Infamous Iron Man #3: Review

Dec 2016

Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev

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Story Name:

(no title given)

Review & Comments

Rating:

Infamous Iron Man #3 Review by Rob Johnson (January 6, 2017)

The solicit said that Pepper Potts would be in this issue, and she's on the Steve Epting variant cover in the Rescue armour. But I don't see her. Unless ...

... she's Cynthia von Doom's companion - unlikely. We saw her and her unknown ally at the end of #1, and we still don't know how she's back from the dead and why she appears not to like her son.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Infamous Iron Man #3 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

Cynthia von Doom lights a candle and cuts her palm for blood in a pentagram. But someone interrupts her ritual to draw her attention to the fight between her son Victor and Thing in Amara Pereira's apartment.

Victor von Doom armours up and throws Ben Grimm out of a window. Thing is confused that his foe is wearing armour more like that of Iron Man (but not so colourful). They clash again ...

Next thing we know Amara wakes up in a bedroom elsewhere. She runs outside to find Victor floating in lotus position and mentally rebuilding his armour. Apparently her home was trashed in the fight so he brought her here unconscious - here being a castle somewhere in Switzerland. She's free to go back but he warns her that SHIELD won't leave her alone now they know of her connection to him.

Amara wants to know why Victor has given up being villain Dr Doom and wants now to be hero Iron Man. He explains how Dr Doom achieved his goal of ultimate power as god of the (much-reduced) multiverse in a time and place very few remember. (Secret Wars III of course.) But it all fell apart, and afterwards he realised that it hadn't brought him the fulfilment he expected.

But if conquest wasn't his true purpose then he must find another. He decided to become a hero and studied (and helped) Tony Stark as the role model most like himself (in the 2015 Invincible Iron Man series). And when Stark fell (in Civil War II) he decided to take up the vacant position as Iron Man. His life as a supervillain has made him familiar with other villains, which puts him in a good position to hunt them down (we see him attacking the Mad Thinker last issue).

This doesn't impress Amara. Becoming a hero because being a villain was boring isn't good enough. Victor contends that his motive doesn't matter, only his actions. She demands he take her home. And with a magical wave he (presumably) does just that.

Apparently Doom similarly magicked his way out of the earlier fight. But Thing is determined to track him down again. He's communicating with Maria Hill of SHIELD as he lands the FantastiCar in the ruins of Doom's Latverian castle looking for clues. She warns him that the country has devolved into civil war, and urges him not to cause an international incident.

He loses the connection as he enters Victor's old lab. And his rocky skin starts falling off as he is confronted by Doom's mother.

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