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The Invincible Iron Man (2004) (Collected Editions) #7
Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. - With Iron Hands
When an unseen terrorist throws a struggling nation into chaos, Tony Stark's past as a munitions manufacturer collides with his present role as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is Tony himself responsible? And what's his connection to the deadly menace growing within S.H.I.E.L.D. itself?
Collecting: Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. 29-32
Collecting: Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. 29-32
96 pages, Paperback
First published November 19, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 19, 2011
With Iron Hands has two central story threads. The first deals with a nuclear terrorist named Nasim Rahimov and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s efforts to take him down. Rahimov has developed what are called "Thumbnail Nukes", small nuclear bombs that leave nearly zero radiation in the wake of its detonation. Serious business, obviously. The second thread involves a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Nicholas Weir, or "The Other Nick", who attempts to steal a powerful weapon developed by his agency after finally getting fed up with them in light of Stark's ascension to the top of the food chain. The theft goes wrong, the weapon bonds with Weir, and the two go out wreaking general mechanized havoc around the country.
While both threads sound pretty interesting at first, their execution in print is really lacking. The problem lies in a crucial error in the structure of the story. Plot A is abandoned temporarily midway through the book in favor of focusing primarily on Plot B. Plot B, though, exists for the sole purpose of providing the writer with the needed tools to resolve Plot A. Unfortunately, by the time those tools are acquired and focus is returned to Plot A, my attention had been taken away from it by Plot B for so long that I had lost interest in it.
In addition to that, given the nature of Plot B as merely a means to an end, the story feels heartless and has no feeling behind it (though the reason why had eluded me until finishing the book). There's nothing to be gained by reading it than the means to make the ending make sense. It's the comic book equivalent of a "fetch quest", a mission in a video game that adds nothing to the experience other than a means to pad its length through arbitrary measures.
Not that the story that has an actual point fares any better. At the end of the day, Tony mentions that he has to make the tough decisions and sometimes that means people are going to get hurt. Despite this, he never forgets any of them. That's all well and good, but it's delivery feels so forced and fake that I think I liked it better when the story was pointless. Everything you expect from cheesy and cliched lesson learning moments are present. We've got the ghostly figures of people who have been touched (hmm, perhaps not the best choice of words when it comes to Tony; let's say "affected") by the main character hovering over the thoughtful figure as he narrates to the reader everything morally relevant in the story while awkwardly working in the title to said story. Bleh!
The art is really the only praiseworthy portion of this book, and even it's far from infallible. The pencil work is nice enough, but it's not exactly memorable. To me at least. The coloring seems to jump back 'n' forth between good and "Why is every indoor scene seemingly colored with only red, purple, or blue?". On the whole, the art for me was solidly in the unremarkable-but-at-least-better-than-the-story territory.
This story is overall pretty bad. Some decent art keeps it from being terrible, but that didn't stop me from continually asking myself "Why am I reading this?". The story lacks heart, a sense of sound story structure, and a very reason to exist. Take a pass on this one.
While both threads sound pretty interesting at first, their execution in print is really lacking. The problem lies in a crucial error in the structure of the story. Plot A is abandoned temporarily midway through the book in favor of focusing primarily on Plot B. Plot B, though, exists for the sole purpose of providing the writer with the needed tools to resolve Plot A. Unfortunately, by the time those tools are acquired and focus is returned to Plot A, my attention had been taken away from it by Plot B for so long that I had lost interest in it.
In addition to that, given the nature of Plot B as merely a means to an end, the story feels heartless and has no feeling behind it (though the reason why had eluded me until finishing the book). There's nothing to be gained by reading it than the means to make the ending make sense. It's the comic book equivalent of a "fetch quest", a mission in a video game that adds nothing to the experience other than a means to pad its length through arbitrary measures.
Not that the story that has an actual point fares any better. At the end of the day, Tony mentions that he has to make the tough decisions and sometimes that means people are going to get hurt. Despite this, he never forgets any of them. That's all well and good, but it's delivery feels so forced and fake that I think I liked it better when the story was pointless. Everything you expect from cheesy and cliched lesson learning moments are present. We've got the ghostly figures of people who have been touched (hmm, perhaps not the best choice of words when it comes to Tony; let's say "affected") by the main character hovering over the thoughtful figure as he narrates to the reader everything morally relevant in the story while awkwardly working in the title to said story. Bleh!
The art is really the only praiseworthy portion of this book, and even it's far from infallible. The pencil work is nice enough, but it's not exactly memorable. To me at least. The coloring seems to jump back 'n' forth between good and "Why is every indoor scene seemingly colored with only red, purple, or blue?". On the whole, the art for me was solidly in the unremarkable-but-at-least-better-than-the-story territory.
This story is overall pretty bad. Some decent art keeps it from being terrible, but that didn't stop me from continually asking myself "Why am I reading this?". The story lacks heart, a sense of sound story structure, and a very reason to exist. Take a pass on this one.
January 24, 2012
It isn't terrible, but it's boring. Too wordy, character insights all copped from better stories, and the plot makes no sense. Actually, there are two plots. They do not make sense apart and they do not make sense together. The final two pages are so mawkish they are downright embarassing.
Skippable.
Skippable.
August 2, 2012
Making Tony the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. was such a dumb idea. It really should have been the dumbest of the aftermath of Civil War, but then One More Day came along to redefine worst plot development in a comic book continuity ever.
Practically speaking, Tony's director status doesn't have any effect on this story, since he's out in the field Iron Manning the entire time, which is of course what we expect from Iron Man. The twin storylines hit some familiar highlights—Tony feels responsible for accidentally enabling or not being able to non-destructively disarm the villains and angsts about it—but they way they're juggled isn't great.
These four issues aren't enough to fill even the slenderest of trades, so they rounded it out with a not particularly interesting and ultimately kinda pointless one-shot from 1998. I guess it is vaguely associated thematically, since it depicts a very chilly working relationship between Iron Man and Nick Fury (who doesn't even know that Iron Man is Tony at this point, so they do the whole you-didn't-tell-Stark-but-now-you-can-tell-me dance). Fury wants Iron Man to do a little underwater salvage work, but refuses to tell him anything about the vessel, which turns out to contain some kind of human/hydra hybrid created by, you guessed it, HYDRA. The HYDRA hydra ends up slipping into a deep ocean trench, where it is presumed dead but actually alive and lurking and presumably plotting. Woo. Not one of Chuck Dixon's best efforts.
Practically speaking, Tony's director status doesn't have any effect on this story, since he's out in the field Iron Manning the entire time, which is of course what we expect from Iron Man. The twin storylines hit some familiar highlights—Tony feels responsible for accidentally enabling or not being able to non-destructively disarm the villains and angsts about it—but they way they're juggled isn't great.
These four issues aren't enough to fill even the slenderest of trades, so they rounded it out with a not particularly interesting and ultimately kinda pointless one-shot from 1998. I guess it is vaguely associated thematically, since it depicts a very chilly working relationship between Iron Man and Nick Fury (who doesn't even know that Iron Man is Tony at this point, so they do the whole you-didn't-tell-Stark-but-now-you-can-tell-me dance). Fury wants Iron Man to do a little underwater salvage work, but refuses to tell him anything about the vessel, which turns out to contain some kind of human/hydra hybrid created by, you guessed it, HYDRA. The HYDRA hydra ends up slipping into a deep ocean trench, where it is presumed dead but actually alive and lurking and presumably plotting. Woo. Not one of Chuck Dixon's best efforts.
April 12, 2021
There are two threads that are running concurrently in this comic. One of the threads is that of a disgruntled S.H.E.L.D. agent and the other is that of a former friend who is driven to madness and in each instance, in a somehow contrived way, Tony Stark is blamed and he feels guilty. Matters, of course, as they do, come to a head simultaneously, and Stark uses his Iron Man suit and persona and saves the day in this uncompelling tale, solution by Iron Man. It is clichéd. The artwork is uneven, some good, some rather lazy in this uninspiring comic.
January 24, 2025
The art in this is really good. This Iron Man armor looks amazing and cool. Tony is great here.
The story takes place after Civil War, where Captain America fought against Iron Man and Tony feels guilty for what he did to Steve Rogers. Tony Stark here is the new directory of SHIELD and has a team which uses the Iron man technology. Pretty cool. The story is clichéd, but enjoyable to read. Is too short though. It needed more insight and more catch up from the previous comics.
The villains here, are kinda lame to be honest. There are two main villains which are practically the same. Both of them have a history with Tony and both want revenge on him or to prove him wrong.
Anyway, though clichéd is still a cool story with great art.
The story takes place after Civil War, where Captain America fought against Iron Man and Tony feels guilty for what he did to Steve Rogers. Tony Stark here is the new directory of SHIELD and has a team which uses the Iron man technology. Pretty cool. The story is clichéd, but enjoyable to read. Is too short though. It needed more insight and more catch up from the previous comics.
The villains here, are kinda lame to be honest. There are two main villains which are practically the same. Both of them have a history with Tony and both want revenge on him or to prove him wrong.
Anyway, though clichéd is still a cool story with great art.
January 11, 2025
Not as strong as the previous arc. Ends the series with more of a whimper than a bang.
May 16, 2012
This was one comic book I was very disappointed in. I was excited to read about Iron Man, but this story did not live up to my expectations. It was jumpy and felt like even the writers didn't know what they were going to do next that they themselves were just going with the flow and writing down whatever came to mind. The story didn't make sense and I should have just left this one on the shelf and picked out something else that would have been better worth my time.
April 2, 2013
Two interesting storylines make this a convoluted book. At first you think, these happenings are related... then again not and then you think it is too nice to have the one storyline help solve the other one. There are cool moments with a nice sense of wonder, but both new enemies would have been worth a deeper look at in order to lift their importance as adversaries... now they only serve as "one-hit-villain of the arc" (and not even that as they have to share the time in the spotlight).
July 31, 2011
Iron Man has become a vehicle for the moral implications of building bigger and badder weapons and the highly probably consequences of such bloodthirsty hubris. This story pits Tony Stark against an old friend who shares the same ideals, and it is a weird balance of one or the another trying to minimalise the killing. At the end of it all, hard decisions are made and regrets are remembered.
August 10, 2015
Really not as good as the Knauf portion of the Director of SHIELD run; it wasn't even that great of a story. Didn't have anything to do with the plotlines that the rest of the run had been about or even the themes of Tony as Director; it was just a little story with a one-off villain. Go read Haunted instead.
April 9, 2013
I'm giving this three stars because it was well written, thought it wasn't very entertaining. I'm ready to stop reading the moody Iron Man stories that came after the Marvel Civil War and get to the fun adventure of Fraction's run.
October 31, 2013
Individual issues on marvel unlimited
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews