Didjutal Comiks: IRON MAN #233

Digital comics are the future of comics, so says everyone on the Internet and everyone trying to justify their purchase of an iPad and leveraging that into a desperate attempt to generate content for their blogs and stuff. It is in this spirit that the management at Witless Prattle continues the following, exciting, weirdly specific and slightly iconoclastic feature.

Iron Man #233
August 1988

"Slaughterday!"

Writers: David Michelenie & Bob Layton
Artists: Jackson Guice (pencils) Bob Layton (inks)

We join Iron Man on a typically rough day--a satellite belonging to Stane International's orbit has decayed and it has a nuclear energy core, so something has to be done to keep it from crashing into the Earth. He rips out the core and does a few flashy things to show off and soon enough, is flying back to Stark Enterprises. A helpful TV news reporter brings us up to speed on the latest status quo in the book (Post-Armour Wars, Stark had made it seem like there was a new Iron Man functioning as his bodyguard and the previous Iron Man had been killed. Bit ridiculously complicated, sure, but there we are) and we're off to tie up more post-Armour Wars stuff.

Stark's still getting sued for attacking the vault during the Armour Wars, and still having trouble getting companies to sign on due to the fallout from it. Nevertheless, there's a big demo planned and they're determined to make a good show of it--all the better to calm people down about the Armour Wars stuff.

We cut to Bob Layton's second favourite character--Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man, finishing up a contracting job and then pick up a few subplots here and there: Edwin Cord, now jailed after the Amour Wars, is still plotting against Stark and plans to mess up his demo. We also meet up with Kathy Dare for the first time ever, at a polo game (geez, the 80's, I swear) and Jim Rhodes & Marcy Pearson try (yes, again) to patch up their on-again, off-again relationship.

But soon enough, we're on to the demo. Thanks to some digital chicanery, Rhodes stands in for Iron Man while Stark suits up as Iron Man and gets his demo thing on by helping to build a monorail. However, as the "The Simpsons" taught us, it's damn near impossible to build a monorail without something going wrong, and soon enough, robots pop out of the ground and attack Iron Man.

Meanwhile, another group of armed mooks is about to join the fun, but Ant-Man shows up and beats the crap out of them in short order and Iron Man has about as much trouble with the robots as you'd expect--namely, not much.

Anyways, in the aftermath, Stark Enterprises came out looking great, Edwin Cord's still pissed off and . . .yeah, pretty much things continue to tick along for the book for a good bit.

There's not really much to this issue, when you get down to it--we're still post Armour Wars, still trying to tie up all the loose ends from that and establish the new status quo in a more meaningful sense while kicking off newer subplots like the Kathy Dare stuff. Beyond that, there's not much to say about it--I confess I'm not the world's biggest Scott Lang fan and so it's a bit hard for me to get too het up about him reappearing and kicking ass, but what the hell, he's already better than Hank Pym by . . .not being Hank Pym.

I also add here that, in an ironic turn, the next issue is actually the first issue in this series I reviewed for Witless Prattle, which is . . .yes, pretty ironic in terms of irony, I suppose. I'm also pleased with myself for getting through the entire review and not once mentioning Stark's Permed Mullet Of Doom.

Oh, damn.