Editor's Note: Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. #31 arrives in stores tomorrow, July 16.

"With Iron Hands: Part 3 of 4"

Mark J. Hayman: 4 Bullets
Paul Brian McCoy: 2 Bullets

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Mark J. Hayman 4 Bullets

Well now, colour me impressed.

After disparaging the colour schemes of the last couple of previews I've reviewed, it's a happy surprise to find a book done right. Joël Séguin's ability to depict S.H.I.E.L.D. Ops with a cunning blend of pinks, purples, fuschias and plums, deftly shading multiple light sources while highlighting every brush stroke, is what we critics sometimes like to call "Art." Exteriors are handled with equal aplomb, and ol' Shellhead glints and gleams in all the right places at all the right times. Lovely stuff. Note to self: remember to eat those plums in the fridge.

Visually, things are refreshingly dynamic without becoming overwrought. Almost every panel moves and flows, pausing only when it's opportune. With four artists listed it's not possible for me to dole out individual praise, so you'll have to divvy it up as you see fit, lads. Anatomy, perspective, framing and form are all well delivered. There's more than a hint of Neal Adams' influence, especially in the character design, as well as a splash of Art Adams with the weirder looking antagonists. A discrete pair of Adams? (Or is it "Adamses"? Nah, that sounds too much like the Egyptian god of chewing gum.) It's been awhile, but let me dust off my Kevin McDonald impression: co-incidence!?

I suppose you'd like to know something about the story, too. The nutshell version has a pair of plots playing out, which may or may not be related. Plot the first has an old drinking buddy of Tony's, Nasim Rahimov, apparently gone rogue and bent on widespread death and destruction in the form of a plethora of miniature nuclear devices. Stark leads an armoured special ops unit to a mythical Eurasian country standing in for Kazakhstan (or possibly Kyrgyzstan), where things don't go exactly to plan for the good guys or the bad. You may be happy to learn that freelance nutjob Paladin gets his purple behind handed back to him in a conventionally inventive way. I suppose that warrants an explanation. Since Extremis, Stark is technology made flesh, which is exactly as Videodrome-creepy as it sounds. Therefore, employing any technology against him isn't the smart thing to do. Unless you're a Skrull, but this book is a Skrull-free Zone (what with everyone's favourite Dum Dum still being stalwart, heroic, and so forth).

Plot the other concerns a loon named Nicolas Weir, a former techno-muckity at S.H.I.E.L.D. who feels stepped on, over, and around by Stark, so naturally it's time for great, big vengeance. Weir has dusted off a hitherto unknown doomsday weapon, modified it based on his own insane version of "better," and, whoopsie!, been literally absorbed into its mainframe. So now there's a psychotic giant, floating brain that isn't overly fond of our Tony following him around. Worse, since it ate Weir, it not only really, really doesn't like Tony, it also has the advantage of Weir's meaty bits offsetting Tony's mastery of all that goes beep! At the moment I'm envisioning a tiny hologram of Maria Hill endlessly repeating "Help us, Philip J. Fry, you're our only hope!"

So on the whole things are looking pretty crappy for Tony, S.H.I.E.L.D., any place they happen to be, and anyone they happen to know.

I should mention the title, too. "With Iron Hands" is just so stupidly clever the phrase has been repeating in my neither gigantic nor floating brain (hydrocephalic doesn't count, right?).

Finally, as a rule, I don't have many rules. When you get up over, oh, seventeen, they become hard to remember and you wind up contradicting yourself which is of little use to anyone. One rule, apart from the usual seventeen, is that I appreciate as quiet and placid an environment as possible when writing (a departure from my misspent youth, when ambient crowd noise was a virtual necessity). Since I tend to work from home a great deal, which leads to near constant interruptions (for their own sake, I've learned), I don't get nearly as much writing done as I'd like. Reading, on the other hand, has its own rules and often suggests a soundtrack. For this issue of Iron Man I recommend Heaven Up Here by Echo and the Bunnymen. Remember to crank it when "All My Colours" starts. The neighbours can go holler for all of those four minutes and six seconds.

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Paul Brian McCoy: 2 Bullets

I'm going to put my curmudgeon hat on for a minute, here. Hold on... Okay, there we go.

If I didn't know any better, I'd think that Marvel was trying to kill this series so they can run wild with the critically acclaimed Matt Fraction version. I mean, why else take the writing team of Daniel and Charles Knauf, who have made this book their own (and something special, at that), off the title as the Iron Man movie hits the theaters, while launching another series with a hot new writer and giving that new series the same name this one had until Stark took over S.H.I.E.L.D.? And the guy who gets the spotlight that accompanies a multi-million dollar opening weekend? Who is he? He's a good writer, but his biggest spotlight has been an Avengers/Transformers crossover series. I guess giant robots that change into VW Bugs are kind of like millionaire alcoholics who fly around in high-tech armor while fighting terrorists.

For the record, I loved Lone, but it's gone and I am wearing my curmudgeon hat.

And then, to put the cherry on top, let's get an art team (I'm looking at you Kurth and Hennessy) who draws the ugliest, most awkward looking people I've seen in many years, to be the anchor for the story. If you've read my reviews of newuniversal: Shockfront, you know what's coming. There is actually another art team also working on this book (Pagulayan and Huet), and their pages look good with lots of action and well proportioned and properly lit characters. Whenever you see people twisting their heads around like their necks are broken, their bulgy eyes marred by blotchy uncalled-for heavy shadow, you know you're looking at the vision of Kurth and Hennessy.

This comic is awful, and it's ugly, and it makes me want to stop buying the series. That is not a good thing.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that the storyline that I praised as being interesting, exciting, and worth reading back in my review of the first chapter of this story? Not mentioned at all this issue. This issue is all about the giant flying robot brain and "The Other Nick" who apparently was created just for this story. You know, the characters and story I thought were out of place and didn't fit with the current iteration of Iron Man? That's them.

So to sum up: Ugly, ugly art. Why is everyone blotchy and contorted? Stupid, stupid story. Why ignore the nanotech and miniaturized nukes with limited radioactive yield? Why focus on a giant flying robot brain? It's silly and, um, no, it's just silly.

And when this is over (after one more torturous month), we finally get our Secret Invasion cross-over, by yet another creative team (but at least it's Christos Gage doing the scripting). I guess the Knaufs needed a lot of lead time to get Eternals up and running. This book is going to continue to suffer from a lack of focus and an inconsistent voice until they get back. The question is, will this diversion prove fatal?

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