I haven’t read any of the older Iron Man comics beyond those that are uploaded on scans_daily. I have only read Iron Man 4, some New Avengers and a few of the important arcs involving Steve and Tony. So far, the writing for the parts I have read has been awesome, and I’m loving the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D series.

Extremis and Execute Program really highlights Tony’s dislike of himself and the ways he want to change the world for the better. Yinsen’s kid screwed him up, and the destruction caused by him and the other supers reinforces the idea that Superheroes of the Marvel universe cause some major collateral damage with little supervision. The following chapters really showcase just how cut off Tony is, and just how much pressure he is under; superheroes from all sides, Happy’s deaths, betrayals, and just people in pain from every side. It was brutal and the aftermath of Civil War left Tony in a position where he can try and make everything better.

Except, Tony start seeing the dead, and the Mandarin enters the picture. (BTW: The Mandarin is pretty damn awesome in his current run as main villain against Iron Man. There is just something about a villain that fools everyone without coming across as smarmy bastard that makes them likable. He’s just so competent). The dead offers advice and overall acts like the peanut gallery, though Tony’s hallucination of Steve was both creepy and gut wrenching at the same time.

Tony thinks he is going crazy, uses a nuke to destroy the possibility of the neoplastic tumor being released on the world where over 90% of them will go mad, and is, of course ordered to wear power dampeners around his ankles and gets suspended from his job because dropping bombs is bad. He decides to go on his own investigation, finds clues of the Mandarin, and finally gets told that the Extremis, beside providing him with awesome Matrix-like abilities and healing powers also have amazing processing abilities that the human brain can’t understand. That is, Extremis piece information together at a speed and level that the human brain can’t process in a way that a person can understand, hence creating hallucinations of dead people to tell the individual what is actually going on. It really does sound much more plausible and is much more interesting than I have made it out to be. Somewhere is there, Sal dies horribly, Maya gets doped into working for the Mandarin, and everything kinds of suck.

So, there is fighting, there is DumDum being awesome by shooting out the UN, then there is Tony vs. The Mandarin. Which OMFG! It is all sorts of awesome, and involves Tony lasering off half of his own ankle to get rid of the bloody power dampeners. There were broken arms, ripped flesh, and tony getting the rings from the Manadrin’s spine. It was a pretty awesome fight; fast, brutal, and very dirty.

At the end of this arc; the Mandarin has disappeared, Tony’s ankle has grown back (Extremis), and Tony still hate himself. Look at it this way; innocents died, Sal died, Steve is still dead, the SHRA is still there and nowhere near resolved, and Tony is still alone, hating his job, trying to hold the world together. So yes, I love Tony Stark, in all his fucked up and overly control-freak ways.

I just re-read the post, and honestly I’m not even sure it makes sense, I just needed to get it out of my system, because without verbalising it somehow I can’t process exactly what I’m feeling about the current IM arc. I don’t read any of the other titles (only the summaries) so the whole Skulls Secret Invasion is not having much of an impact on the way I view Tony’s characterisation.

Also, I really like Maria Hill. I liked her in New Avengers, and I like her more in Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.