Invincible Iron Man #11 Comic Book Recap/Review

Invincible Iron Man #11 – Gangbusters

Invincible Iron Man #11 Comic Book Recap

At Stark Headquarters, the shareholders arrive with the villain Ghost in tow.  They ignore Friday’s greetings and proceed upstairs.  In spite of the AI asking them not to proceed, they insist that Ghost break into Tony’s lab.  He gladly does so, and in a moment, the door opens.  The villain is confused, as inside, he found Mary Jane.  She and Friday explain that Tony is busy working on a new invention, and that they have been running the company in his stead.  They ask if there is anything else they could do for the shareholders, other than informing Tony that they just hired a felon to break into his lab.

invincible iron man war machine

Meanwhile, outside of the New Mexico State Penitentiary, Riri lands in the path of an approaching transporter truck. She shatters the vehicle, but her armor breaks down around her.  The young woman finds herself surrounded by police.  She apologizes, saying she is one of the good guys, and was just flying by.  She’s new to this, but promises to do better next time.

[Related: Click Here To Find Invincible Iron Man Comics Online]

Meanwhile, in Japan, Tomoe’s gang has spotted the Avengers all around Osaka.  They are looking for Stark.  Tomoe is rueful of this, commenting that thanks to that damn Madame Masque, they lost their most valuable asset – anonymity.  They can’t run and hide without damaging their reputation, and while Tomoe can easily handle somebody like War Machine… Thor is an entirely different story.

Meanwhile, Tony spots the Vision flying around.  Frustrated, he goes to meet with Rhodey.  Tony insists they are wasting their time and he doesn’t need to be rescued nor did he want the Avengers called in.  He then notices this isn’t really his friend, and insists that Ms. Marvel reveal herself.  The shape shifter obliges, but apologizes.  She calls in, and says she has Tony.

In no time at all, the bio-hack ninjas are taken down, but Tony remains annoyed.  He was still trying to figure out just how far this gang’s reach was, and though the Avengers were able to capture Zhang, Tomoe’s right hand woman, they didn’t get Tomoe herself.  Tony uses his disguise to talk to Zhang to try and find Tomoe’s location, but it’s no good.  Zhang reveals Tomoe gave everyone up and has gone into hiding.  She could be anywhere.  But there’s more to her than she leads on.  So much more.  When she comes back… it will be the end of them all.

On the Heli carrier, Tony still remains bothered by all of this.  He still has no idea what Madame Masque stole from him.  He also insists he didn’t need rescuing, but Rhodey disagrees.  Counter-intelligence isn’t Tony’s job or specialty.  He’s Iron Man – a super hero and a titan of industry.  All this was an excuse to hide from his life.  So now there’s nothing left to do but come back.  Stark contacts Friday and asks her to see if Amara still likes him.  She obliges, and asks if he knows about the teenager flying around the country in advanced armor tech.  He, uh, does not.

Invincible Iron Man #11 Comic Book Review

Hello and welcome to Comic Island!  My name is Arden, and this is my recap, and review, of Invincible Iron Man #11.

Now this issue was pretty disappointing.  After spending so long building up so little, I really felt mostly let down by this comic.  It’s not terrible, as in there aren’t any scenes I didn’t enjoy thanks to Bendis’ usual snappy dialogue, I’m just frustrated with how little we got out of this comic.  It was cool seeing Ghost in what felt like the perfect job for him, but he wasn’t used much.  It was cool having the Avengers go up against the techno ninjas, but we only got a single page of that.  It was neat seeing Riri in action after the slow introduction of her, but again, she hardly did anything.  So all this set-up was paid off, but in a very minimal sense, and I’m left feeling let down by this comic.

Mike Deodato’s art delivers as it has consistently throughout this arc, but there’s nothing spectacular here to draw.  I loved all the characters big and small used in this comic, but none of them were used very effectively.  And while I liked the ideas presented at the end, that Tony was just running away from his problems, that’s not really the impression I got out of the last ten issues.  My impression from the first story that Tony’s life was actually coming together.  And while it’s possible to make a good story out of him running away from that, in fact, I think that would have been a good way to do this story, that wasn’t what I got out of this story arc.  Did I miss these hints in issues six-ten of Tony running away from his problems?  It sure didn’t feel like this is what the story was getting at.  The impression I got felt more like his usual obsessive way of solving problems and doing whatever it takes to get the job done.

[Related: Click Here To Find Invincible Iron Man Comics Online]

So no, I don’t recommend this comic.  Hopefully this series rights itself as it gets into its full blown tie-in mode for Civil War II.  Bendis should be able to make something out of that considering he’s helming the main title and all.  In fact, that’s what I want to believe is going on here – that these comics have been less than stellar because he was focusing on writing Civil War II when he wrote these comics.  If that’s the case, that’s okay, I guess, but it would have been a lot better to just involve a guest writer or something then, because the energy of Invincible Iron Man’s first five issues has all but evaporated in these last six comics.

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