Invincible Iron Man #188: Review

Nov 1984

Dennis O'Neil, Don Perlin

Story Name:

And Grimm Shall Be Their Name!

Review & Comments

Rating:

Invincible Iron Man #188 Review by T Vernon (May 31, 2016)

Comments: The original Brothers Grimm appeared in SPIDER-WOMAN #3-12; this is the first appearance of the second set.

Review: Now this is more like it; after the overly cliched tale last time, Iron Man now faces some creative foes: the Brothers Grimm. They really spice up the story with their magical powers. Yeah, they also have a revenge motive, and they are taken down rather unimpressively, by Tony studying government records, no less, but things got a bit brighter. But what's with Rhodey? He seems to be going off the deep end even as Tony has done....

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Invincible Iron Man #188 Synopsis by T Vernon

Tony Stark is hired by a small electronics firm to do repair work, and asks to be paid in spare parts. Elsewhere, brothers Percy and Barton Grimes have discovered the Brothers Grimm costumes in the attic—and discover they can do a strange kind of magic tricks with them. Barton sees criminal possibilities here, and persuades the reluctant Percy to take revenge against a restaurateur who outbid them for a property....
Back at their company HQ, Tony adjusts the Iron Man helmet to Rhodey's specs; Rhodey goes out for a test run (insulting Tony on the way) but finds the headaches are worse than ever; he decides not to tell anyone lest they try to talk him into giving up the Iron Man identity. That day, they also receive their first commission: creating a circuit design for a video-game company—which Tony constructs in five minutes. Tony, Rhodey, and the Erwins decide on a name for their company: Circuits Maximus. To celebrate they go out to dinner at a restaurant...and yes, it's the same one the Brothers Grimm are about to attack....
The baddies show up in the middle of dinner, turning the soup to acid. Rhodey dashes off and dons the armor, returning to push them away from the building. They respond by throwing pies full of blackbirds at him, and once Shellhead has cleared away the birds he dives on the villains—only to go through their empty suits and crash into a tree. The Grimms get away....
Rhodey, humiliated by that defeat, stands guard at the restaurant, waiting for the Grimms to return. They do, first tossing acid-filled eggs at the hero and, when they don't work, causing a beanstalk to rise into the air and entangle the hero. Iron Man frees himself by burning through the beanstalk but he also sets the restaurant on fire....
Meanwhile, Tony has gone to the county seat and discovered that Percy and Barton Grimes had reason to want to destroy that restaurant, reports his suspicions to the police and the Grimes brothers are arrested. Angry at his failure, Rhodey takes off, hating Tony Stark more than ever....