Ultimate Iron Man II

One of two things happened between my readings of Ultimate Iron Man and Ultimate Iron Man II. Either the writing got a lot better, or I relaxed about the continuity weirdness and accepted that this whole prequel thing could be true after all without breaking anything that has happened later in Tony Stark’s timeline. Regardless, the upshot is that I got to enjoy this book lots more, and yay for that! Despite being labeled and numbered as a new series, it picks up right where the last one left off; Tony is using his new experimental armor to fight against bad guys and his father is in jail, framed for the murder of a rival arms manufacturer. The story adds in a few new twists that work well as prequel fodder, including government agents who want Tony’s new “robot” and continued visits to the pre-Richards Baxter Building. But mostly it’s a straightforward murder mystery set at the highest levels of corporate espionage and global terrorism. The man inside the Iron Man suit may be far more powerful than I’m comfortable with, but his story is always funny and never boring, so I can cut a little slack on my complaints this time.

Card has still come nowhere near a connection point between this ongoing origin story and the Tony Stark that joined the Ultimates way back in the second issue of that comic, and I suppose now that the Ultimate series has ended and been rebranded, perhaps he never will. Despite my previous complaints, I have to be a little disappointed by that, as the characters were really starting to pop. At least I’ve got something like 40+ years of main sequence Marvel continuity to read, so I don’t have to feel too sad about it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.