Review — ‘Invincible Iron Man’ #16 Is Big On Action, Light On Content

After months of build-up, scheming, near-misses, and obfuscations, Invincible Iron Man #16 is a massive release of tension, the kickoff to the climax of the series’ involvement in Fall of X, and possibly its time as a de facto X-Men book. As such, it’s big and loud and action packed. As a result, it works much better as an emotional experience than a cerebral one. 

The story in Invincible Iron Man #16 is told across a series of full page splash. Every page, in fact, is a full splash (save for two that form a double page splash across them, with two panel insets), echoing Superman #75.

The story is fairly straightforward. Tony Stark and Feilong battle one another via their massive mech suits, while the Stark Sentinels flit about serving as cannon fodder. Writer Gerry Duggan does his best to bring some substance to the proceedings via narrative captions detailing Tony’s running monologue throughout the action, expressing a combination of tactics, commentary, and lamentations. Duggan’s effort is valiant, but this is clearly an issue designed to be a big action-packed spectacular and a showcase for the art. 

It’s probably overselling it to say that penciler Creeks Lee and inker Waldon Wong rise to the challenge. They meet the challenge, certainly, turning in big pages of robot fighting action. The full page splashes don’t merely serve as a vehicle for better showcasing the kaiju-esque armors of Tony and Feilong. They feel particularly expansive after so many issues in which Tony and Emma Frost are operating in the shadows, skulking around the Hellfire Club and hiding their identities from the ever-watching eyes of Feilong and Orchis.

The shit has hit the fan, plot-wise, and the art is contributing to the feeling of tension having reached its breaking point by going big and bright and expansive.

Unfortunately, it also makes Invincible Iron Man #16 an incredibly fast read, even by modern standards (and even taking into account Duggan’s captions and a few sections of antagonistic dialogue between the combatants). Lee and Wong have no issues delivering on the kind of clear, easy-to-follow action the story calls for. However, the full page panels and the story’s setting (the Australian Outback, chosen by Tony to serve as both part of the lure to get Feilong to the fight and to minimize the possibility of bystander casualties and property damage during it) means there’s not that many ways to depict the action in interesting and/or different ways.

The lack of panels make everything feel big, but that’s the only feeling they can convey, lacking the ability to direct the readers’ eye or play with expectations. Lee and Wong do what they can with the placement of energy bursts or explosions to break up the visual monotony, but there’s only so much they can do within the setting and approach. When everything is using the same widescreen “camera zoom” it becomes even easier to skim each page and turn it faster, contributing to the pacing problems. 

Certainly, this is all intentional. Invincible Iron Man #16 was clearly designed to be a fast-paced, light-on-content popcorn comic, and by those standards, it succeeds. It also succeeds as a welcome burst of the tension the series had been slowly cranking up in the preceding issues. It is cathartic, seeing Tony’s plan come to fruition and feeling the welcome relief of having reached a place where Tony can superhero punch his problems again, at least for a while. Unfortunately, once that initial burst of tension is released, the issue deflates rather quickly.