Ultimate Comics Iron Man #1

Ultimate Comics Iron Man #1:

The Team

            Written by Nathan Edmondson (Grifter, Who is Jake Ellis?), Art by Matteo Buffagni (Captain America)

The Book

            The first, and most important thing to say about this comic is that Iron Man’s suit is ridiculously, erroneously, recklessly ugly. The shape of the head is obscene. It feels like they took Chris Hemsworth beautiful face and covered it in acne.  They change all of the looks of the characters for the Ultimate universe, and that’s okay, and he looks like this in Ultimate Comics Ultimates as well, but it’s horrible and it needed to be said.

            The reason the incomprehensible ugliness of the suit is so important is because it’s a pretty apt metaphor for the book as a whole, especially considering that it’s a mini-series. Edmondson has four issues to get his point across, and it feels like he just pissed 25% of his available space away.

            The story bounces between two periods in time, which usually isn’t a problem, but in this book it’s done too quickly to have a valuable effect. The reader doesn’t have a chance to spend substantial consecutive time in any one space, leaving the book feeling vapid when it comes to a close.

            The emotional payoffs are the largest casualty of Edmondson’s haphazard approach. We meet Josie (or Josey. It’s spelled both ways in the comic, which is presumably an error) when we go “Back Then” , and then Howard Stark comes in and acts all Howard Stark like and, presumably, I’m supposed to feel something here because Tony is young and Daddy is controlling his life, but Edmondson gives me no reason to actually feel that way. Then he cuts back to Tony, present day, making major profits and living the rock star life because he went down the path his Dad created for him, and then Edmondson tries to take the reader back to feeling sad about Josie.

            On top of that, the action is mundane. There really isn’t much of note in that category, which is probably positive for this book, because every other noteworthy piece of this book has been staunchly bad.

            Other than the suit, the art is pretty much a non-factor. I don’t look at it in awe of its powerful beauty, but it isn’t distractingly bad either. Buffagni does fine, which is more than I can say for a lot of the book.

            On the bright side, there are still three issues left, which give Edmondson at least a little time to recover. On the other hand, there are only three issues left, and it appears that the order might be three more than necessary.