Graphic Novel Review – Stuart Moore – Iron Man – With Iron Hands

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Spoiler alerts. Marvel Comics – 2009 In the absence of Nick Fury, Tony Stark is acting head of SHIELD, a CIA like body who monitor super-hero and super-villain activity. Stark’s promotion to head of the organization upsets the man who expected to get the job, Nick Weir, who promptly sets out to get revenge. He steals some of Stark’s Nano technology and builds a giant brain monster with himself integrated into it. Stark, as Iron Man, also faces a problem with a terrorist in Russia who has developed bombs with nuclear blast potential but no radioactive fallout – both villains are using apparatus initially invented by Stark, who is a weapons and armaments dealer. (a side of his work that is never deemed immoral in its own right). Stark appeases one villain and uses him to help defeat the other, but Stark knows that whatever he does, someone has to die, and playing God creates a terrible dilemma for him. So much emphasis on Stark’s decisions in stopping a tragedy never really questions the ethics of his line of work in the first place. The thought of nukes that don’t irradiate is treated as appositive even when we see them detonated here. A story with its ethical wires decidedly crossed. It is not alright to use nukes without radiation. The explosion is pretty bad in itself. Arthur Chappell