Review — ‘Iron Man’ #3 Succeeds By Focusing On One Plotline

When launching a new series, it’s important to both give an idea of what the main plotline of the book’s initial arc is going to be, while also laying the seeds for additional plot points which may complicate the main one or live on after it.

To the credit of writer Josh Williamson, he did that quite well across the first two issues of the series, setting up the immediate “Madame Masque is kidnapping Tony Stark proteges” plotline while also throwing a bunch of additional plot-balls into the air, including a new relationship, the Melinda/Pepper tension, and the Avengers concerns over Iron Man’s behavior. But equally important is taking the time to focus in on one of those plots, to give it some room to advance and created a sense of narrative momentum. That’s what we get with Iron Man #3.

Keying off the cliffhanger ending of the previous issue,Iron Man #3 focuses in on the AIM plotline, establishing, the aftermath of the attack on MODOK that in which Tony got caught up, that Madame Masque’s machinations are happening within a broader context of an all out war between different factions of AIM, triggered by the fallout of events from “One World Under Doom.”

Not only does this help further/complicate the plot for this series, but its a clever way of using the shared universe, acknowledging and piggybacking off a recent crossover event in a way that reminds you these characters’ books don’t exist in a narrative vacuum, but which also doesn’t require you to have read every page of that event.

To be clear, while the main AIM plot is the focus – it bookends the issue – it’s not the only thing happening in the issue. It also spends some time on the burgeoning relationship between Tony and Luna, which also wraps in Pepper and Melinda. Luna, as yet, doesn’t do much for me as a character – new love interests, like new status quos, tend to rise and fall with creative changes, so its hard to get too invested in them.

Especially when they involve brand new characters, and Pepper deserves more to do than be an awkward ex-girlfriend. But the cutaway to Melinda’s parallel investigation into the AIM situation finally gets her back in action, and serves as an effective way to loop the romance subplot into the broader focus of the issue.

Art-wise, Carmen Carnero seems to get better with each issue. Here, she effortlessly controls the pacing going big and wide for the bookending action sequences before slowing down, increasing the number of panels and zooming for the quieter, more personal date scenes.

Along they way, she drops at least a couple iconic images, from a long vertical panel depicting the different AIM factions that could be a movie poster to the reveal of Madame Masque’s repurposed SHIELD helicarrier (one built by Tony when he was head of SHIELD, a great way to quietly emphasize Masque’s ongoing obsession with him).

All in all, it’s another strong showing for the young series, which continues to shake-off some of the excess and chaos of its opening issue by more expertly weaving its various threads together, making it clear what the focus of this initial arc is meant to be.