, finds the one alien race that gives so much of a shit about the Phoenix Force that they probably also wept when Hitler ate a Luger for lunch, and then gets arrested. To be continued…” So while Gillen does the best he can with the giant expository task that he has set himself, it is still a slow issue that gives enough background to explain why things will eventually happen, without anything actually, you know… happening.

Greg Land’s art, well… Gillen sets Land up pretty much perfectly in this issue, in that he seems to have followed and embraced the aforementioned speculated “SPACE BITCHES!” reminder sign on his wall. Visually, the bulk of this issue follows a few horny and shitfaced alien skanks, recognizable as not being current human pornstars by dint of skin color and ridges of bone instead of hair (meaning that if Tony has actually scored with Veritina, he would have a terrible pelvic bruise in the shape of a triangle, or perhaps a small landing strip ), which means that Gillen has allowed Land to work to his strengths. However, Land still draws one damn weird Tony Stark; there is one image of Stark where his teeth are about twice the height of his squinty eyes, and there’s a panel on the final page where the text indicates Tony is meant to be confused, but instead looks like it’s putting his complete and total concentration into shitting his pants. With that said, Land draws a pretty interesting and consistent set of armor in action, but there’s not a lot of scenes of armor in action in this book to make the artistic accounts total up into the black. Look, I’m going to admit that Land isn’t my favorite artist, so I’m far more likely to find flaws than transcendence in his stuff. But the fact of the matter is, I spend almost every issue of Iron Man trying to figure out what porn star he’s traced to depict female characters, when I’m not trying to identify what facially deformed spastic he’s tracing into Tony Stark. This art just doesn’t work for me.

Iron Man #6 is, in its own way, an ambitious comic book. It introduces a completely new alien race, puts Tony Stark into justifiable mortal danger, and it does it in a way that tries to keep itself from being a dry exposition-fest. But there is no denying that it is almost completely exposition, setting the scene for what will hopefully become an action-packed story. This issue is setup, and as such, I can’t recommend it on its own. If you’ve grabbed it and haven’t read it, maybe consider putting it aside and reading it back-to-back with Iron Man #7 when it comes out.

Unless you have a fixation on purple chicks who look like porn stars with a weird calcium growth issue. In which case, buy away… just tell me about it before we have a chance to shake hands.