Superior Iron Man #1

By Tom Taylor, Yildiray Cinar & Guru-eFX

Superior Iron Man is one of the three new Marvel series released last Wednesday alongside All-New Captain America and Captain America and the Mighty Avengers. Replacing the creative team from the previous Iron Man book with Earth 2 and Injustice: Gods Among Us writer Tom Taylor, Superior Iron Man is clearly designed in the wake of the successful Superior Spider-Man. It puts Tony Stark in the driving seat spinning out of the events of AXIS as he launches a new app, Extremis 3.0, capable of transforming anyone into the equivalent of perfection. However, as always, perfection comes at a price. And it’s a price which Daredevil isn’t particularly happy about (as well as the fact that those who have used Extremis 3.0 are ganging up on those who haven’t).

This book is a solid, different take on Tony Stark but it unfortunately isn’t perfect. Taylor puts in a decent showing and has an intriguing ending twist, with plenty of set up here. There’s also the inclusion of Daredevil, who is already a resident of San Francisco, and the potential for an Iron Man/Daredevil showdown at some point which could be very interesting to see, even if given the fact that this is an Iron Man book, Tony will probably end up triumphing. Regardless of the inevitable conflict’s results, it remains a tantalising prospect, and with and the new status quo so far is working, with Iron Man being even more arrogant than he normally is.

Yildray Cinar’s artwork is pretty good. There’s no red Iron Man suit in this comic and Tony has updated his look with a new, flexible suit that looks pretty good. It’ll take a while to get used to and it’ll be interesting to see it in action not just in Superior but also in other books featuring Iron Man. The book’s artwork is reinforced with the addition of Guru-eFx’s colours, which work well in conjunction with the pencils. It’s slick, smooth and the contrast between Tony’s and Daredevil’s neighbourhoods is played out very well.

However, not everything about Superior Iron Man works here. For those not reading AXIS, the change in Tony’s personality feels abrupt, and sudden. There’s no context or depth really developed to his character and he just comes across as more of a jerk than he already is. However, it is only the first issue and with Tony being the major solo character here (Pepper Potts gets to be the stand-in for the audience in this issue), there is plenty more room to expand in future issues.

So despite its problems, Superior Iron Man is off to a fairly strong start with an interesting premise. It’ll be fun to see where Taylor, Cinar and Guru-eFX can take this book going forward and this reviewer is certainly on board for at least the first arc.