Invincible Iron Man #9

Review: A race against the clock to save Rebel's life! While Tony interfaces with his psyche for some emotional flashbacks. The biggest flaw with this subplot so far is that we didn't really know Rebel: he died in IM #1 and that was that; we were supposed to imagine Tony Stark's close friendship with a character who was new to this series and had never appeared in the previous three decades of Marvel history; fake sentiment doesn't work. So now Jeph Loeb fills it in for us as Tony risks his own life to keep Rebel alive, we see a bit of what these two guys meant to each other. It still lacks the solid pathos that it would have had if Rebel had been, y'know, an actual running character but it also doesn't leave all the heavy lifting of imagining this dude was Tony's best pal up to us. The action scenes are quite nice; why are all flashbacks in sepia? This isn't THE WIZARD OF OZ, we're not in Depression-era Kansas, but sepia = past so we'll learn to live with it.

Comments: First appearance of Victor von Doom and Titanium Man in this series, both in flashback. And is that Superman in the Russian newspaper? Oh, and Conner is back to being Connor a time or two.