Review: ‘Iron Man’ #1 And The Problem Of Modern Relaunch Fatigue

The modern superhero comic landscape, especially at Marvel Comics, is lousy with relaunches. Seemingly every creative team change or significant change in direction warrants the cancellation of a series and its relaunch with a fresh new #1.

In terms of Iron Man, one of Marvel’s foundational characters in both its comic book and cinematic universe, in the sixty-one months of this decade we’ve seen four different Iron Man #1s. Those came in 2020, 2022, 2024 and now 2026. The idea of goosing sales with a new #1 every couple years isn’t inherently bad, but with each new #1 typically comes a new status quo for the character, a new base of operations, a new supporting cast, in the process halting any narrative momentum the character has and eliminating the same elements from the previous volume.

As such, across the four 2020s volumes of Iron Man, Iron Man has been rich, he’s been poor, he’s been a New Yorker, a Californian, an X-Man and a giant sword-wielding magician with steampunk armor. It’s all a lot, and the problem is, even when a series hits on a particularly interesting premise (I was quite partial to what Spencer Ackerman was trying to do in the last volume), there’s little confidence it’ll stick around for more than a couple dozen issues, at most. All of which brings us to the latest Iron Man #1.

As the first issue of a new series, Iron Man (vol. 7) #1 does what a first issue needs to do. It offers up a brief action set piece with a minor villain (Blizzard) as well as the early hints of a larger antagonist (Madame Masque, who is targeting young scientists in whom Tony Stark has invested). We get the beginnings of a supporting cast (longtime Gal Friday turned superhero Pepper Potts and S.H.E.I.L.D. agent turned more recent Gal Friday, Melina May, an appreciated carry over from the last volume of Iron Man), a new setting (Tony’s workshop is now inside the bunker where the Hulk was created), and the tease of a mystery underscoring it all.

In the process, we also receive a clear image of writer Josh Williamson and artist Carmen Carnero‘s take on the characters. A professed fan of the character, per the issue-ending editorial, Williamson casts his Tony Stark in the model of Robert Downey Jr.’s Stark — he quips while fighting, makes flashy entrances, and can’t be bothered with mundane details. It’s a good fit for Carnero’s (late of Exceptional X-Men) smooth, cinematic style and the work of colorist Nolan Woodward, who gives everything from the Iron Man armor to the glitz of the Tony Stark Award presentation to flame effects rich layers of color.

It’s all perfectly fine and largely well-executed first issue storytelling. It’s also a stark break with the previous volume of the series (which, to its credit, largely put the toys back in the toybox when it ended). If you didn’t like Ackerman’s short-lived take on Iron Man, or Gerry Duggan‘s X-Men-centric version, this is something different from both of those, something more akin to a “traditional” Iron Man status quo, at least for now.

But the relaunch grind both gives and takes. In a publishing environment in which, if you hate a character’s current direction, you just need to wait a bit for something new to come along, but also, if you love the current direction, you can’t get too attached to it because it’ll be replaced with something entirely new before long, it’s hard to get too worked up — pro or con — about anything. This could turn into the greatest Iron Man run ever, but it’ll still all come crashing down in five or ten or 25 issues, whenever sales dip, or Williamson gets bored, or some big crossover event reboots reality again.

And while new directions and creative turnovers are hardly new to comics, what’s changed is that whatever comes next will start over fresh, rather than continuing to build on the foundation already laid down. As the first half of this decade shows, Iron Man, as much as if not more than any other character at Marvel right now, is the perfect example of that.