REVIEW: Iron Man vol 1 #207

Writer: Denny O’Neil
Penciler: Mark Bright
Inker: Akin & Garvey
Colorist: Bob Sharen
Letterer: Rick Parker
Review: Madman

I can count on one hand the number of Iron Man comics I’ve purchased. I never really jumped on the Iron Man train until after his first movie came out as my youthful self was way more interested in web slinging, pumpkin bombs, and waiting for Ben Riley to die…not some jackass drunk in a fancy shiny red and silver suit of armor. I never really gave him a second thought until after the first movie, no matter how bad the last two were…
Sorry, no offence, Mr. Rourke.
Anyway, yeah, after seeing that movie I started to care…a little.

I had a friend growing up that always tagged along with me to the LCS, and it didn’t take long for him to dip his big toe into the house that Kirby and Lee built. I remember he bought a decent sized stack of Ghost Rider books and all was right in the world until his preacher father saw said Ghost Rider books, no doubt covered in flaming skulls and all kinds of cool stuff…
Clearly his son had been possessed by Satan himself, and I was taking him on a road straight to Hell. The next weekend my buddy’s father drove us back to the comic shop and made him take them back. I can still picture him explaining to the store owner that he needed to return this stack of comics, because his dad said, “They were of the Devil”. Reluctantly the shop owner gave him store credit, much to the displeasure of the preacher. On the way back home we tried reasoning with this man about how comics can’t literally damn you to Hell, why it wasn’t fair, etc, etc.      

Maybe we wore him down, and he just wanted to shut us up. Maybe he saw my unyielding determination that my friend be allowed to grace the sacred halls of Marvel…or even DC for that matter.
We eventually found middle ground, and that middle ground was “just a guy in a suit of armor”. That’s right: I have it on good authority that Iron Man will not lead you into eternal damnation…
We went back the next weekend, he traded his store credit for a stack of Iron Man books, and we gorged ourselves. I think I literally burned myself out on Iron Man that weekend.

Sixteen years later Jr. would rekindle the tiniest speck of interest I had in the character. A few years later it’s still a speck, and I have a different friend that collects Iron Man books. I was going to just give him this book after the review, but then I saw that it was written by Denis O’Neil. That pretty much means I’ll have to take it to the grave…
I am a huge supporter of Mr. O’Neil.
I had the opportunity to meet him personally and hear him tell some incredible stories such as the exact moment he birthed Ra’s Al Ghul, and how a heart attack saved Azrael from certain death. Huge fan. Super cool dude.

This issue is all about Iron Man vs A.I.M and their huge satellite-based sun death ray. Even though it was the usual dated dialogue and artwork, I didn’t hate this issue, and I’m sure the arc is a lot of fun. There was brief dialogue with Stark trying to convince Rhodes to wear his own suit of armor, and Rhodes still refusing. That made me snicker. I suppose I’ll spend the rest of my days searching faithfully though dollar boxes searching for the rest of the story arc. That’s ok, because I planned on doing that anyways.