Invincible Iron Man #12

[informationgeek]

Writer Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Mike Deodato Jr.


More with Riri Williams...









Then in walks Tony Stark who wants to see what she's building...

Comments

[flint_marko]

I loved the scene in the issue where Tony said he could wipe out New Attilan if he wanted to.

[nyadnar17]

Considering the shit he did as part of the Illumanti its not idle threat. In terms of raw destructive capability Tony has many peers but no equals.

[lucean]

Something I love about Tony Stark, and actually Scott Summers as the leader of X-Men, is that if they want to take something out, they could in a way you would never see coming.

Hulk and Thor are the powerhouses, Captain America the tactical genius, but when it comes to sheer destructive planning, those two are just at the top of the list for me.

[wizardru]

To wit:

[crinos]

I loved that arc.

[lucean]

Which arc was that from again?

[kd_the_movie]

The Fear Itself Tie-In where the Juggernaut infused with Hammerpower! was cutting a swath through San Francisco

[crinos]

Yeah, basically Sin or the Serpent or whoever gave the City of San Fran an ultimatum: Kill the mutants, or Hammer Powered Juggernaut destroys the city.

Cue Cyclops basically throwing every mutant in every conceivable combination he has at his disposal at Juggernaut in an attempt to slow him down. Most of his plans fail, but one does work (Not gonna say which one, its a spoiler).

[shadur]

Doesn't one of them involve Gambit charging up that rock kid with kinetic energy, and another has Magneto throwing an airliner?

[crinos]

Yep. Plus they had Karma and one of the mutant kids from the military base in hell blasting him, another had Dazzler and Banshee (or maybe it was Siryin) teaming up to blast him (Because Dazzler can make sound into lasers) and another one had one guy try to set Juggernauts blood on fire (Which was worse than ineffective, because for a while they had to deal with a rampaging Juggernaut that was also on fire).

You know, call Scott boring, call him an asshole, blame him for Avengers vs. X-men and killing Charles, but dammit, he is the man with ALL the plans.

[icon_uk]

another one had one guy try to set Juggernauts blood on fire

Adam-X the X-treme?!?!

[scorntx]

The very same.

[burkeonthesly]

Airliner, no. Two aircraft carriers, yes.

[thehood]

Though he said this pointing out his days as a weapons developer.

[deepspaceartist]

I know, right? Tony sitting in the rubble of Stark Tower, making it quite clear that if he decided to respond in kind, the Inhuman royal family and New Attilan would be wiped off the fucking map, end of story. I think Hill, Rogers, Danvers and the other bigwigs of the MU that like to crap on Tony need to be reminded of this more often. For all they like to dismiss him as a greedy selfish jerk, if Tony ever decided to go legitimately evil they would all get their asses kicked. Heck, plan A when he did go evil in the past (the Crossing, Superior Iron Man) was "Get a good Tony to fight evil Tony." Tony Stark is a force to be reckoned with, and the list of people who could make him stop is very small, and just got significantly smaller with Rhodey and Bruce dead.

[arilou_skiff]

And Reed.

Reed, Bruce, Doom, maybe T'Challa on a good day. Maybe Blue Marvel (don't know much about him), Adam Warlock, Thanos.

[viridian5]

I wish he would.

[scorntx]

The Bendis coefficient on these pages is pretty low.
It's still pretty Bendis, though.

And I question the need for an A.I.! Tony's suits worked without one'a them damned things for decades and it all worked out fine! Blasted upstart kids these days just got no attention span. They just want an A.I. to do all the hard work while they play their pokeymons or somesuch! Because having a fancy tech-suit just isn't enough, ohhh no! [Further angry muttering and cursing]

[mrstatham]

The AI only seemed to come into play after the Extremis stuff was rendered useless in Tony's body, and appears to be a bit of a development of returning the armour back to being actual armour rather than say, cutting-edge tech that's actually part of his body. Given Tony's not connected in such an intuitive way anymore, I could see him using an AI now to pick up the slack.

[beyondthefringe]

The way I see it, the first Iron Man suit was the equivalent of strapping weaponized pieces of a junked VW Beetle to your body and praying for the best. Subsequent upgrades were like wearing a VW minivan, and upgrading to your choice of muscle cars.

But in recent years, technology has gotten to the point where someone like Tony, perpetually on the cutting-edge of what's possible and even plausible, is building stuff that simply can't be handled by human reactions. It's not all levers and buttons and however the hell he operated the original suits.

Now he's piloting the equivalent of a really expensive supercar with all the bells and whistles... and without an AI, it would be near-impossible to use it to its full capability. :)

Dammit, I know so little about cars, and went into this analogy unprepared.

[mrstatham]

No, I think you explained it pretty well. One of the best examples of why Tony is still one of the only ones qualified to operate the armour even *with* an AI though, would be the Rucka-written Punisher: Warzone story from a few years ago; there, Frank just happened to manage to steal/use a more contemporary armour and still only just managed to use it because Tony had made it that intuitive.

So I think Tony brings a lot to the table, but the nature of the tech - particularly as our understanding of what would be required to operate such a thing (like a HUD, sensors, weapon systems) has increased - means an AI is totally necessary.

[wizardru]

"It's not..."
"What?"
"It's...you know..."
"WHAT?"
"It's just you can hear some of the"
"The conversational tics that..."
"Right, the flow, the way he writes it. I mean, it's natural, but..."
"..but, it's become kind of a thing. A trick. Sorta"
"Right, right."
"Like, its realistic to a point, but then."
"Then it feels like everyone talks that way."
"Right."
"Right."

[thehood]

It always seems like he tries to do what Rick and Morty do so well and so much better than he does.

[burkeonthesly]

Am I reading Bendis, or an Aaron Sorkin script?

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I figured part of it was due to the model she reverse engineered. Did that one need an A.I.? If she reverse engineered an older model, maybe it wouldn't be necessary?

[hybrid2]

The hair thing still annoy me.

[leoboiko]

Their hair makes me think of Cascão from the classic Brazilian children's comics, Turma da Mônica.

[raspberryrain]

What hair thing?

[tigerkaya]

Abe and Stark can tell you kid right off you don't need an A.I. to pilot armor.

As to Riri, I'd like to see another writer other than Bendis write her.

[icon_uk]

Abe and Stark (and even Stingray for what it's worth) started low tech and reengineered to meet their needs as time went by. Tony does use an AI now, not sure about Abe.

Riri might be creating something so complex from the outset that she really does need the AI.

[owlbrigade1]

It is the 15 years old that bothers me. If they aged her up to even 18 then I'd be less knee-jerking over it. I just... I don't know, I just have no toleration for precocious child geniuses anymore. Probably because I am old.

[leoboiko]

Coming from computer science, I've seen my share of teenagers who are better programmers than me (n.b. I'm a pretty good programmer), so I find that part entirely believable.

[icon_uk]

It's one reason I actually had no problem with the Teen Tony from "The Crossing" (I had many, many issues with The Crossing itself, don't get me wrong, but Teen Tony wasn't one of them).

Next gen tech having a next gen Stark made a certain amount of sense to me; one less fixated on applying transistors to EVERYTHING (I grew up reading a LOT of Iron Man from the 60's repreints) and who had started out in a world where IT was increasing exponentially.

[liliaeth]

I appreciate that at least they have her ask Tony for an AI, instead of having her build one herself.

[lordultimus]

So Bendis is trying to make his own pet version of Lunella Lafayette, because that's the image I'm getting from these scans.

[icon_uk]

Given how few such characters there are, I don't see that as a bad thing per se.

[icon_uk]

I like her mother calling her out on her irritating obfustication about whether she had stolen or borrowed materials.

[captainbellman]

Question for you, guys:




WHERE

IS

ARNO?!?

[funbox]

Left to die in the Iron Man governed shard of reality that GOD-DOOM put him in? Honestly I think he did just get locked up in that event and no one has thought to use him. I'd love to see him come back, maybe be taken on as an additional mentor to this Riri gal.