Witness the profound loneliness of the “perfect man” in Iron Man #9. Pulling the antagonist into center stage, this ninth installment of the Armored Avenger’s solo title puts Michael Korvac’s past, present, and future into focus as he continues his crusade toward Taa II…with an unlikely ally now in tow. Written by Christopher Cantwell, drawn by CAFU, colored by Frank D’Armata, lettered by Joe Caramanga.
Iron Man #9 proves to me that this volume of Iron Man is about imperfect, arguably broken, people trying to deal with their imperfections.
For someone like Tony Stark that’s easy. You get a new suit, you surround yourself with (similarly imperfect) co-workers, and you throw yourself headlong into work. From someone else, like new series co-star and former Invader Jim Hammond, it’s even easier. You isolate yourself on a barren planetoid and yell at people to leave you alone.
But for Michael Korvac? That’s a whole other matter entirely. While Tony and his co-stars are absent this month Iron Man #9 still provides plenty of thematic texture in their stead. All centered around the returned Korvac, who readers (myself included) might not be that familiar with. Though, personally, I’ve reread The Korvac Saga [Ed. Note: That’s from Jim Shooter’s classic Avengers run, you young’uns] since taking up this iron mantle at CXF, I also understand that general audiences don’t have a lot of connection to Korvac. Or really even know what his deal is.
Thankfully, this does a lot to work to fill readers in, while keeping the story tonally in balance with Cantwell’s thesis about Tony Stark: namely, that he knows has flaws and is working to, at the very least, learn to live with them. Michael, on the other hand, is the direct opposite. A man who thinks he’s perfect and has twisted all his trauma to justify his “perfection” (read: fanaticism and hatred of the other; which is really just hatred misaligned from his pain).
We are shown Korvac’s “becoming” at the hands of the Badoon, his eventual defeat at the hands of The Avengers, and most everything else in between. This is intercut with his ongoing present-day plot, which involves the Controller and now Jim Hammond journeying toward Galactus’s starship Taa II.
Though the near-constant flashing back and forth between the past and present is jarring, the emotions and texture Cantwell continues to lay out are satisfying enough. Korvac has been telling us for a while he’s better than Tony and now Iron Man #9 starts to show exactly why he thinks that, all while refreshing readers about his history and capabilities.
Cantwell even fosters a bleakly funny haughtiness to Korvac here that we haven’t seen in the past. In one flashback in particular to the classic Avengers story, Korvac flatly intones how sorry he is that Iron Man won’t allow him to rule them all and laments calmly how disappointing it is that he has to kill them all with expedient violence. That’s pretty funny and gives Korvac a darkly comic edge that I would really like to see continue throughout this opening arc.
Art team CAFU and Frank D’Armata also shine with Iron Man #9’s singular focus. Though a few of the interior scenes do come off stiff, CAFU’s turn to the cosmic glory days of Avengers past are just pure visual candy. Especially impressive is the full-page splash of the Shooter Era Avengers in all their ragtag glory, which is further given a keen energy thanks to the eye-grabbing colors of D’Armata. They even manage to make Wonder Man look cool. It really is a feat.
Iron Man #9 will probably read better as part of a trade paperback, but that doesn’t make its thematic significance to the new volume any less important. By giving readers a refresher on Korvac and following through on the “dark mirror” it’s been setting up against its leading man, Iron Man #9 succeeds even without the titular Avenger.
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
