Editor's Note: Invincible Iron Man #5 arrives in stores Thursday, September 4.

"The Five Nightmares, Part 5: Code Black"

This issue begins to bring Matt Fraction's first arc of Invincible Iron Man to a close, delivering on last issue's cliffhanger that saw several Stark Industries facilities across the globe targeted by Ezekiel Stane's group of tech-based terrorists. It's a solid backbone for a superhero story, but Fraction and Larocca turn it into something more, providing an issue that functions as much as an exploration of Tony Stark's character and an examination of Stark Industries' role in the world as anything else--without forgetting to provide a good old-fashioned straightforward hero-vs.-villain core to hang it all off, too.

There are plenty of little touches throughout this issue that show that Matt Fraction really understands the world that Iron Man inhabits. I enjoyed the various sci-fi ideas that the writer manages to incorporate into the tours of the Stark facilities, showing how Stark technology that was originally designed for military applications has now been put to positive use in the fields of medicine and information technology. There are also several nods to the increasing importance of branding for global, multinational companies, with the virtually identical speeches given by the various Stark Industries tour guides (who all appear dressed in similar outfits with a uniform colour scheme) reflecting the increasingly homogenous nature of worldwide corporations.

Salvador Larocca reflects this idea of visual branding in his similar (but subtly different) designs for the different Stark Industries facilities all over the world, which provide some of the most impressive images of the issue - particularly the showstopping image of the explosion in the Spanish facility, which leaves no doubt that Fraction is unafraid of racking up substantial civilian casualties in order to establish Ezekiel Stane as a serious threat. Larocca is going from strength to strength on this book, coping with the demands of several quite detailed and complicated panels (such as Tony's conference call with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Pepper) but also managing to pull off the big, dynamic images that the second half of the book calls for.

The final battle scene of this issue proves particularly satisfying, seeing Ezekiel square off against Tony for an extended, uninterrupted sequence that sees Fraction do something quite clever with Iron Man's suit in quite a subtle manner. It's so subtle, in fact, that I only worked out exactly what the writer was up to on the last few pages of the issue - and even then, the dramatic cliffhanger doesn't make things entirely explicit. However, rereading passages of Tony's internal monologue provides a few clues as to how he's chosen to make use of his armour in this situation, and it makes perfect sense given the unpredictable nature of his opponent. Yet again, Tony is shown as an intelligent, forward-thinking hero who can plan for several eventualities at once, playing into the metaphor of multiple games of chess that was introduced last issue (which also calls back to the character of Obadiah Stane).

There are one or two omissions from the story - Pepper doesn't really get much attention despite the revelation of her new powers last issue, and the simultaneous terrorist attacks on the various different Stark facilities seem to grind to a halt once the big fight starts - but for the most part, this is a very solid, satisfying read that also shows just how strong a character Iron Man is as a result of the changes that his character has gone through over the last few years.

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