Iron Man 2 opens on Friday, and if you’re excited about the Jon Favreau movie, you might want to pick up a collection of the comic book series that inspired it. Iron Man’s been appearing in comics more or less continuously since he was introduced in 1963’s Tales of Suspense #39, and there’s a hefty stack of books collecting the various series in which he’s starred.
The problem is that most of them aren’t very good, or are mostly of historical interest. Of all the major early Marvel characters, Iron Man was probably the one with the least strong ties to particular creators or a particular approach in the ’60s and early ’70s; even his first story was plotted by Stan Lee but scripted by his brother Larry Lieber, with some of his character design by Jack Kirby but some (as well as that first story’s artwork) by Don Heck. With a few exceptions, Iron Man has been a creative hot potato ever since, and generally a second-tier comic book; the character has usually seemed more useful as an ensemble player (in Avengers or in crossover stories like Civil War and World War Hulk) than on his own.
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Still, there are a handful of Iron Man stories that are in print, entertaining in their own right, and likely to make sense to somebody whose only previous exposure to the character are his movies. Here are three starting points: books a fan of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark could get a kick out of.
THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN VOL. 1 by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca
A forty-dollar hardcover (sometimes listed with “Omnibus” in its title)–although it’s easy enough to find for considerably less–this reprints the first 19 issues of Fraction and Larroca’s terrific current Iron Man series, whose look and feel share a lot with the first movie. (The same material is also available as a series of three paperbacks or slimmer hardcovers, subtitled “The Five Nightmares” and “World’s Most Wanted” books 1 and 2.) Enjoy the flirtatious dynamic between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts? Wonder what would happen if Tony’s laissez-faire attitude toward arms dealing caught up with him? Curious about the prospect of slipping him into the premise of “Flowers for Algernon”? This is the one for you.
IRON MAN: EXTREMIS by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov
Ellis and Granov’s story arc kicked off the fourth Iron Man series in late 2004, and although it appeared at an infamously slow rate (its six issues took nearly a year and a half), it formed the groundwork for the past half-decade’s worth of stories. Iron Man, at its best, is often a device for telling stories about the cutting edge of technology, and “Extremis” returned to that premise, and to the idea of a self-loathing genius given a renewed existence by integrating technology with his own body. The CGI effects of Granov’s artwork give the storyline a sort of video-game look; it’s also been adapted into a limited-animation “motion comic” serial that recently debuted. (Granov went on to draw the beginning of Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas, a miniseries written by Iron Man director Favreau, which abruptly went into limbo after its second issue.)
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IRON MAN: DOOMQUEST by David Michelinie, Bob Layton and John Romita Jr.
Michelinie and Layton collaborated on Iron Man longer than any other team–from 1979 to 1982, and again from 1987 to 1989. Their best-known storyline was probably “Demon in a Bottle,” in which Tony Stark’s drinking problem threatens to destroy him and his company, but it’s melodramatic and stern in a way that the first Iron Man movie distinctly isn’t. Much more fun: this tightly compressed little high-adventure double feature from 1981 and 1989, which involves time travel, Dr. Doom and King Arthur, and incidentally sets up a couple of plot points in Brian Michael Bendis’s recent Avengers comics.
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