Invincible Iron Man #29: Review

Jul 2008

Stuart Moore, Carlo Pagulayan

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Story Name:

With iron hands, part 1 of 4

Review & Comments

Rating:

Invincible Iron Man #29 Review by Rob Johnson (February 24, 2016)

At last we see Iron Man: Director of SHIELD in the indicia. It's been on the cover since #15 when the indicia said just Iron Man. The indicia did change in #17 but only to The Invincible Iron Man. The current change is really because there's a new parallel Iron Man title starting this month which *is* called Invincible Iron Man.

Stuart Moore takes over from the Knauf brothers as scripter for this 4-issue story arc. Carlos Pagulayan will be penciller for all 4 issues, but Roberto de la Torre will also stay on for the 1st 2. As usual de la Torre inks himself and Jeffrey Huet continues to do the job for Pagulayan. I think Carlos did the Nick Weir part and Roberto did the Kirikhstan stuff.

The arc title 'With Iron Hands' is probably a tip of the hat to Jack Williamson's old SF tale 'With Folded Hands' in which robots are designed to protect humans from harm, but achieve this by taking control of the world and lobotomising anyone who doesn't conform to their idea of a peaceful world.

We've seen the SHIELD Overkill Horn before in Strange Tales #150-152. SHIELD developed it because they rightly suspected that Hydra had 1. Hydra's got destroyed. SHIELD later used theirs against Hate-Monger and Red Skull in Super-Villain Team-Up #17.

From Our Blog:

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Invincible Iron Man #29 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

SHIELD Director Iron Man is getting ready to lead the armoured Team Alpha on a mission into Kirikhstan. While he waits Tony Stark remembers his old lover Bethany Cabe and is dying for a drink he can't have 'cos he's an alcoholic. Deputy Directors Dum-Dum Dugan and Maria Hill are overseeing the operation from the helicarrier. Shellhead is supposed to be just part of the team this time, but Dugan and Hill have a bet on how long that will last.

SHIELD has been invited here by the Russians to find some terrorist-planted nuclear bombs. (But since Kirikhstan is no longer part of the Soviet Union the locals might not be so welcoming.) The terrorist only gave a list of possible sites so the team split up to cover them all.

Stark expects the bombs to be detected by magnetometers on their wrists. Carstairs, Farrell and Colletti call in negative, but the 4th Alpha Gomez reports a contact before an explosion cuts him off.

The helicarrier and the rest of the team move in to Gomez' location. But Iron Man has detected another bomb. Tracking it down he finds a miniature device with nano-scale components. Atomic force microscopes in his gauntlets allow him to manipulate the mechanism. But as he works the bomb ejects 4 smaller lasers which he destroys. Then a tense 2 minutes of fiddling enables him to deactivate the trigger mechanism.

Gomez is badly burned but should recover. Strangely his nuclear bomb exploded with hardly any residual radiation. Tony thinks he recognises this technology. SHIELD has intercepted a transmission from the terrorist, a badly disfigured man who claims to want revenge on the Kirikhstan government who mutilated him and killed his wife. And Stark recognises him as Nasim Rahimov.

As predicted Tony Stark takes control of the operation once he gets back to the helicarrier. Rahimov was a classical pianist (and we'll learn next issue also an inventor) and his wife was a painter, and they were both personal friends.

Meanwhile SHIELD Special Weapons Director Nick Weir is being given access to a storage area for ultra-dangerous weapons in a Pentagon basement. In particular he's come to see the SHIELD Overkill Horn, which was developed during the Cold War to remotely-detonate enemy weapons. But Weir KO's his guide Lt Crater with a baseball bat, and sprays nanites at the Horn, setting off alarms.

When troops burst in Weir has Crater as a hostage with a gun created by his nanorobots. It turns out he's miffed because inventive genius Tony Stark has made him effectively redundant after taking over SHIELD. But now he'll show them all how good he is, as his nano-system upgrades the Overkill Horn into a machine that will counter any possible weapon, and adapt to any future weapons technology.

But something goes wrong as the wildly-mutating Horn attacks the soldiers and engulfs Carter. And Weir runs away.

Story #2