The Marvel back issues continue to flow from the tap. Today I'm revisiting a beat-up copy of Iron Man #250 from December 1989. Jordan and Bird go one on one on your Nintendo Entertainment System, TSR's Web of Gold is set to rock your dining room table, and Taito is porting arcade games to home screens faster than children can collect their allowance. Immerse yourself in some of the best escape fantasy a buck-fifty can provide. The banner at the top reads, "Acts of Vengeance!", but that Marvel event of the time hardly applies. This one can be read all on it's own.
The cover is a Bob Layton masterpiece. Iron Man, Doctor Doom, and Merlin loom over a futuristic cityscape. The armored avenger is wielding a blade one can only assume is Excalibur and a caption blurb reveals the year is 2093 A.D. This is a comic book-ass comic book. This is the kind of no-frills "Make Mine Marvel" stuff that created a legacy a publisher could lean on for decades. Back when every twenty-five issues marked a blockbuster, before the complete cycle of reboot-event-reboot had taken hold, certain single issues had to carry the weight of of being called an epic.
I know the writer of this issue, David Michelinie, more for his work on Spider-Man with Todd McFarlane. What I've read of his work is action-packed, seemingly created with an artist's itchy trigger finger in mind. His plots move in such a way as to maximize the minutes of costumed action, sometimes at the cost of the civilian identity stuff that made Marvel stand out in the 60's and 70's. This is '89 however, and the heady days of Liefeld, Lee, and shouting muscle monsters is nearly upon us. The visuals here are more of what my mind's eye recognizes as Bronze Age Marvel, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the excesses of 90's comics did not exist here. Layton actually reminds me of George Perez in this issue, and since he's credited with plotting the issue in tandem with Michelinie, a strong artistic direction for the issue can be sussed out and it benefits the finished product greatly.
I was so taken by this issue, I forgot about the clumsy beginning. A mysterious "artifact" (which I can only assume is tied to this whole Acts of Vengeance thing) has shunted Iron Man and Dr. Doom into the future. By page two, Stark and Von Doom are already marveling at their future surroundings and a page later they're being recruited by none other than Merlin to save the futuristic Camelot-to-be. I love how Merlin walks up like he's just another Marvel character and not a hero of legend in an ancient piece of real-world literature. Wait. What am I thinking!? Thor is in the freakin' Avengers. Maybe comic book heroes aren't modern day myths as much as myths are just old-timey superheroes.
Merlin and the young Arthur of the future try to persuade the heroes to help deal with a string of disappearances and satellite hacks that could signal a larger threat on the horizon. Iron Man is down for do-goodery, but Doom is his usual self, and our present day characters part ways in the world of 2093.
(Something just occurred to me: this is just a few years shy of 2099, a year that Marvel constructed a whole sub-imprint around. I wonder if Peter David or any of the creators who worked on the 2099 books ever used this issue's setting as a basis for the future Marvel U?)
Anyhoo, Iron Man takes to space to save satellites and do some sleuthing. Meanwhile, Dr. Doom comes into contact with half of the story's villain tandem: himself. Doom comes scarred face to mechanical face with his future self and doesn't like what he sees. Much like Thanos's revelation in the classic Infinity Gauntlet story, Doom is brought low by his own inner turmoil, doing more damage to himself from within than any costumed hero could do from without. With apologies to Lex Luthor, Marvel has the best egomaniacs. The best!
Iron Man's mission to space sees him cross paths with Andros Stark, a descendant of the Stark line with none of Tony's heroic qualities. The cold, arms dealing capitalist never has that redemption arc and that is how we get the cackling mad war monger that is Andros Stark. Andros also makes mention of Arno Stark, a mid-21st century Iron Man legacy character that was last seen in Kieron Gillen's Iron Man run from just a few years ago. The Stark family line is littered with cracked mirror versions of Tony and his father and I like what Marvel does with that a bit more than DC's attempts to do similar things with the Wayne family.
Naturally, Andros Stark and Future Doom are in cahoots and their scheme involved hitting the big ol' reset button on the world and emerging as conquerers. Our Doom gets punked a few more times, tripping over his ego to comedic effect while Tony trumps future tech with old school mysticism as he weilds Excalibur and cuts through Andros's gear. Doom learns Iron Man's identity, but their trip back to the present wipes the memories of both travelers, nipping that threat in the bud before it can bloom.
Everything is tied up pretty neatly, with Tony off to resume his pre-artifact activities and Doom feeling a little shaken after his encounter with his future self. The last panel of the story sees him grim visage cast as a big, dopey frown thanks to a low angle and some shading. Doom is peeling pretty sad about what he may be destined to become thanks to chasing immortality, but his defeat is a private one. It's really more of a Victor Von Doom story than a Tony Stark story, all things considered.
This is a pretty complete package and unlike a lot of the random fodder I encounter and write about for this blog, I fully recommend this issue. It stands alone nicely and Dr. Doom fans should add it to the list of essential Doom reads. I'd almost put it up there with John Byrne's "day in the life" style issue from his legendary Fantastic Four run.
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