Comics I Bought This Week: June 4, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got no new comics but I did get a hard cover collection:

"Hulk: Red and Green" Volume 2

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

"The Invincible Iron Man: Five Nightmares" by Matt Fraction and Salvdore Larrocca

I haven't checked in on any "Iron Man" comics in a long while. I've liked Matt Fraction's writing on "Iron Fist" so I decided to check out his work in this collection.

This relaunch of Iron Man ties the book in more closely with the movie but since the movie was pretty close to the old Iron Man comics I've read it really didn't take a lot. Tony Stark (Iron Man's alter ego) is the head of Marvel's spy agency and still running his own giant technology company. The son of a former Iron Man enemy decides he wants to kill Tony Stark and his company.

The first few issues of this story were a little bleak. That's when the villain of the piece, Ezekiel Stane, starts his campaign of super terrorism against the world. He sends guy out to blow themselves and others up with super bombs. Stark isn't sure how to stop him. But eventually he does and that's the story.

I generally liked the story. It was a downer at first and had a little too much "The world isn't the same old man" stuff in it for my taste but I liked the plot and script.

I found the artwork just so-so. Some of it was good but some of it fell flat. Once again the coloring let me down. The colorists were going for a illustrative realism and it didn't work. Muddy skin tones and "realism" where it wasn't called for by the pencils bogged it down for me. Not horrible artwork but not A level either.

All in all this was an okay book. I enjoyed the writing more then the art but they played together pretty well. Check it out if you want to catch up on the world of Tony Stark.