Iron Man: Fatal Frontier #3

[arbre_rieur]

"I don't want anyone to dismiss this as an Iron Man mini with no connection to the main "Iron Man" book. This is core Iron Man stuff." -- Kieron Gillen

(Note: Keep in mind that this is one of Marvel's online Infinite Comics. They're designed to be read on a digital device, with each page replacing the previous one on your screen. When the pages are instead side-by-side, stacked vertically, like in this post, it can make for an awkward reading experience. Also, the format makes page count a tricky matter, but if you count each "slide" as a page, then this is well under 1/3 of the issue.)

His power running dangerously low and his jettisoned battery about to explode rather all-consumingly, Tony Stark decides he's done for.









He sacrifices the energy keeping his heart beating to save Udarnik from the explosion. His pulse slowing down, hovering between life and death, he has a hallucination about Ho Yinsen.

























And one final ingredient, the catalyst that made the moon start to bleed red...

Comments

[cypherfdp]

That robot is just so excited to have Moon Friends again.

[q99]

Nice, peaceful resolution!

... granted, it's not going to *end* that way.

[md84]

So all of this is happening because 1) a robot got lonely and 2) the moon has been exposed to so much cosmic macguffin stuff that it's BECOME cosmic macguffin stuff.

Makes sense, as much as anything makes sense in comics.

[drmcninja]

Man, they reuse a lot of panels in this book.

[icon_uk]

In a sequence of images that would be part of the "Motion comic" feel that a digitial title would have, with the smaller images (like Udarik and the Various visitors to the moon) changing within the larger image.

[practicalcat]

It doesn't work in a non-motion comic, though.

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

But it works fine here, because this is a motion comic.

[practicalcat]

Legit! I couldn't tell by the post.

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

I'm now getting some Sparks Nevada & Croach the Tracker vibes from Tony & Udarnik there.

[arilou_skiff]

Fun.

[starwolf_oakley]

I recall a novel where characters wondered if private corporations going into space would turn it into a new version of the Wild West. I guess there's something to it. Don't remember the title, sorry.

[quatoria]

What, you mean kind of like... a western in space? Nah, that'd never work.

[violetclm.livejournal.com]

The Man who Sold the Moon, maybe?

[damar148]

There's that Sean Connery film Outland that basically was High Noon.

[7dialsmystery]

The Weyland-Yutani corporation is here to accompany you on the way to a brighter tomorrow! Let's make all worlds a better place!

[donnblake]

All right, I've been snarking at this book for a while, but I have to admit, this is pretty cool.

[psylynce]

I'm glad they went with Tranquility Gulch, for some reason. It's got a good sci-if western ring to it. Or I just like the word "gulch". Nice and guttural.

On Continuity...

[mr_cyn1cal]

See, this is the argument against continuity...

"Mr. Stark, do you have prior experience running this kind of operation?"
"Yes, Mr. Secretary General, not only was I the US Secretary of Defense -"
"-a position you lost due to many various and sundry reasons - we'll be getting to that-"
"-I also developed and deployed the SHRA and Initiative programs in the US"
"Would these be the same programs that lead to a superhuman civil war among the American Superhuman community, and then subsequently lead to massive causalities in New York during an incursion from space by the Hulk, and then a planetary alien invasion by the Skrulls?"
"Don't worry! I erased my brain after that and rebooted with a memory that doesn't include any of those events!"
"So not only are you saying that you are responsible for those events, but that because you don't remember them, you can't possibly have learned from the horrible mistakes you made?"
"and I'd do it all again!"

Filed under: People in the Marvel Universe must be dumber than a bag of rocks.

Re: On Continuity...

[dr_archeville]

I disagree, if anything it seems an argument against writers not knowing their continuity, and not properly aligning their stories and characters. (I.e., if you want to tell Iron Man stories, there are some types of stories he doesn't work well in; if you want to tell a frontier/Western tales, there are some characters you shouldn't use.)

Re: On Continuity...

[arbre_rieur]

I think their point is that there comes a point where a character has so much continuity that it becomes too restrictive. Alan Moore's groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing technically violates continuity because the central concept it all springboards from, that the Swamp Thing is not and thus never can be human, contradicts a single issue previously published where he did temporarily become human.