Post by Yasotay on Sept 21, 2024 11:49:15 GMT -5
A few last thoughts on this Iron Man story. I had mentioned that Ling was beaten half to death here. That wasn't hyperbole as she was shown at the end of #137 in intensive care with doctors saying she stopped breathing. Yes, as Icctrombone showed, a few issues later she was almost fully recovered when Tony Stark took all his friends on a Caribbean vacation. Even for comics that felt a little too comicy. But especially for a writer like Michelinie, who had previously injected some realism into Iron Man with Demon in a Bottle, just saying she's fine now after a such brutal beating from a gang of criminals seemed ridiculous. PTSD? At least a little physical rehab? Something to show this had significance for the character? Naw, she's good as new.
The ending to the main story line was awful. I'm not going to call this a spoiler, since the comic is 44 years old so you've all had time to read it, but the next issue revealed the villain behind everything was Iron Man's old girlfriend Madame Masque, who was actually out to get his current girlfriend, Bethany Cabe. Her motivation made no sense: I don't love Tony anymore but I don't want anyone else to have him, either. Then, at the end, when Madame Masque is humiliated to have Bethany see her scarred face, Bethany tells Iron Man to let her go, she's suffered enough. What? The woman kidnaps and threatens to murder you, has your best friend beaten nearly to death, and you let her go so she can continue to run a major criminal empire? But it's okay because she was embarrassed so that taught her a good lesson (apparently the lesson wasn't well learned since, I believe, she's still a supervillain to this day).
This story also featured the Spymaster, who I believe was last seen being arrested by Iron Man for things like espionage, sabotage, attempted murder and probably a whole bunch of other villainous stuff. Yet somehow he's walking around free in this with no explanation of how he got out of jail. And let's not forget Tony Stark's African-American sidekick, Rhodey. While the character started out okay when Michelinie introduced him earlier in his run, and would eventually turn into the hero War Machine, writing dialogue for him in these issues it seems as if Michelinie has never heard a black person speak outside of bad 1970s TV shows ("Yo mama! Sheeoot!")
Even forgetting about the Ling McPherson portion, the whole thing was a mess.
But at least this comic did give us the memorable line, "Nobody puts the hurt on Big Jim Crane!"
The ending to the main story line was awful. I'm not going to call this a spoiler, since the comic is 44 years old so you've all had time to read it, but the next issue revealed the villain behind everything was Iron Man's old girlfriend Madame Masque, who was actually out to get his current girlfriend, Bethany Cabe. Her motivation made no sense: I don't love Tony anymore but I don't want anyone else to have him, either. Then, at the end, when Madame Masque is humiliated to have Bethany see her scarred face, Bethany tells Iron Man to let her go, she's suffered enough. What? The woman kidnaps and threatens to murder you, has your best friend beaten nearly to death, and you let her go so she can continue to run a major criminal empire? But it's okay because she was embarrassed so that taught her a good lesson (apparently the lesson wasn't well learned since, I believe, she's still a supervillain to this day).
This story also featured the Spymaster, who I believe was last seen being arrested by Iron Man for things like espionage, sabotage, attempted murder and probably a whole bunch of other villainous stuff. Yet somehow he's walking around free in this with no explanation of how he got out of jail. And let's not forget Tony Stark's African-American sidekick, Rhodey. While the character started out okay when Michelinie introduced him earlier in his run, and would eventually turn into the hero War Machine, writing dialogue for him in these issues it seems as if Michelinie has never heard a black person speak outside of bad 1970s TV shows ("Yo mama! Sheeoot!")
Even forgetting about the Ling McPherson portion, the whole thing was a mess.
But at least this comic did give us the memorable line, "Nobody puts the hurt on Big Jim Crane!"
