Tales of Suspense

[colonel_green]

Four scans from Captain America #605 and three from Invincible Iron Man #25.
 

#605 brings the "Two Americas" arc to an end, as Brubaker gets to the inevitable "Cap fights another Captain America wannabe with a different vision of America" story - pretty much every Cap run since Englehart has to have at least one of these.  James and Sam are on the tail of Evil 50s Cap, who's teamed up with the Watchdogs and plans to blow up the Hoover Dam as a wakeup call to the country so that everything can go back to Leave It To Beaver (I'm guessing Evil 50s Cap isn't a fan of Mad Men).

As our heroes defeat the Watchdogs, James (who is wearing his old costume at 50s Cap's insistence after he was captured) fights 50s Cap; he tries to get through to 50s Cap, who, after all, was a guy who wanted to be a hero and was driven insane by the formula he used to make himself a supersoldier:





Later, the police dredge the water looking for 50s Cap.



As a whole, I think the parallels between the two Caps could have been more fleshed out through the entire arc, but this was an effective ending, and I really liked how the last page brings home that Bucky sees him as a bit of a cautionary tale about the fate of the people who wear the Cap costume.  Brubaker's references to those characters in past issues have always been effective; if I had a single-issue copy of that scene from his first arc where Steve goes to Arlington, I would totally post it, because "They were Captain America" is one of my favourite moments of the run.

Also, 50s Cap gets a classic "if/when the next guy wants to use me, it's easy to say I survived" end; the gentlemanly way for ongoing writers to handle a character's rogues most of the time.

Over in Tony's book, every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in; I had decided to stop buying this with #24, but I skimmed the #25, and it looked interesting, so I ended up buying it, and it is indeed one of the best individual issues that I've read.

Tony goes around rebuilding his fortune/company for the Nth time (while saying he's never done this before, which is wrong, but whatever), starting with the cash flow problem, since they have no money, as Pepper tells pretty much everybody.  Tony visits the site of the Avengers Mansion, where rebuilding is underway, and Thor pays a visit.





He decides to get the cash from the world's business community by offering to mass-produce the Iron Man armour's power source for civilian use, which is a good idea, but one I can't imagine will ever come to any fruition in the wider universe, given the implications of that sort of thing.

He also designs a new suit of armour using Reed Richards' facilities (not having any of his own at the moment), which is entirely liquid and is stored on his body.  I found that interesting, because I assumed that getting rid of Extremis was due to a desire to have him literally have to put on the suit again at all times like in the films, but I guess not.
 

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[jazzypom]

The comic has been half assed from issue one (I stuck through the first seven issues, then decided that I had to stop this train, because I wanted to get off), and silly me before I stopped buying the comic, I felt moved to compose (and post!) a letter, saying that Larroca's art was killing the comic for me. In the sense that Tony's world is one that is technological design not only as forefront but in the background, and how in Larroca's world, the background tended to be static. I also said that Larroca's art seemed warped and more to do with tracing than any sort of dexterity (but in a more polished way) and I got blown off, only for the comic to win an Esiner. So, what do I know.