International Iron Man #4

Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Art by: Alex Maleev
Published by Marvel Comics


In the last one or two years, some fans have expressed dissatisfaction with Brian Michael Bendis. He suffers from the same blessing and curse as screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. His dialogue is witty and immediately identifiable. Like Sorkin’s, Bendis’s dialogue has the side-effect of making characters sound similar. Because his style is so distinct, even people who don’t normally notice such things can pick up on it.

However, when Bendis gets material that fits his style, no one cares that that all the characters are too witty for their own good or that every serious situation gets a well-timed quip. It’s just plain fun and International Iron Man is Bendis in top form.

The series begins after Tony Stark discovers he’s adopted. He embarks on a journey to find his biological parents and soon his investigation leads him to cross paths with an old college flame, Cassandra. It turns out that Cassandra isn’t just another fling. She might very well be the original heartbreaker that set Tony down the path of lifelong bachelorhood. And she’s a terrorist.

The story is balanced between then and now, flashing back and forth between the early days of Tony’s romance with Cassandra, and his current life-and-death entanglement with her. Cassandra has transformed from adorable schoolgirl crush to a leather-clad, eye-patched arms dealer with A.I.M.-level tech and resources. She’s a heavy hitter now.

Bendis always manages to capture memorable moments of young love. The pair have a college party meet-cute, they banter, they fall in love, they get attacked by Hydra and galvanize their trust in one another. That last bit is purely Marvel, but in the Marvel universe, it probably happens to a lot of blossoming romances.

If it all sounds a little too “storybook,” that’s because it is. As we found out in the previous issue, Tony fell for a “honey pot” scam. Cassandra’s family used her to gain access to Tony and, thus, vicariously gain access to his world-famous weapons-dealing father (who immediately saw through the ruse, creating an even wider rift between he and Tony).

Bendis knows Tony inside and out after writing the Avengers for six years. Every line Tony delivers feels organic and as good as it feels to follow around the full-grown, fully-realized adult Tony Stark, it’s even more fulfilling to learn about his early college days from a writer who consistently nails the attitude and emotions of young characters who desperately grope their way around the pitfalls of early life. As usual, Alex Maleev adeptly handles both micro-expressions and the meatier splash pages.

No, this is not a perfect comic. Tony learning of his adoption is just a gimmick to inject unnecessary drama into his life. It is front and center throughout the issue as the driving force behind all of Tony’s actions. It’s too...normal. This is important to Tony, as it would be for most people, but he’s willing to start a war with a well-funded terror group to find answers. There has to a more efficient way, right? Still, it’s hard to demand much more from an Iron Man comic. Our hero is charismatic, funny and clever. He makes bad decisions and cleverly finds ways out of the situations he creates for himself. Some readers may complain about the relative lack of action, but, all-in-all, you won’t find an Iron Man story that captures the essence of the character as well as in International Iron Man.