by Charlie Brooks, CMRO Contributing Writer
Iron Man
Issue #20
Written by Christos Gage, Art by Jackson Guice
Published: March 2012
Although Iron Man #20 takes place in the director of SHIELD’s own book, the story is really Tim “Dum Dum” Dugan, one-time member of Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos and Tony Stark’s second-in-command during World War Hulk. It’s about his personal differences with the way Stark ran things, and it’s about him being forced into Iron Man’s position where he has to make the tough decisions. And, overall, it’s a pretty good story, albeit with one big flaw.
Our issue picks up shortly after the Hulk has defeated and captured Iron Man in their battle in World War Hulk #1. SHIELD’s Helicarrier goes in against the Hulk but fails to do any damage. Then the Hulk boards the ship and speaks with Dugan, asking where Nick Fury is. See, back before the events of Planet Hulk, Bruce Banner was living in the Alaskan wilderness, keeping away from people and doing as little damage as he could. That’s when Nick Fury found him and asked him to go up into space to save the world, and when Iron Man and the other Marvel heroes exiled him. The Hulk wants to exact his revenge on Fury, but as Dugan informs him, the old SHIELD director wasn’t actually involved. Nick Fury had already gone rogue by that time, meaning that Iron Man and the others were using a look-alike robot to trick the Hulk. With that resolved, the Hulk leaves, and Dugan has little choice but to let him go.
We then enter into some minor flashback territory as Dugan gathers some SHIELD officers who have had prior experience with the Hulk. Among them is Clay Quartermain, a one-time ally and other- time enemy of the Hulk who went rogue and helped the Hulk way back in Peter David’s Ground Zero storyline, where Clay, Rick Jones, and the Hulk tried to stop the government from stockpiling gamma bombs. The meeting of the minds gives Dugan two options: build up defenses outside of New York and give the Big Apple to the Hulk’s army, or go in guns blazing and risk the resulting casualties. Obviously, neither of these situations is ideal.
While pondering the situation in Tony’s office, Dugan finally gets to speak with the guy who is supposed to be the main character of the book. Tony is able to communicate with Dugan through his armor thanks to his Extremis abilities, and tells his sub-director about Plan B: zap all of New York City, including the Hulk, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four, into the distortion area of the Negative Zone, which will basically annihilate everything. This is a plan with the highest chance of success, but it would also wipe New York City off the map entirely. Quite a dilemma for Mr. Dugan.
Despite having very little Iron Man, this issue is pretty decent. It’s certainly better than the forgettable Iron Man #19, since here we get a new aspect of the World War Hulk story instead of a rehash of what went on in the event’s main book. Without even having Tony Stark in the book very much, it also highlights how tough Iron Man really does have it, as he is routinely dealing with world-threatening forces and having to choose between things like letting the Hulk and an alien army run amok or totally annihilating New York City. The best bit to this aspect of the story is that, unlike so many other Iron Man appearances in other titles, we don’t have the characters constantly talking about how ballsy Tony Stark is or how making the tough decisions somehow absolves him of guilt when he makes the wrong choices. Dugan doesn’t even like Tony all that much, but due to the position he’s in he finds himself sympathizing with our hero. This is much better storytelling than the average post-Civil War Iron Man appearance.
This issue does have a downside, and it’s a major one. That downside is, quite simply, that it has no resolution. A major new superweapon is introduced, one that could save the day while also wiping out New York, but we’ll never see the ramifications of using it. Heck, we’ll never even see Dugan have to make the decision as to whether he should use it or not. This is the end of the World War Hulk crossover with Iron Man – next issue brings Tony out to Omaha, Nebraska. We don’t get a “To be
Continued” at the end of this story. Instead, we get a message telling us to find out Iron Man’s fate in World War Hulk. Spoiler alert: nothing that happens in this issue comes up there, rendering this story completely meaningless.
An old rule of writing is that if you introduce a gun in Act One, you have to use it by the end of the story. In the case of comics, you can’t just have a superweapon sitting around on the shelf and then not bring it up again. I’m not saying that World War Hulk should have seen New York get wiped out by Tony’s doomsday device, but it’s a waste of good potential not to at least explore how the device might get used. By not bringing this up again, it renders the entire issue moot. Even if the point is just to show how Dugan now sympathizes with Tony for having to make tough decisions, that point gets lost because Dugan never has to make a tough decision of his own. As far as we know, he spends the rest of World War Hulk sitting in his office agonizing over what to do while the problem takes care of itself. That is a waste of good storytelling.
Thus ends the Iron Man crossover with World War Hulk. Iron Man is an essential character to the World War Hulk storyline, and yet his book also highlights the flaws of a crossover story. Thanks to being taken out early in World War Hulk, Iron Man’s own book basically wasted two issues spinning its wheels. First we had a rehash of World War Hulk #1, then we have a legitimately good story that goes nowhere because of a lack of followup. Admittedly, we knew that the way to defeat the Hulk wasn’t going to present itself in a peripheral book, but if that was the case, why was this story necessary at all? Nonetheless, if you can get over this one flaw, this issue tells a solid story about Tim Dugan, marking a chance to see how the folks at SHIELD reacted to Iron Man being in charge.
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