Iron Man vol5 #16 (2022)
by Christopher Cantwell & Julius Ohta
cover by Alex Ross
Doom kicks off 2022 by showing up in the Iron Man series by Cantwell, who you might remember wrote Doom’s own miniseries.
I really liked this Iron Man series, way more than the Doom one, although towards the end it lost stem.
To make a looooong story short, Iron Man has defeated space supervillain Korvac and now has the Power Cosmic.
I’m more worried by the armor growing a mouth. Iron Man should never have a moving mouth.
Or a nose.
I’m sure you guys are overreacting. It’s not like Tony Stark will do something incredibly reckless, right?
Because of Tony’s gift, EVERYONE IN NEW YORK is now as smart as he is.
The best known moment of this storyline.
What could POSSIBLY go wrong with making everyone super-smart?
Unfortunately everyone just became just a technology and science genius… including supervillains.
This reckless attitude convinced Hellcat… who is currently in a relationship with Tony… to call an expert in being addicted to cosmic power.
Iron Man vol5 #17 (2022)
by Christopher Cantwell & Julius Ohta
As reckless as the gift was, it does end up doing some good.
But SHOCKINGLY, there are also negative consequences.
Since it’s the Marvel Universe New York, I believe this might actually have reduced the number of locals trying to take over the world.
Tony’s solution for those who break the law by using his gift is to reduce their intelligence.
Which would be fine if he just made them normal again, but the fact that he goes beyond it shows that he’s already crossed the line.
For what it’s worth, this implies that Tony’s IQ is around 185.
With a classic jab at New Jersey by its neighboring state.
Meanwhile, Doctor Doom is channeling his inner Darkseid by sitting on Hellcat’s couch.
A new immortal Doom quote: “Doom carries no napkins”.
Never thought I would ever see Doctor Doom being invited to a pizza party.
This is serious enough to force Doom to spend almost a week working on a plan.
Helping Hellcat and War Machine will be heroes that joined Iron Man earlier in the run: the Golden Age Human Torch, and new hero Halcyon.
Halcyon is pretty interesting, a mutant with an incredibly niche power (his heartbeat doesn’t go faster no matter what he does) who is also a mute.
Fantastic teamwork, no notes.
They definitely need another expert.
With his help, Doom is able to build a device that take away Tony’s cosmic powers.
Good thing that the power hasn’t gone to Tony’s head.
Time for a pizza party!
Should’ve brought anchovies.
The team springs its trap, with Doom revealing how he’s been able to protect himself.
With Cantwell writing, it’s no surprise to see a reference to the ending of the Doom miniseries.
I wonder how Tony knows about Doom destroying a parallel timeline; it’s probably because of his new cosmic powers.
The only one able to do some damage is War Machine.
Too bad it’s only emotional damage.
Tony completely loses it, killing everyone except Hellcat.
Times Doom has died: 4
Iron Man vol5 #18 (2022)
by Christopher Cantwell & Lan Medina
Hellcat uses her mental powers (she had them in the Defenders years and they were reactivated in this series) to get into Tony’s head.
He’s in denial about having crossed the line…
The conversation includes a montage of all the times Tony screwed up his life, which I’m amazed is able to fit in a single page.
Tony resurrects everyone, saying he’s sorry for killing everyone.
Well, he’s sorry about ALMOST everyone.
Tony has A LOT of self-reflection and, across the following issue, gives up the power and even manages to convince a returning Korvac to stop his plans of universal conquest.
It’s a good couple of issues, but no Doctor Doom. I still encourage you to check them out.
At the end, Tony Stark decides to go into rehab because he realized that cosmic power was just the latest in a long, long, LONG line of addictions he’s gone through.
Doom significance: 0/10
Time will tell if this is reference again, but so far I don’t think it has.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
The rest of the run goes to more Silver Age stuff, but not here.
Will it stand the test of time? 9/10
I realize that my style of review, in addition to not including either the introduction or the full conclusion, probably makes this look way worse than it is… because I truly enjoyed this.
The trick is not just having Tony learn the same lesson once again, but going into why he’s never actually learned any lesson in his previous addictions and failures.
They probably could’ve done more with the “everyone in NYC is a supergenius now” concept, but it would’ve detracted from the character study that was clearly Cantwell’s priority.
That being said… after the escalation of the introduction, delegating the resolution for a telepathic therapy session that takes up almost an entire issue breaks the flow of the story and is very distracting.
Times Doom has died: 4
Between this and Doom’s series, Cantwell is single-handedly responsible for DOUBLING this count!
Once again, I seriously recommend checking out the Cantwell series.
Among other things, it’s responsible for making me a huge fan of Hellcat as his superhero love interest, because holy crap do these guys have a great chemistry together and a ton of similar trauma.
Tony even asks her to marry him, with Patsy being genre-savvy enough to refuse.
It’s a great character study of Tony Stark with a lot psychological, sociological, technological and even theological themes explored from different angles.
But it also has Iron Man on roller skates jousting a vespa-riding superintelligent gorilla, because comics.
