Basement X

IRON MAN # 7

So, Gillen has brought Iron Man into space with a modified suit. It's quite interesting.
Our basic story is that there is a race who have found Stark guilty of killing their God and other related crimes. It's quite fun and there's a re-introduction of a Marvel UK character that's amusingly executed.

Sometimes, I don't mind Greg Land art. I think he does the suit quite well. But, his Tony Stark, like most of his person art looks really photo-shopped and 'still'. Tony's also looking a bit oriental as well.
I really feel Land art takes a few marks off of this book.

So, no one reading this?

IRON MAN #9
Writer: Kieron Gillan
Artist: Greg 'Tracing Paper' Land

The second story arc wrapped up last issue. This was the initial space saga story. Iron Man was captured and held at trial for killing the Phoenix, who was a god to his captives.
I don't feel I understood the story that well, but from bits in the current issue, I gather that Iron Man's helper, who manipulates Stark whilst helping him escape death during trial by combat brings about the death of the race holding Iron Man, by stealing a device that brings the race energy to run their world. The device ciphones off power from the Celestials and other entities like the Phoenix. They do this unnoticed, until the baddie steals the device and the Celestials, now aware of the game wipe out that race. Baddie escapes with the device, Iron Man now realises that he inadvertently was part of a genocide.

This issue...
Iron Man enlists the help of Deaths Head to track down the baddie only to get played.
Quite a well done issue. Nice bit of context by including StarLord and hence giving us a semblance of editorial cohesion as Iron Man also stars in GOTG.
Nice swerve in the book and nice cliffhangar.

I hate the art though. It's the cheesy faces. Most everything else is otherwise quite good. Those Kodac camera smiles ruin everything though.

I'm somewhat tempted, but two things push me off of the book. One being that Iron Man as a solo hero has never really interested me. The tech things usually just go way over my head and they don't make sense. I like him in Avengers, but his tech heavy dialogue usually just washes over me there too at times. So a whole book of that would be too much.

The other things pushing me away is Land, as I've never really been much of a fan.

When Land first landed at Marvel, I kind of liked it. It seemed fresh. After a while, the photo realism gets a bit much, when you're no longer impressed with the realism and can see how many different issues of different books all star the same character models in the exact same poses. And the cheesy Kodac smiles!

I agree. I was somewhat entertained by his work at the start and then everything blurred together. Basically the same face for expressions over and over. It works for covers from time to time for me, but I don't like reading books when he's on interiors.

Land was amazing on Sojourn. Everything from there on was just not good.