Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1 (New York Comiccon 2008 Edition)

Another leftover promo book that I picked up at Free Comic Book Day 2011. This one is a NYCC promo from 2008.

Title: Iron Man: Legacy of Doom
Issue: #1 (New York Comiccon 2008 Edition)
Date: 2008
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: David Michelinie, Bob Layton
Penciler: Ron Lim
Inker: Bob Layton
Colorist: Moose Baumann
Letterer: Artmonkeys Studios
Editor: Molly Lazer

This is a "lost" adventure of Iron Man, a series of events that Tony Stark discovers was wiped from his memory. The first third of the story is a pretty tedious setup along with a recap of a very silly-sounding previous story that had Stark and Viktor Von Doom doing their take on A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court. I suppose that story needs to be dredged up every so often if only to prove the point that you can't improve on Mark Twain.

Apparently this is a sequel to that story. Stark gets summoned to Latveria with the threat that "millions of lives hang in the balance", which I suppose is a threat that Doom could make pretty much any time he wants. Stark takes the bait, and then has to fight some soldiers who are attacking Doom's castle. This sequence serves no purpose other than as a kind of random encounter of the type you see in poorly plotted D&D adventures.

Once the soldiers are dispatched with no actual casualties, we get down to business. Doom is on to a sinister plot by Mephisto. And Iron Man has "proven adequate against mystic dangers in the past" (Wait. What? That makes no sense at all; Iron Man is like the least mystical hero in the Marvel Universe).

Anyway, there's an amusing bit of counter-trickery involving a device to return Doom and Stark from Mephisto's dimension, which is actually the only good moment in this book.

Then it's off to Hell, which resembles the mine cart roller coaster at Jordan Furniture's "Motion Odyssey Movie (MOM)" ride. With some rather unthreatening-looking blob creatures in what is basically another random encounter. Then the big plot twist is revealed, which is surprising in the sense that I wasn't expecting it because it was way TOO obvious and I figured there had to be something more clever going on.

Nope.

Rating: 3/10

2099 Limited

Title: 2099 Limited
Date: 1993
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Pat Mills, Tony Skinner, John Francis Moore, Peter David, Gerard Jones
Penciler: Tom Morgan, Pat Broderick, Grant Miehm, Rick Leonardi, Ron Lim, Dwayne Turner
Inker: James Palmiotti, Tom Florimonte, Bud La Rosa, Al Williamson, Adam Kubert, Dwayne Turner, Kyle Baker

Ah, the bright and shiny days of the early '90s, when comics were, well, shiny. This is a preview ashcan giveaway that was packaged with issue #7 of Hero magazine. It previews the full line of 2099 titles from Marvel, which feature one of the many zillions of possible alternate futures of the Marvel Universe. The world is a fairly generic dystopia that is played for laughs half the time (a thirty-mile long mall in California, and so on). The X-Men 2099 story looks like it has the most potential here, with a young mutant named Fitzgerald making his way across the desert to a refugee city that exists outside of the corporate totalitarian power structure.

Punisher 2099 had a generic fight scene featuring what had to be the dumbest "smart" weapon ever. It's a guided needle-bullet that never misses, but always lodges in the target's arm and then burrows to the heart, which of course gives Punisher time to remove it. Um... Why not just program it to always shoot the target in the head? Oh, right. Because that would make sense.

Spider-Man 2099 concentrated on character interactions. The spider-man character doesn't appear in costume. Much like the Doom 2099, Ravage 2099, and 2099 Unlimited (featuring Hulk 2099) bits, there really wasn't enough story to get a sense of what it was all about.

None of these titles rose above the level of generic in these previews, and the editors might have been better off devoting the space to show a bit more from one or two titles rather than trying to preview the whole line.

But the cover is shiny.

Rating: 4/10