Giant-Size Hulk, Iron Man: Iron Age, Invincible Iron Man

Giant-Size Hulk 1

I don’t know what possessed me to buy this.  Peter David writing a new Hulk story? The reprint of Hulk: The End?  I don’t know if I regretted it then, but I regret it now. A lame Champions v Hulk flashback story, followed by another Banner/Hulk battle-of-the-personalities internal struggle circa Planet Hulk.  Finish it off with a spiritual successor to David’s final issue back in Hulk 467, and you get a boring Giant-Size money grab. I’m a sucker.

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Boring (Cutting)

Iron Man: Iron Age 1-2

Kurt Busiek’s take on Iron Man: Year One.  Pepper Potts’ narration of the first issue carries the whole thing.  She’s so gosh darn likeable, and Patrick Zircher nails the look.

Love the wardrobe, the freckles, the ability.

Happy Hogan doesn’t fare as well in the second issue.  His voice is too similar to Ben Grimm’s to stand on its own.  

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine

Iron Man 128

The classic alcoholism issue.  It holds up pretty well, even if the structure mirrors every Very Special Episode from the 80s - Iron Man gets drunk.  Iron Man tries to be a hero, but makes things worse. Bethany holds an intervention, including a cautionary story of how she failed to help someone else in her life in the past.  Tony accepts help. Cue montage scene of him quitting cold turkey. Tony makes amends with a wronged Jarvis. Alcohol tempts Tony one last time in a moment of weakness, but he resists and emerges out the other side a better (and cured?) man.  

Perhaps this was groundbreaking at the time, but there’s very little drama in it almost forty years later.  This makes the writing that much more impressive, as it still manages to entertain. It helps that the art is quite good, with an unrecognizable John Romita Jr drawing in the Marvel house style.  Part of me wishes he stayed with it, instead of morphing into his current look.

No one draws like this anymore.

Such an evolution in style for Romita Jr.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

Iron Man 327-331

What was I thinking???  I have very fond memories of the Teen Tony issues, despite the scathing reviews of the time.  If nothing else, I remember the early Jim Cheung art, foretelling the superstar that he would eventually become.  

Who could have predicted from this...

...To this.

Instead, I find that he only drew two of the five issues here, and the writing is even worse than the “serviceable” that I had mentally attributed to it.  I’m not sure if anything I’ve read for this project so far has aged as poorly as this.

Not by Jim Cheung.  How did this make it into a Marvel comic? 

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Stupid (Cutting)