Comics I Bought This Week: November 19, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Echo - 16

Dr. Horrible - 1

Hercules "Full Circle"

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

"The Invincible Iron Man: World's Most Wanted: Book 1" by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larrroca

This Iron Man volume can be summed up like I summed up "The Ultimates". It's alternately good and a train wreck. I blame Warren Ellis's writing for bringing "real" geo-politics to super hero comics. Except in Ellis's comics the geo-politics usually hinder things. It's tough to get things done in the real world. In Ellis-land the heroes were often thwarted by bureaucracy and politics.

In the current Marvel Universe Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, is in charge of the US's national security. It defies believability and takes me out of the story sometimes. That and as the guy in charge Norman Osborn has no checks and balances on him. He just does whatever he wants even though if these were "real" geo-political stories he would lose his job in a day. At one point Norman Osborn decides to test a super hero's power so he orders an airliner shot down. It is shot down and he has to explain himself to no one. It's this kind of stuff that makes me put the book down in disbelief.

The rest of the story is pretty good. It's an "Us Against the World" tale as Tony Stark (Iron Man) has to go on the run because Norman Osborn has made him an outlaw. The "Us" refers to Tony Stark, his co-worker Pepper Potts, and Tony's ex-secuity chief Maria Hill. All sorts of chase scenes, fight scenes, and strategies go by at an entertaining pace.

The art was only so-so for me. It's that photo realistic type artwork that's been popular in mainstream super hero comics for a while now. It comes off as a little dead to me. Well executed by lifeless at times.

So there you go. When it was good it was good but when it was bad I had to put the book down out of sheer disbelief. But at least sometimes it was good. That's more than I can say about a lot of comics.