Thursday, January 19, 2017

Invincible Iron Man #3

   This is the second time Marvel has gone through a
"let's replace some of our biggest characters with doubles" phase.

    Back in the '90s, they replaced Tony Stark with James Rhodes (who became War Machine after his run as Iron Man), Thor with Thunderstrike, and Captain America had to give up his uniform and became an independent hero (taking turns as Nomad in the  '70s and The Captain in the '90s).

   So now we have a second Captain America (the Falcon), a female Thor, a young Hulk, Nova and Wasp, and now a young female Iron Man (though she finally comes up with her own hero name in this issue).

   Teen Riri Williams has built her own armor and is now being advised by a computer intelligence modeled after Tony Stark.

   We get to see some of her on-the-job training as she learns more about being a hero, and she meets a valuable advisor.

   And we also see who's now in charge of Stark Industries (while Tony is out of the picture).

   It's largely a setup issue, putting characters into place and bringing in a big bad menace for Riri to face.

   The script by Brian Michael Bendis is sharp and funny and the art by Stefano Caselli is expressive and clean, with great storytelling.

   I still don't know why they need another Iron Man - there's a perfectly good one who keeps showing up in their movies - but Riki's shaping up to be an interesting addition to the Marvel Universe, too.

Grade: B+

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