Iron Man Epic Collection, Vol. 4: The Fury of the Firebrand

Iron Man Epic Collection

by Archie Goodwin

Revolution in Latin America and a mechanical visitor from outer space keep Iron Man fighting and you turning pages, but when the Spymaster puts together an elite team with one objective - destroy Stark Industries - the pieces for an Iron Man crossover classic come together. Only with the combined forces of Nick Fury, Daredevil and Madame Masque can our hero have a chance of overturning the Spymaster and the power of the Zodiac Key. It's an adventure as only Marvel makes them. Also featuring the Controller; the politically charged Firebrand; the first appearance of Howard Stark and the debut of the Guardsman, who will fight with Iron Man as each hero's abilities are pushed to their limits - with tragic consequences. COLLECTING: IRON MAN (1968) 25-46 AND DAREDEVIL (1964) 73

Genres: Comics, Superheroes, Marvel, Comic Book, Fantasy, Collections

472 pages, Paperback

Published August 25, 2020

About the author

Archie Goodwin was an American comic book writer, editor, and artist. He worked on a number of comic strips in addition to comic books, and is best known for his Warren and Marvel Comics work. For Warren he was chief writer and editor of landmark horror anthology titles Creepy and Eerie, and for Marvel he set up the creator-owned Epic Comics as well as adapting Star Wars into both comics and newspaper strips. He is regularly cited as the "best-loved comic book editor, ever."

Reviews

[Sean Gibson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not Iron Man's finest hour. Or two years. Sheesh. The most redeeming thing about this arc of issues is that I'm done reading it.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing read after the fun of volumes 2 & 3. The Iron Man series definitely seemed aimless during this time. I can see why almost no characters created during this time were ever really used again. The Spy Smasher stuff was probably the most interesting story but fell apart at the end. I also did enjoy the book slowly becoming a romance book but Tony sure fell in love with Marianne very quickly without much reason. Not an essential read by any means.

[Alex Andrasik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best, not the worst. I mean - there's some pretty bad stuff here. Gerry Conway occasionally reaches for what I imagine is meant to be Steranko-esque scripting style, sort of vaguely high-falutin'. Well, I don't like Steranko's scripting very much, and I don't like the knockoff version any better. There's even some attempt at the kind of visual/verbal intertwining that Steranko was known for, but the effect is just not the same: an undulating strip of tickertape in a panel transitioning between two scenes reads, for some reason, "The above scene is to be observed for its ironic content. Once observed it is to be digested. When this is done, the very next episode becomes almost poignant." Um, okay. Almost!

As with his work on Daredevil in this era, there's a lot of very obvious seat-of-the-pants plotting, especially with regards to Tony Stark's new love interest in this volume, Marianne Rodgers - who has "esper" powers for some reason. (There must have been a brief moment in the late 60s/early 70s when the term "esper" was very en vogue.) And sadly, we're stuck with Mr. Kline again - also from Daredevil, the mystery mastermind who managed to employ scads of Marvel menaces for a variety of nefarious ends, only to turn out to be some kind of alien cyborg for no reason. All of that happens in the pages of Daredevil and none of it is directly explained here in Iron Man's mag. Here he bedevils Iron Man with the ridiculous Demetrius and Slasher, the latter of whom has claws and also grows? - and also MIKAS! A MUTANT STAR CHILD! Or something! It's all very pointless and strange. The sucky part is, a shadowy puppetmaster pulling the strings on Marvel's two most putatively "grown-up" stars - lawyer Matt Murdock and industrialist Tony Stark - could have been really interesting. I wonder if the sudden lurches in the Mr. Kline story was the result of editorial interference, saying, "You can't write a comic book about this kind of legal and corporate wrangling." Which would be too bad - another idea before its time. But maybe I'm giving too much credit.

Despite all this - I kinda like a lot of the individual stories here? Tony does some nifty globe-hopping around various Stark Industries holdings, encountering shifty underlings and popular protest against his corporate doings. There's an emphasis on environmentalism, with one whole issue, #25, dedicated to Tony trying to convince shareholders to take global warming seriously, only to have them shrug him off in a decidedly realistic and dispiriting ending. There is a lot of the usual heavy-handed social issues, with Long Haired Youths waving signs at be-suited Corporate Squares, sometimes falling under the influence of malign forces; the most interesting of these is the titular Firebrand, who, unlike most such characters in these kinds of stories, seems to be a true believer of his own radical political views. (Of course, his plot involves taking advantage of tensions in a Black neighborhood over the building of a community center.) There's a wacky visit to a Conan-esque "Dark Dimension" that's a lot of weird fun, as Tony is pitted against a sleeveless barbarian-king with a magic sword. We also meet Kevin O'Brien, a brief stand-in for the off-shuffled Jasper Sitwell, whose great contributions to Marvel mythos are his debut of the Guardian armor and a truly awful Irish accent. A couple other clunkers are #30, which pits Iron Man against a highly otherized Japanese villain, and #32, in which an alien robot's arrival on Earth forms the basis for an extremely perfunctory racial parable. Oh, and also, maybe I'm misremembering things, but I thought Tony's heart got fixed in an issue of The Avengers or something, but it's treated like the status quo is back in some of these issues. Oh well. Continuity!!

[Martin Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

A real nadir for Iron Man and a slog to get through. Starts out oddly episodic and perfunctory, as Goodwin’s run peters out with some stories that feel very early silver age in their plotting (if not their progressive politics at least), bobs along through some mediocre fill-ins. Then Allyn Brodsky comes on board, seemingly with some big ideas, only for him to be quickly replaced by Gerry Conway, who pivots them into a lot of repetitively psycho-dramatic near-nonsense (I assume drug-induced, given the Bullpen at the time). Conway’s labyrinthine sub-plots are then dropped like a hot rock as he disappears, Bob Kanigher of all people brushes away some of the crumbs (in an issue that was clearly made so last minjtr - I guess because Conway quit abruptly - it just ends on page 13) and then Gary Friedrich drags the series back into readability briefly, but trashing a lot of the preceding issues’ material along the way.

Art-wise, Don Heck feels out of time and place in the first half of the volume, not helped by some of the inking. Eventually he’s replaced by George Tuska, whose art is the real highlight of this volume.

All in all, this is not a good volume of comics. It doesn’t read well as a collection, ending up inconsistent and at times near incoherent as a serial, and I can’t imagine how much more frustrating it would have been to read monthly at the time. Many Marvel fans that came in through the MCU are surprised to learn that Iron Man was, at best, a B lister for most of his existence before the movies. This volume is, I think, perfect evidence of how little regard Marvel had for the character in the early 70s.

[Anthony Wendel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume drags in a few places mostly because they were trying to introduce a better supporting cast around Tony. At the same time some very important issues are addressed including humanity's impact on the environment, racial injustice, and political discourse we are dealing with 50+ years after they were originally published. It's moments like these which form perfect time capsules of the Era they came from and how it's important to learn from the mistakes of the past.

[Shannon Schmelzle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting collection. I feel like this is probably Iron Man right at the tipping point between the more basic 1960's era Iron Man where he is the most basic of white boys in his super suit and the more bronze age of Iron Man where we start having flaws, such as his alcoholism.

Most of this collection is a fairly fun romp, simple one off stories, sometimes having a bit of a political edge to them. But then near the end Gerry Conway comes in and has to bring down the whole party with his lame Mr Kline storyline from Daredevil. Then at the last few issues I feel like we start to get a real shift in storytelling. Tony's board is against him. His best friend has gone insane with jealousy.

So if you are interested in more Silver Age Iron Man before the booze problem, I could probably recommend this collection. Don Heck then George Tuska are on art chores and neither one is a dud.

[Bryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first handful of issues in this volume were written by Archie Goodwin, and they're some of the best IRON MAN stories of the era (especially the titular "The Fury of the Firebrand"). But the next 400 pages are filled with some of the most forgettable IRON MAN stories ever written. Things had gotten so bad for the character that, by the time the stories at the end of this volume were coming out, the title had almost merged with DAREDEVIL (another wildly unspectacular early-'70s Marvel comic) and was only coming out every other month because the sales were so dismal. This is one for the completists, and probably no one else.

[Doug Duncan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a bit rough to say the least. It felt incredibly aimless and unenjoyable throughout, a huge step down from the last few volumes. I think I may take a little break from the character after this one to come back fresh after this disappointing mess.

[Edward Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read, though a little bit preachy in places.